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What would happen to your home if water levels in the Great Lakes rose six feet? A new predictor from NOAA lets you see exactly what any change in water levels from either six feet above or below current levels in the Great Lakes would mean for the surrounding Midwest properties — whether they get…

Microsoft Office Just Got Way Better on the iPhone

Do you like using work and productivity apps on your mobile device? Yeah, me neither, but Microsoft wants to change our minds with its new—free—apps for iPhone and for Android tablets. Until now, if you wanted to use Office apps on your iPhone you were ushered into the sad existence known as “Microsoft Office Mobile,”…

What The Elections Tell Us About The Future Of Marijuana Legalization

While voters in Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia passed measures in favor of legalizing pot, Florida rejected the use of medical marijuana. The various campaigns and their outcomes offer valuable insights into the politics of pot, now that 17.5 million Americans live in states that permit retail marijuana. Philip Wallach and John Hudak,…

Why You Can’t Always Trust Your Brain

You’re probably familiar with the rabbit-duck illusion. Like other “ambiguous images,” this illusion can tell psychologists a lot about how we perceive our surroundings. The implications are as clear as they are unsettling: When confronted with ambiguity, we often see what our brains want us to see. How our brains deal with ambiguity is one…

How the Bugs In Our Buildings Could Actually Make Us Healthier

University of Oregon researchers Jessica Green and G Z ‘Charlie’ Brown call it the Pickle Box. This former walk-in storage unit for pickles, remodelled into an enclosed climate chamber, is helping scientists understand how people shed their own ‘microbial cloud’ in a built environment. The bacteria, fungi and other microbes that we leave behind in…

Unprecedented New Image Shows A Planet-Forming Disc Around A Young Star

Now this is extraordinary. It’s the sharpest picture ever made of a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star. The image, which bears a striking resemblance to prior artistic impressions, is set to revolutionize our understanding of how planets form. The new image was made possible by ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. And as the…

Into The Woods Trailer Delivers So Much Wonderful Singing

Now this is more like it! Here is the first Disney Into the Woods trailer that’s finally for fans. Get an eyeful of cast sing-a-longs and a few scenes that all die-hard Stephen Sondheim fans should recognize. Behold, Meryl Streep in early ugly witch form, and sexy later witch. Her hair looks amazing. Also this…

These Strange Looking Screws Could Help Repair Your Body

Miniature grenades? Fishing lures? Broken screws? Nope: these are in fact a new kind of medical implant that could help your ruptured tendons recover. Usually, ruptured tendons are repaired by implanting bone anchors made from titanium that allow the breakage to heal—but then the titanium studs have to be removed. These new implants are made…

Marvel Accidentally Gave Us The First Look At Avengers 2‘s Vision

If you watched Marvel’s 75th anniversary special this past Tuesday, you saw the first real look at the android hero the Vision‚ you just didn’t know it. In one of the behind-the-scene shots of Avengers: Age of Ultron, a caped, red-and-green-headed gent is tucked behind a camera. Check it out! I mean, I guess the…

NY-LA road trip video shows how amazingly beautiful America is

Filmmaker Alex Avella filmed this beautiful video on his road trip from New York to Los Angeles. If there is something that really amazes me about North America is its stunning landscapes full of cinematic references. This short captures this feeling perfectly. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Winamp 2 Has Been Immortalized in HTML5 For Your Pleasure

Winamp disappeared into obscurity, died, then came back to life. But with such a turbulent history, it pays to make sure that the iconic piece of software lives on. Good job a working version of it’s been immortalized in HMTL5, then. Yup. Put together by Jordan Eldredge in HTML5 and Javascript, this is a working…

What Is The Hardest Scientific Concept To Wrap Your Mind Around?

Some scientific concepts are brilliant in their simplicity, but others require a little mental gymnastics to really understand. Today we want to know about the scientific tenets that you find trickiest to grasp. Whether it’s an idea from theoretical physics or just a question of a seemingly impossibly large scale, tell us about your pick…

Android 5.0 Lollipop Is Guzzling Battery on Some Phones (Update: Fixed)

It’s Google’s latest and greatest build of Android, but 5.0 Lollipop is not without a few faults left to iron out. According to Google’s issue tracker, the mobile operating system may be causing the battery of certain older handsets to deplete more quickly than they should. The Nexus 5 is the smartphone specifically called out…

Physics students have calculated that the physical impact of being rescued by the Flash is, in fact, more damaging than being hit by a car. Based upon footage from the new TV show, they say that increasing the area over which the superhero makes contact with a person would lower the pressure and likelihood of…

Common Animals Morphed Into Terrifying New Species

What would happen if we mixed a baboon with a sparrow, or a shark with a spider? We may never find out in the real world, but here is where Photoshop can help. Check out these absolutely horrifying hybrid species as envisioned by artist Sarah DeRemer. Californian Sarah DeRemer, 25, began making hybrid animals as…

Which Lord Of The Rings Star Won’t Be Showing Up In The Final Hobbit?

Find out where Prometheus 2 could be headed. Plus a fan theory makes a good guess at where American Horror Story’s fifth season might be set. Guillermo del Toro updates us on Crimson Peak and the Pacific Rim sequels. And another classic Disney character is coming to Once Upon a Time. Spoilers now! Top image:…

Smaller Chips Make More Mistakes—But That Could Be a Good Thing

When you shrink electronics and their transistors with them, they become more error-prone. Usually, that’s compensated for by a boost in voltage—but researchers at MIT think we should embrace the mistakes instead. The idea is simple. Smaller chips with increasingly small transistors are more efficient, but that efficiency is squandered by pumping in power to…

Crescent Saturn and its crescent moon. This has to be one of the most beautiful pairs of heavenly bodies we’re lucky to see, thanks to the Cassini spacecraft. In this photo, Titan’s crescent nearly encircles its disk due to the small haze particles high in its atmosphere, scattering the incoming light of the distant Sun.…

The Real Reason So Many States Are Legalizing Cannabis in One Chart

With more and more states legalizing cannabis—though, sadly, not always the good stuff—have you ever wondered what might be motivating them? Money, duh. This data visualization from Information Is Beautiful does a very good job indeed of showing just how lucrative marijuana can be. It might be rarely planted and not wildly popular, but it…

The Technical Tricks That Made Birdman Look So Perfect

There are many reasons why Birdman is so good. But one the ones that’s harder to explain is the way the movie is shot and edited to look like a single long take. Variety talked to the film’s digital colorist, Steve Scott, about how they achieve this effect. [via Sci Fi Now]