Wi-Fi is a series of invisible waves, streaming along through our houses and offices and planes. What would those waves look like if we could see them? Like these crazy exploding-rainbow images!

Well, okay, we don't have any way of actually seeing Wi-Fi, so there's not really a way of knowing what it would look like without speculation. But these images from Nickolay Lamm, done with help from astrophysicist M. Browning Vogel, are certainly beautiful, and pretty instructive, too. In the top image, you can see Wi-Fi waves emanating along, colored with a rainbow gradient. But Wi-Fi doesn't just travel in a straight line, so Lamm also included the image below, showing waves emanating spherically, in pulses, from a source. "Wifi fields are usually spherical (like the one here) or ellipsoidal and extend about 20-30 meters, assuming a typical off the shelf wifi box," Lamm writes at My Deals, where the images first appeared.

And what would those spheres and ellipses look like accounting for multiple signals? Maybe on the National Mall? Something like this:

Hmm. I know it's just a representation of invisible waves, but... how can we make this real?

[My Deals via Quora]

"Fragmentation," when applied to Android, which it often is, refers to the platform's tendency to branch off in all different directions from the original core operating system. Google releases a version of Android, and then the manufacturers, like Samsung and HTC, alter it: they add their own software skins on top, they add or remove software, they modify the way the camera software works or what the buttons do.

Then there's hardware fragmentation; Android phones come in different sizes and shapes, with wildly divergent abilities. Some have single-core processors, some have quad-core. Some have 4-megapixel cameras, some have 13-megapixel cameras. Some have NFC and some don't. Some have wireless charging and some don't. This isn't necessarily bad; it does mean that users have much more choice than users of a less fragmented OS like Apple's iOS. But there are downsides.

All of this makes it very difficult for the user to have a consistent experience, because it's tremendously difficult for developers to make sure that apps work on all of these devices. And some developers either can't or won't ensure that that happens. So we care about Android fragmentation--and this infographic, over at OpenSignal, is a solid look at it, based on the devices that have downloaded the OpenSignal app. It shows how popular each branch of Android is, separating by specific device, brand, version of Android, or screen size/ratio. And look how many different branches there are!

Check out the interactive infographic here.

Lying on your therapist's couch might be a thing of the past. Why bother, when you could duke it out with your depression by the pool? Online-based therapy could help patients overcome barriers to treatment like long distances to clinics, long waiting times or the fear of stigma associated with seeking treatment for depression. And new research shows it can be just as useful to reduce depression as in-person treatments.

A study from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Leipzig in Germany published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that internet-based psychotherapy could be just as beneficial as therapy of the traditional lying-on-the-couch variety. In the longer term, it could even be more effective. According to the researchers, this is the first randomized controlled trial for online depression treatment to use equivalent therapy methods and treatment lengths. Previous studies have explored how different methods of Internet-based treatment can affect depression, and online therapy as a treatment for other conditions like PTSD and panic disorder.

A total of 62 patients with depression received cognitive-behavioral therapy over an 8-week trial period. Half received an hour of face-to-face time with a therapist once a week with some take-home assignments like logs of their negative thoughts, while the other half received an Internet-based intervention that consisted of writing assignments and subsequent written feedback from a therapist (without any video chat-type interaction). Almost all of the six therapists involved in the study treated both the online and in-person conditions (one did not).

The study found no significant differences in the therapy outcomes between the face-to-face and online groups, and both groups were pretty much equally satisfied with the treatment they received. Depression was no longer diagnosable in 50 percent of the face-to-face patients after treatment, compared to 53 percent of online patients.

After three months, a follow-up showed that the effects of online treatment may even last longer. Patients who received internet-based therapy continued to improve, with 57 percent no longer diagnosed with depression, compared to 42 percent of the conventional group.

Patients who received face-to-face treatment worsened after leaving therapy, re-exhibiting depressive symptoms, while those who had online treatment were more likely to maintain the reduction in symptoms associated with the treatment. The researchers suggest this could be because the internet-based intervention puts more focus on self-responsibility. "This might evoke a stronger, longer-lasting sense of self-efficacy in handling negative thoughts and depressive behavior," they write.

However, the anonymity that could draw people to online therapy could also become problematic. More participants in the online group dropped out of therapy compared to those in the face-to-face group, seven to two. The researchers write that the anonymity of an online therapeutic relationship may make it easier for patients to drop out and simply disappear into the nether regions of the 'net, just like that great girl you met on OkCupid who just stopped responding.

The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope has been in orbit since 1999, and it's constantly collecting information, even when it's just adjusting its position. This picture, a composite of more than 73,000 images, shows what happens when the telescope moves across the sky as it focuses its attentions from one object to another, leaving a slew of x-ray data in its path.

The telescope looks at x-ray data from high-energy objects like black holes, stellar wind and pulsars. Here you can see 1,200 slews from between 2001 and 2012.

It kind of looks like a giant orange broom, but that big, bright dot on the right is the Vela supernova remnant, one of the largest features in the sky visible by x-ray. In the center, you can see Scorpius X-1, the strongest source of x-ray emissions in the sky apart from the Sun.

A full catalog of XMM-Newton's slews can be accessed here.

[ESA]

Could Alzheimer's disease originate in your mouth?

It sounds like a strange idea, but scientists have recently found one small clue that dental bacteria may play a role in some cases of Alzheimer's.

A team of researchers from the U.K. and the U.S. found gum-disease bacteria in the brains of four people with Alzheimer's disease. The bacteria didn't appear in the brains of 10 people who didn't have Alzheimer's disease and had donated their brains to science. Six more people in the study who had Alzheimer's disease didn't have the bacteria.

The study wasn't set up to show whether the bacterium-Porphyromonas gingivalis, a major cause of severe gum and tooth diseases-causes Alzheimer's. Instead, researchers were just aiming to see if the buggers could appear in the brain. And there they were.

Bacteria in the mouth could hop into the bloodstream and travel to the brain after someone loses a tooth, Bloomberg explains. Chewing, brushing and flossing are also able to transfer oral bacteria into the bloodstream, but the study's lead scientist, StJohn Crean of the University of Central Lancashire, told Bloomberg that people should keep brushing and flossing. Keeping your mouth clean reduces the number of bacteria in there and the likelihood that they'll travel elsewhere. (Anyway, Porphyromonas gingivalisseems to be rare in the mouths of those without periodontal disease.)

Crean's team isn't the only one that's looking for a connection between gum disease and Alzheimer's. Decades of research have shown that those with Alzheimer's have chronic inflammation in the brain. Some scientists think that perhaps inflammation elsewhere in the body, such as in the gums, could affect the central nervous system.

The Porphyromonas gingivalis study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease in May.

You knew it would happen. NASA is planning to send a 3-D printer aboard the International Space Station next year, The Guardian reports.

3-D printers' ability to custom-make parts would be invaluable for repairs in space. But first, engineers need to make a 3-D printer that works in zero gravity.

Challenges include that thermal properties are different in zero gravity, Jason Dunn, who co-founded Made in Space to develop the technology, told The Guardian. In addition, each of the printers' intricate parts needs to stay in its correct place without the help of gravity.

So far, Made in Space's printer has passed testing in a micro-gravity environment created on a modified Boeing 727, The Guardian reports.

NASA also recently performed more tests of rocket engine injectors made by 3-D printers, Space.com reports. Popular Science previously reported on 3-D printed injector tests done at the Glenn Research Center in Ohio. These later tests, conducted at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, exposed printed injectors to temperatures near 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. They held up as well as traditionally built injectors.

Scientists have long theorized that herpes viruses are so stuffed with genetic material that infecting a host cell is as easy as popping a balloon. Or exploding a powder keg. The internal pressure within the virus is so great, it explodes its genetic material straight out of its virus shell and right into its desired host.

Pressure-driven infection has been observed previously in bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria cells, but scientists from Carnegie Mellon University now have the first experimental evidence that a eukaryotic virus, a virus that can infect cells with a nucleus, can do it. They've also been able to measure the pressure.

The herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1)--that's the type of herpes that normally causes herpes infections around the mouth, as opposed to HSV-2, the usual cause of genital herpes--contains a double strand of DNA 400 times longer than the radius of its capsid, the protein shell that holds it. As a result, the DNA bends on itself to fit inside, creating a huge amount of pressure on the viral shell--tens of atmospheres, around eight times the internal pressure of a car tire. The HSV-1 enters the host cell and sneaks its way over to the nucleus, where a hole in the nuclear membrane acts like a key, opening the door for the virus to shoot its high-pressure genome load into the nucleus.

This type of pressurized infection occurs in all eight types of herpes viruses that infect humans, including Epstein-Barr, which causes mono, and Varicella zoster, which causes chickenpox. With better knowledge of how the viral infection unfolds, the researchers hope better antiviral medications can be developed.

The discovery is detailed in a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, delightfully entitled "Herpes Virus Genome, The Pressure Is On."

[Sci-News.com]

This document is the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created NASA. It was signed into law by President Eisenhower 55 years ago yesterday. The document outlines NASA's policies, guidelines, objectives, and more. Their objectives, as described in 1958, are as follows:

How do you think they did? Read the full text of the document here, and check out what they've been up to of late.

Happy belated, NASA.

Lauren Wolf, an associate editor at Chemical & Engineering News and self-described ocean-urinator, recently took it upon herself to find out the scientific truth about what really happens when humans pee in the ocean.

She first turned to the internet, of course. As she discovered, though the body excretes urine in order to rid the system of unwanted chemical compounds, it's not necessarily harmful. In fact, the composition of pee isn't that different from that of seawater. The average human's urine is more than 95 percent water and contains 1-2 g/L of sodium and chloride ions. Upon exiting the body, urine from a healthy human is also sterile. Only once it's out does it begin to attract existing colonies of bacteria, but it wouldn't add any to the water.

There's one component that poses a potential problem given its high concentration: urea, a nitrogen-heavy molecule that amounts to a substantial average of 9 g/L of urine. In the grand scheme of the ocean however, that's tiny.

According to Stuart Jones, biochemist in the department of clinical biochemistry at King George Hospital, a person generally excretes 0.2L - 0.5L of urine at a time. This translates into three grams of urea.

Even in the extremely rare scenario that the all the world's 7 billion citizens peed in the Atlantic Ocean at the same time, there would be about 6x10^-11 g/L of urea within a total collective volume of 3.5 x10²⁰ L. Essentially a minuscule amount. And as it turns out, nitrogen is an important fertilizer that contributes to the survival of certain plant species within the aquatic biosphere.

Wolf is sure to emphasize that the same isn't necessarily true of small, concentrated bodies of water like pools or streams, however. To cover her bases she also recognizes that humans can excrete amounts of other byproducts not mentioned here.

Moral of the story: when you gotta "go," it's OK to pee in the ocean. After all, the animals do it. And some, like whales, pee at much larger rates with much greater amounts of sodium and chloride ions than humans.

"No question, pee in the ocean," Jones said in the article. "Urine is harmless stuff in the first place and is diluted to the point of insignificance within minutes. There are far more harmful things in the ocean to worry about!"

Another important thought experiment: Is it ever OK to drink your own pee?

Would you let a robot draw your blood? Perhaps in the future, you'll be able to choose an mechanical phlebotomist over a human one.

A California-based startup is trying to build a robot that is able to find a vein and draw blood on its own, IEEE Spectrum reports. The robot's makers hope it could speed things during clinical trials for drugs, which may require dozens of blood draws.

The robot, named Veebot, is about as accurate as a trained human. Its creators want it to be more accurate than humans before they try to enter it into clinical trials. Once they make their technical improvements, they'll have to find funding for those trials. All in all, it may be many years yet before Veebot gets to work in hospitals.

Nevertheless, Spectrum has made a video of Veebot at work on real humans. (Perhaps its own makers?)

Check out the Spectrum article for a description of how Veebot uses a combination of infrared light, ultrasound and machine learning to find the right vein.

[IEEE Spectrum]

A common response to global problems like climate change and overpopulation is apathy ("I won't be around to see the effects, so what does it matter?") or pessimism ("Nothing we do will stop it"). So, we keep producing greenhouse gases and making babies, and we fail to generate any truly creative, new responses to these problems. So says Richard Gayle, a finalist in the Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge and president of SpreadingScience, an organization that trains scientists to improve their methods of sharing their findings, research, and ideas.

Gayle wants to alter the fundamental way we approach these problems, and see if that allows us to imagine new solutions. His strategy, unconventional though it sounds, is to tell stories.

Gayle cites the work of Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman in distinguishing between two types of thinking: System 1, which are the nearly instinctive, fast, prejudiced thoughts, like, "I am seeing accurately"; and System 2, which involves slow, "deliberative thinking"-often as a result of encountering contradictory beliefs.

An example is a simple optical illusion:The three lines are exactly the same length, but we are nearly powerless to see them as such. Once told that our perception can't be trusted, we must investigate the claim; measure each line. But without a reason to doubt the perception, no intellectual reflection seems needed. Encountering contradictions and paradoxes leads to honest reflection, and a novel realization: (in this example) our trusted senses can fail us from time to time.Another example is Aesop's parable of the tortoise and the hare. When told that a tortoise beat a hare in a race, we scoff, incredulous. But when we hear the story of the hare's excessive pride and the tortoise's slow, steadfast dedication, we are forced to reflect; we can reach a new outlook on competition. Shall we recite? "Slow and steady wins the race."

We can clearly move from System 1 to System 2 when faced with simple problems, like the examples above, but Gayle wants to see if the same technique will work for more complex, scientific problems-the energy crisis, pollution, water use, and so forth. Gayle speculates that in these situations, the move from 1 to 2 is inhibited by complexity and fear. But perhaps presenting them in a simplified, counterintuitive parable will defeat the all too common negative vision of the future, engender positive and creative reflection, and-ideally-result in new approaches or solutions.

But he's not tackling the complex problems just yet. He's just trying to see if stories can indeed positively alter people's outlooks on the future.

Gayle intends to do so by telling a story he made up called "How the Asteroid Saved Mankind" in three different formats: a short, illustrated parable; a video; and a longer, detailed examination. The story is counterintuitive (people tend to fear asteroids) and feels exaggerated, like the tortoise and the hare, but plays on people's positive conceptions of space exploration: It will tout asteroids as our salvation. In the future (so the beta-version of the story goes), asteroid mining will be inexpensive and will provide "enough resources to build space-based solar arrays," which will then give us enough energy to "actively sequester carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere faster than we added it," Gayle says. Ideally, "creating a positive narrative alters how people view these complex problems."

Now, he's seeking $8,000 through the Rockethub-Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge. That would enable him to create all three versions of the story and also to experiment with them, he says. Gayle would survey people on their views of the future (what the world will be like in 10, 20, and 50 years; their level of excitement for having and raising children; etc.), then split those people into three groups. One group is the control and gets no story, one gets the parable, and the last watches the video. After, they're all presented with the detailed, data-filled examination, and surveyed once more. Several months later, they're surveyed a final time to see if and how their sentiments about the future changed.

The project recently broke 20 percent of its funding goal. If Gayle gets full funding and his results are promising, he hopes to apply the technique to other problems, such as "personal health, food production, water use," and more, he says. To help him reach his goal, go here. And for more on the Rockethub-Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge, go here.

While most of us keep going about our internet lives as if that pesky NSA thing never happened--demonstrating a "general giddy sense that privacy is kind of stupid," as Gary Shteyngart aptly describes it--the Guardian is making it harder and harder to uphold that complacency.

Today, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald exposed yet another NSA program called "XKeyscore." And it sounds bad. Really bad. Per Greenwald:

Kinda makes PRISM seem like child's play.

The Guardian's report is based on an NSA Powerpoint detailing the surveillance program. Some of the lowlights:

• no authorization required
• real-time surveillance of any target's internet activity
• capacity to target "US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant..." the Guardian reports
• if an analyst wants to look back on a target's Google Maps search history, for example, he or she can: "XKEYSCORE extracts and databases these events including all web-based searches which can be retrospectively queried" (slide 20)
• near-comprehensive access to a target's activity, from email to chat to accessed files to social media activity
• open access for analysts to the databases
• one powerpoint slide titled, "What Can Be Stored?" boasts "Anything you wish to extract"
• In 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period," the Guardian reports

Flip through the Powerpoint to see more, and read the Guardian'sfull exposé.

Of course, surveillance in the United States is a long-standing tradition. But the extent to which the NSA's analysts appear to overstep the law--something at least one intelligence official acknowledges--is unnerving, to put it lightly. That's okay, though--privacy is stupid, right?

It's very expensive to put things into outer space. So HyperV Technologies, of Chantilly, Va., has begun a Kickstarter campaign that hopes to pioneer an electrically powered and slingshot-inspired alternative, with the goal of greatly reduced launch costs. It's called the Slingatron, and backers have already donated more than $12,000.

Rocketry is the classic, tried-and-true method for getting things into space, but it's not without drawbacks. Rockets are one-way tubes, filled mostly with explosive fuel, designed to have a good thrust-to-weight ratio and deliver a small cargo into orbit. Once a stage of the rocket has spent its fuel, it drops off into the sea, letting the craft continue farther and lighter. Reusable rockets, like SpaceX's Grasshopper design prototype, offer a better value than disposable rocket stages, but they still use expensive rocket fuel.

The Slingatron, instead, would launch things into space with hardly any rocketry involved at all. Cargo units would each have a little rocket, for course corrections once in orbit, but getting into space would be by the Slingatron's own power. The inspiration for the design comes from slings, a weapon common in antiquity and made famous by the story of David and Goliath.

The Slingatron mimics the spiraling acceleration of a sling, but otherwise appears very unlike the classic cloth weapon. Instead, it consists of a fixed metal coil on top of a gyrating platform. Because of this gyration, the Slingatron is not designed for especially fragile satellites (or humans), as this type of acceleration involves a dangerous amount of gravitational force. HyperV Technologies has an 8 second video showing the concept in action:

The Slingatron track doesn't itself spin, but because its motor gyrates at between 40-60 cycles per second, it imitates that effect for the cargo. Once the Slingatron is moving at speed, the cargo is released into the track near the center of the spiral, and the gyrations send it moving faster and faster outward, like a roller coaster going through hoop after hoop but still gaining momentum. A special "plasma film" forms between the payload and the track, much like how water on a slide makes the ride faster. When the cargo reachers the end of the Slingatron track, it is launched upward and flies away at high speed.

In the first video above, a prototype Slingatron launches a 1/2-pound steel block more than 325 feet per second. The Kickstarter project wants to make a much larger version, both to demonstrate the technology and smooth out the kinks before firing objects off into space.

The project has until August 22 to reach its $250,000 goal.

So, here are the rules: To answer, follow us on Twitter and tweet at us with the hashtag #mysteryanimal. For example:

Hey @PopSci, is the #mysteryanimal a baboon?

And then I might say "if you think that's a baboon, perhaps you are the baboon!" But probably not, because this is a positive environment and all guesses are welcome and also this is not a very common animal so guess whatever you want!

The first person to get it right wins! We'll retweet the answer from @PopSci, and also update this post so your amazing animal knowledge will be permanently etched onto the internet. Show your kids! Your dumb kids who thought that was a baboon!

Update: And the winner is...@MeganIsTubular, who correctly guessed that this is a tufted deer! The tufted deer, native to mountainous central China and a bit of Tibet, isn't closely related to any other deer, though it does look quite a lot like the water deer and musk deer. In fact, its closest relative is the muntjac, but the tufted deer is interesting all on its own. A very shy and elusive creature, the tufted deer lives way up high in elevation, just about at the tree line, and is most active at dusk and dawn (this behavior pattern is called "crepuscular").

Its most obvious identification signs are its namesake tuft, like a messy mohawk, and the small tusks that can be seen in males. There's a distinct lack of information about the tufted deer, thanks to its fear of humans and tendency to swiftly hop away whenever it sees one, so we don't really know the purpose of the tusks. Hi tufted deer!

After FYI answered why dumping the world's nuclear waste into a volcano would be a bad idea, our inbox was flooded with readers wondering, "Well, how about shooting it into the sun?"

On paper, this is a fantastic way to wipe our hands clean of all that pesky waste. The sun is a constant nuclear reaction that's about 330,000 times as massive as Earth; it could swallow the tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear rods as easily as a forest fire consumes a drop of gasoline. And NASA currently has two probes orbiting the sun, so the technology exists to get the job done. Alas, the benefits fall far short of the risk involved.

There isn't a space agency or private firm on the planet with a spotless launch record. And we're not talking about cheapo rockets-last year, the craft carrying NASA's $280-million Orbiting Carbon Observatory fizzled out and crashed into the ocean near Antarctica. It's a bummer when a satellite ends up underwater, but it's an entirely different story if that rocket is packing a few hundred pounds of uranium. And if the uranium caught fire, it could stay airborne and circulate for months, dusting the globe with radioactive ash. Still seem like a good idea?

This article originally appeared in the May 2010 issue of Popular Science magazine.

What's this? It's a life-size ear, bioengineered from cow and sheep tissue.

It may not look like something you'd want to have sticking out of your head. Nevertheless, its geometry is closer to life than a previous effort at bioengineering an outer ear, its creators say. In 1997, a team of surgeons from the Children's Hospital in Boston earned fame for engineering a small ear and implanting it in a mouse. One researcher, Harvard Medical School surgeon Joseph Vacanti, was involved in both efforts.

This time, the team created an adult-size ear and implanted it onto a rat. The point of the implantation is to check that the ear doesn't lose its shape after implantation and healing.

Although the latest ear clearly has some ways to go, its creators hope that one day, they'll be able to engineer outer ears for people who are born with deformed ears or who lose their ears in accidents, the BBC reports.

To grow the new ear, researchers created a titanium wire frame modeled after the human ear. They filled in the wire frame with collagen taken from cows. In the future, human replacement ears may use collagen taken from the patient, Thomas Cervantes, one of the researchers and a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the BBC. The researchers then seeded their scaffold with cartilage cells taken from sheep.

Cervantes and his colleagues published their work today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Starbucks seems to have embraced the fact that very few people actually go to coffee shops to sit and drink coffee nowadays. For cafes, solid Wi-Fi connection is about as necessary as fresh brew. So the company has teamed up with Google to make free Wi-Fi faster in all 7,000 of Starbucks's U.S. stores. (If only the company would adopt its role as the urban traveler's public bathroom with such enthusiasm).

Google reports that its connection will make Starbucks Wi-Fi 10 times faster than before. For those lucky enough to live in a Google Fiber city, it'll be 100 times faster--watch out for whiplash there, guys. The "Google Starbucks" network should show up at a Starbucks near you starting in August, with the full rollout happening over the next 18 months, according to Endgadget. Goodbye, spotty AT&T access!

[Google]

Five German scientists have proposed a new strategy for mitigating the effects of climate change: turn coastal deserts into forests. Why? Forests, full of trees that consume carbon dioxide, are a great bulwark against the gas most responsible for global climate change. Deserts, with their lack of plant cover, are terrible at doing the same thing.

Key to this process is carbon sequestration. Plants sequester some of the carbon dioxide they breathe in, storing it in their branches and trunk and roots, as well as depositing some in the soil they live in, offsetting somewhat the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.

To turn deserts into a viable spot for carbon sequestration, the researchers assembled a diverse team of specialists, with knowledge ranging from irrigation and carbon sequestration to desalination and economics.

Short, poisonous, and hardy, the Jatropha curcas tree can survive severe heat, poor and alkaline soil, and very low rainfall. It also produces a seed rich in an oil suitable for use as sustainable and environmentally-friendly biodiesel fuel. The paper suggests planting Jatropha curcas in the desert along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, setting up a desalination plant to provide the water needed for irrigation, and then letting the plants start sequestering carbon and eventually producing biofuel.

If this proposed pilot project were to be successful, future Jatropha curcas orchards could expand to cover more coastal deserts, generate more fuel, and sequester more carbon dioxide.

A potential unintended side-effect of such a project is a chance of increased cloud cover and rainfall. Something to consider carefully, because as we've seen time and again, tweaking with ecosystems can have very unexpected consequences.

The study appears in the journal Earth System Dynamics.