China’s miniature biosphere experiment has yielded sprouting cotton seeds, and they are the first plants to germinate on the Moon—an important first step in creating a viable, self-sustaining lunar colony. China’s Chang’e 4 lander arrived on the Moon’s far side on January 3, 2018. Among its cargo is a miniature lunar biosphere developed by scientists at Chongqing University. This experiment consists of a 7-inch-long, airtight container filled with soil, air, water, various seeds, yeast...

According to a new report, EA's open-world Star Wars game, in development following the closure of Visceral Games, has also been canceled. Kotaku has reported this game's alleged cancellation. According to Kotaku, this Star Wars game was the one announced following Visceral Games' closure in 2017, which came alongside the cancellation of Amy Hennig's game in production at the studio. Development resources at the time shifted from Visceral's title, reportedly codenamed Ra...

For the past year, discussions involving data privacy have heated up in Congress, and new federal legislation now seems inevitable. Today, a leading technology policy think tank, supported by Google, Amazon, and Facebook, proposed a “grand bargain” with lawmakers, arguing that any new federal data privacy bill should preempt state privacy laws and repeal the sector-specific federal ones entirely.

In the 2015 blockbuster The Martian, Matt Damon plays an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars and survives by growing potatoes, producing enough food to last months. China’s lunar mission could bring that piece of science fiction a step closer to reality if it succeeds in growing the first flower on the moon in less than a hundred days’ time, an experiment that the China National Space Administration said it would soon broadcast.

A mark on a page, an online meme, a fleeting sound. How can these seemingly insignificant stimuli lead to acts as momentous as participation in a racist rally or the massacre of innocent worshippers? Psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists and philosophers are developing a new theory of language understanding that’s starting to provide answers.

If you had to come up with the most ridiculous thing the Religious Right could do in defense of Donald Trump, it’d be hard to top this one: James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, wants Christians to pray and fast in order to protect Trump from being impeached.

The days of having to tune in live or buy expensive discs in order to watch your favorite shows and movies are gone. Our favorite service overall is Netflix, offering an excellent selection of TV shows, movies and original programming. If you need something a little cheaper, however, Hulu is a worthwhile alternative, and a few dollars less expensive — if you're willing to sit through some commercials, that is.

God of War is the result of the labors of 300 people at console industry leader Sony’s studio in Santa Monica, California. Yet it was the underdog in the battle for Game of the Year at The Game Awards, as Red Dead Redemption 2 was built by a team at Rockstar Games with 10 times more resources. Even so, God of War was the surprise Game of the Year winner, even though it came out in April, long before the fall games that were fresh in everyone’s mind during the holiday season.

Every winter, there is one issue that polarises opinion, particularly among parents – is the flu jab a good idea? No matter where I hear this issue being discussed, the same argument comes up over the false belief that getting the vaccine will give you flu. Researchers in the United States found more than half of parents believed their child could get flu from being immunised against it. And although this study was released weeks ago, it is still dominating online discussions into 2019.

He's still not James Bond, but for now this honor will do. British actor Idris Elba has been named People's 2018 "Sexiest Man Alive." He is the 33rd man to hold the title and appears this week on the magazine's cover. Elba told the publication, "I was like, 'Come on, no way. Really?' " when he first learned he had been selected. "Looked in the mirror, I checked myself out. I was like, 'Yeah, you are kind of sexy today,' " the "...

Scientists have found evidence that dark matter can be heated up and moved around, as a result of star formation in galaxies. The findings provide the first observational evidence for the effect known as 'dark matter heating', and give new clues as to what makes up dark matter. The research is published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 43 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today to kick off 2019. In this particular report we cover Multiplayer Gaming, Ride Hailing for Maps, Home Automation with Siri, Glass Metal, Apple Pencil and a design patent for Fabric. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

The Dutch population is rapidly losing interest in going to church, according to social and cultural planning office SCP. The decline of the Christian faith also continues in the Netherlands. "Churches are losing in authority, binding power and popularity", the SCP said in a new report, RTL Nieuws reports.

For almost two centuries, miners have been extracting coal from pits in Germany’s Ruhr valley, which the country used to power its once-burgeoning steel mills and produce electricity. It’s largely thanks to coal that Germany stepped out of the Industrial Revolution as an industrial powerhouse. Today, the country is the wealthiest in Europe, by a high margin, and the 4th largest economy in the world.

Voyager 2 visited the ice giants in the 1980s, the only craft ever to do so. Planetary scientists argue that new missions to each planet would also benefit heliophysics and exoplanet research. Launching a small orbiter with an accompanying atmospheric probe to the solar system’s ice giants—Uranus and Neptune—should be a top priority for NASA in the coming decade, say planetary scientists who conducted a review of potential missions to do so. Beyond being scientifically valuable, such a mis...

Nearly two years after leaving the White House, Michelle and Barack Obama still hold the hearts of the American people. A new Gallup poll released Thursday found that the former first couple are the most admired woman and man in the country. Michelle, who is currently promoting her bestselling memoir Becoming, dethroned former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for the first time in 17 years. Clinton — who's also been in the public eye as first lady, U.S. senator...

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that can automatically differentiate between different types of cancer cells and their sensitivity to radiotherapy. A team of researchers in Japan have devised an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can identify different types of cancer cells using microscopy images. Their method can also be used to determine whether the cancer cells are sensitive to radiotherapy. The researchers reported their findings in the journal Cancer Rese...

Alien: Isolation is one of the best horror games this generation, despite a laundry-list of issues. That said, apparently it was almost entirely a different game. Alien: Isolation released back in 2014 as a first-person survival horror game from Creative Assembly and Sega. The game was praised -- and criticized -- for many things, but it was perhaps the game's atmosphere and the tension it creates that won over the most. And the game's first-person perspective was key to both of these ...

Researchers in Australia have developed a 10-minute test that can detect the presence of cancer cells anywhere in the human body, according to a newly published study. The test was developed after researchers from the University of Queensland found that cancer forms a unique DNA structure when placed in water. The test works by identifying the presence of that structure, a discovery that could help detect cancer in humans far earlier than current methods, according to the paper published in jour...

“Nations will revert to their natural tendency of hiding behind their borders, of moving towards protectionism, of listening to vested interests, and they’ll forget about transcending those national priorities,” said Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund back in 2013.

CYBERSECURITY can feel like a chaotic free-for-all sometimes, but it's not every day that a whole new conceptual type of attack crops up. Over the last 15 months, though, cryptojacking has been exactly that. It's officially everywhere, and it's not going away.

The abrupt and pointed resignation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on Thursday alarmed official Washington. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) called him an “an island of stability amid the chaos of the Trump administration.” Retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) told The Washington Post that “having Mattis there gave all of us a great deal more comfort than we have now.”

Family farms can’t survive low milk prices, tariffs and terrible government policies.

Gatwick Airport is Britain's second busiest by passenger volume, and Europe's eighth. And yet it was brought to a standstill for two days by two people and a single drone. Its vulnerability reminded me of a conversation I had two years ago, at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon with cybersecurity investor Sergey Gribov of Flint Capital. He was talking up one of his investments, an industrial cybersecurity firm based in Israel called CyberX. Half-bored, I girded myself for his pitch.

What is this? This is a project for Super Mario Odyssey that plans to recreate most of Super Mario 64. Peach's Castle Exterior, Bob-omb Battlefield (Seperate from this project), and Whomp's Fortress have been done.