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Modern neuroscientists and psychologists know that a healthy dose of nostalgia is good for you, at least if you’re recalling happy days. But there was no sweetness to cut the bitter sensation in 1688, when Johannes Hofer coined the word in his medical dissertation. A combination of the Greek words nostos, or homecoming, and algos, or pain, it was a special type of homesickness associated with soldiers fighting far-off wars—and doctors feared it could kill....

The next step is crucial for air travel: ensure every piece of gear is in the right bag. After all, I’ve had to ditch pocket knives at security because I forgot they were in my carry-on, and I certainly never want to repeat the time I had to trash a whole bag of mole paste from Puebla, Mexico, because I didn’t realize pastes counted as liquid. If it’s not clear yet, transporting camping equipment can present plenty of packing conundrums beyond what you’d expect from a typical vacation....

For hardened New York commuters, this dysfunction has long been part of daily life, but a historic request by the US Transportation Department could help change that. In late March, the US Transportation Department made a call to allocate $100 million in 2023 for a New Jersey and New York area rail project. Specifically, it proposes to help fund the building of a new tunnel under the Hudson River for commuters while simultaneously repairing the old tunnel damaged by seawater during Superstorm Sandy....

One popular encryption scheme, for instance, can be undone only by factoring a huge random number, a “key” unlocking encoded information, into two prime numbers. It’s a task that today is extraordinarily difficult, but not impossible. With enough computing power, a spying government could break the key. Or some clever mathematician could find an easy way to factor large numbers and do it tomorrow, in theory. In search of greater security from code breakers, a new generation of code makers has been turning from math to physics....

Some of the increased concern comes after the eight most recent Ebola cases reportedly do not have known links with other current patients. The WHO said initial investigations by Uganda’s Ministry of Health had shown they were not contacts of people already known to have Ebola. “We remain concerned that there may be more chains of transmission and more contacts than we know about in the affected communities,” director-general Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the briefing....

Researchers from the Toulouse School of Economics decided to see what the public would decide, and posed a series of questions to online survey-takers, including a situation where a car would either kill 10 people and save the driver, or swerve and kill the driver to save the group. They found that more than 75 percent supported self-sacrifice of the passenger to save 10 people, and around 50 percent supported self-sacrifice when saving just one person....

To get to the root of the pimple popping divide, we can look to one of our most basic emotions: disgust. Disgust evolved to protect humans from infectious diseases and poisons, Daniel Kelly, professor of philosophy at Purdue University and author of a book called Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, told PopSci in an interview. For instance, we’ve learned to avoid common repulsive items, like rotten meat or poop, because they can contain microbes that are known to make us sick if ingested....

The project is both a specific manufacturing challenge, and an opening for the United States to newly consider how many warheads it needs on hand to achieve its stated strategic objectives. Inside a nuclear warhead, a plutonium pit is crucial to setting off the sequence of reactions that make a thermonuclear explosion. Inside the pit is a gas, like deuterium/tritium, and around the pit is chemical explosive. When the chemical explosive detonates, it compacts the plutonium around the gas until the core is dense enough to trigger a fission reaction....

Ingenuity, the first aircraft to achieve controlled and powered flight on another world, missed a scheduled communication session with Perseverance on May 3. The rover acts as Ingenuity’s base station, which sends the helicopter’s data back to Earth while receiving and relaying NASA commands. This is the first communication blackout since the two robots landed on the Red Planet in February 2021. A seasonal increase in atmospheric dust, a feature of the approaching Mars winter, caused the blackout by preventing Ingenuity’s solar arrays from being able to fully recharge its batteries....

To that end, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a simulation of two socially aware robots that can now tell if they’re being sabotaged or helped. In a new paper presented at the 2021 Conference on Robot Learning in London this week, a team from MIT demonstrated how they used a mathematical framework to imbue a set of robotic agents with social skills so that they could interact with one another in a human-like way....

The story of the planned and then abandoned drone escort is a smaller part of the broader story about the B-21, the first new bomber developed by the United States in 30 years, and the first one developed entirely after the Cold War. News of the cancellation of the drone escort came at the Royal International Air Tattoo, a massive military air show held in England every July. “The idea of a similar range collaborative combat aircraft is not turning out to be cost effective, so it looks like we’re not going to go that direction,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Breaking Defense in an interview at the event....

Of course rain itself has no scent. But moments before a rain event, an “earthy” smell known as petrichor does permeate the air. People call it musky, fresh—generally pleasant. This smell actually comes from the moistening of the ground. Australian scientists first documented the process of petrichor formation in 1964 and scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology further studied the mechanics of the process in the 2010s. Petrichor is a combination of fragrant chemical compounds....

After collecting and analyzing 22,000 customer bills from over 500 separate ISPs across various connectivities like coaxial cable, satellite, fixed wireless, DSL, and fiber optics, Consumer Reports found that the state of the ISP industry is pretty bleak and expensive, not to mention almost wholly contingent on where one is located. “[Consumer Reports] launched this initiative to find out the true cost of internet service. While we expected some confusing bills, we were surprised to see how difficult it was for consumers to understand what they’re paying for and the frequency of hidden fees,” said Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel at Consumer Reports, adding that, “These findings should alarm policymakers and regulators about the lack of competition in the marketplace and the tactics providers deploy to increase profits....

Located at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Hat Creek, California, the Allen Telescope Array is caught in the middle of two wildfires. The Eiler and the Bald fires, sparked last week, together have torched more than 100 square miles of Northern California. They are just two of more than a dozen fires that began in the state last week when excessive lightning met the drought-dry underbrush. According to state fire spokesperson Captain Amy Head, 209 square miles have burned since last week....

For more than a century, scientists have been trying to understand how this mental training works. In the 1930s, researchers demonstrated that when you’re imagining an action, your brain sends signals to your muscles—subtle triggers too weak to make the muscles contract but ones that might help train the body to perform. Alternatively, mental practice might create a blueprint in your head, like an inner how-to guide for a particular skill....

Thankfully, this is not how our peepers actually work. “Wearing glasses will not make your eyes worse,” says Michael J. Duerr, an optometrist in Rochester Hills, Michigan. “Your actual prescription is based on the anatomy of the eye: the front curve of the cornea, the refractive power of the intraocular lens, and the length of the eyeball.” And peering through spectacles won’t change that anatomy, Duerr says. “Wearing glasses or soft contact lenses will not change what your required prescription is....

But on February 8, one major platform—TikTok—tried to make the space a little bit safer for LGBTQ users. It updated its community guidelines to explicitly ban deadnaming, misgendering, misogyny, and the promotion of so-called conversion therapy on its platform. “Though these ideologies have long been prohibited on TikTok, we’ve heard from creators and civil society organizations that it’s important to be explicit in our Community Guidelines,” said Cormac Keenan, TikTok’s head of trust and safety, in a press release....

Some things to consider before you take the plunge The beta status means that both operating systems are still in testing mode and aren’t ready for the larger user base just yet. Previously, developers with paid accounts could access the new software, but now it’s out there for free for any user with the hardware to support it and a high tolerance for bugs that will disappear before the official release....

From your femur to your stapes, your bones help you maintain your signature human shape; without them, you’d just be a pile of mush. But the skeleton isn’t just a lifeless scaffolding for the rest of your flesh. Erin Waxenbaum, an assistant professor of anthropology at Northwestern University who has studied human osteology for more than a decade, says that while people tend to think of their bones as static, they’re actually changing and evolving constantly, even before we’re born....

About a quarter of respondents to the same survey said they had employed a password manager to help them with this issue. These results are a good reminder that a platform that helps you manage your password—popular options include 1Password and LastPass—is a strong, if imperfect, solution to the problem of personal online security. Password managers basically do two things: they autofill your existing passwords for you, and even better, they can generate a long, complex, random code for you and store that too....