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The Domestic Cat Genome Has Been Fully Sequenced, and It’s Fascinating

The Felis catus genome has been fully sequenced and annotated, which means your pet kitty is about to give up its genetic secrets to science. There have been rough shotgun sequences of the domestic cat genome before, but a large group of international researchers reported last week that their sequencing and annotation of the genome…

Learn the A-to-Z of Space Travel With NASA’s Orion Spacecraft

Space is endlessly fascinating, but it can be difficult to know how to begin explaining its infinite vastness, especially to little ones. Enter the Orion A to Z—a colorful guide to space exploration put together by NASA. The seriescombines concepts vital to the success of Orion, with bold, colorful illustrations and simple explanations. Here are…

Six Clips From The Giver Reveal The YA Dystopia From Your Youth

Lois Lowry’s dystopian nightmare novel The Giver is required reading for most folks who grew up in the ’90s. Needless to say, there’s a lot of pressure on the movie adaptation to get the translation right. And this is the first chunk of footage to really give us a good feel for the film. So…

Acer Chromebook 13 Hands On: Gaming Guts in a Chromebook Body

Chromebooks are getting serious. After just having shipped the first full-fledged Core i3-powered Chromebook, Acer’s escalating again, with a new Chromebook 13 that comes with Nvidia’s K1, which is to say a hell of a lot of graphical horsepower. What’s that mean in practice? Nvidia’s K1 isn’t quite as impressive in a Chromebook as it…

Should We Be Exploring The Oceans Instead Of Space?

For some, the irony is almost too much to bear. While Congress is eager to fund a $2 billion expedition to search for oceans beneath Europa, some 95% of Earth’s oceans are unexplored. Given the role of oceans in regulating climate, and their untapped potential for food and health, is it time to rethink our…

The NSA Is Funding a Project to Roll All Programming Languages Into One

Why bother having to learn HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, CSS and XML, when you could just learn one? Well, that’s exactly what an NSA-funded project at Carnegie Mellon University seeks to achieve. The“polyglot” programming language is called Wyvern—the name comes from a a mythical dragon-like reature with two legs instead of four—and is designed to help…

The Real Plant That Sounds Like a Harry Potter Prank

If Neville Longbottom ever turned evil, and decided to use his botanical powers to advance his wicked agenda, this is the plant he would use. Dumbcane will take away your power of speech, and then it will kill you. Like oleander and poinsettias, this Dieffenbachia picta has become a fixture of yards and houses. It…

Has One of Your Teachers Ever Tried to Teach You Fake Science?

Science education has always been political. School boards sometimes order teachers to instruct their students that evolution is “just one theory,” or to leave sexual reproduction out of health classes. Teachers themselves sometimes insert their pet theories into science classes. Has this happened to you? Have you ever discovered that one of your teachers was…

How Digital Security Is Being Inspired By Nature

Cyber security is vital in our modern digital world, but it’s not ruled entirely by traditional computing techniques. In fact, it’s learning from the natural world—and something called The Danger Theory could help keep our computers safe. In fact, The Danger Theory is really quite new itself—a piece of cutting edge immunology which explains how…

Marty McFly Comes Back to The Future To Perform Magic Tricks

One of the benefits of being a time-traveler is that it would make a career as a magician pretty easy. For instance, watch Stuart Edge at Comic-Con — all he needs to do to wow a crowd is use his knowledge of future events to do card tricks, or bring back future tech like the…

When Will The Last Ever McDonald’s Restaurant Close Its Doors?

McDonald’s is one of the most successful franchises of all time — wherever you go, all over the world, there’s bound to be a Golden Arches nearby. They stopped counting how many billions sold decades ago. Its dominance seems destined to last forever… but nothing ever does. When will the final McDonald’s close? Also, what…

Which Female Hero ISN’T Going to Be Dead In Ant-Man?

Rumor has it a familiar face will show up in Batman v. Superman as a part of Bruce Wayne’s past. Plus another Wonder Woman rumor. We know a few details about Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and how it differs from the Roald Dahl book. Steven Moffat quashes rumors about a Doctor Who villain’s return. Spoilers…

First Footage From Blackmagic’s New Modular 4K Camera Is Just Gorgeous

Blackmagic’s new 4K URSA camera is a crazy modular device with an insane swappable sensor. Now, the first footage filmed by it is available to view online—and it is just gorgeous. As you’d presumably hope for from a $6,000 camera that shoots 4K video at 60fps, the footage is rich, fluid and… well, just watch…

Leonardo Da Vinci would be proud of these cardboard flying machines

These flying machines created by Daniel Agdag make me think of those designed by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 15th century. The difference is that Leonardo based his designs in precise calculations while Daniel builds his spectacular cardboard sculptures guided only by his intuition, with no previous sketching. Daniel Agdad is an Australian based artist.…

The World’s Fastest Camera Can Capture Chemical Reactions in Action

If you thought high-speed photography was already advanced, think again: two universities in Japan have unveiled a new camera that’s 1,000 times faster than the previous best—and it captures chemical reactions in a single shot. A joint venture by the University of Tokyo and Keio University, the new hardware uses a technology called Sequentially Timed…

Divers retrieve NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator —that’s a flying saucer to you and me—off the coast of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii following its successful test on June 28th. [NASA]

Imagine Owning a Magical Universal Converter Box Like This

These days, there’s a connector for almost everything: if it’s not MagSafe 2 it’s that weird USB connector or RCA or who knows what else. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a single converter box to interconnect them all? That’s exactly what Randall Munroe has imagines in today’s XKCD. It is something to dream…

Inside Apple’s Secretive University-Style Training School

Deep within the bowels of Apple, there’s a secretive school where employees learn about the company and how to work for it. Some call it education, others indoctrination—but either way, a new report explains what it’s like. We’ve already heard what Apple’s Genius Finishing School is like, but this new report from the New York…

A Very Special Witches of East End: Don’t Make Supercocaine With Magic

That’s evil 70s Dash, snorting the magically fortified cocaine he sells. With epic facial hair. What more do you need? Whatever it is, this episode has it. I’m basically just Stefon from Saturday Night Live right now. “This episode of Witches of East End had everything: girls kissing, casual murder, potions as allegorical drugs, actual…

Doctors Removed a Tooth Growing Into a Man’s Nose

No, this isn’t a case of a kid sticking a tooth into his nose and getting it stuck. This is a tooth that grew up into a guy’s nose. Basically, he was close to being a human Narwhal. You’re welcome for the nightmares. After a 22-year-old found himself suffering from nose bleeds in his left…