Philae's First Photo.

This first-ever image from a comet's surface shows a steep cliff, with one of the lander's feet is in the foreground.

ESA

Yesterday the European Space Agency made history by completing the first soft landing on a comet. The Rosetta mission successfully dropped the lander Philae onto Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and it has already sent back data and photos.

But the landing was not as soft as scientists were expecting: After the failure of Philae’s thrusters and harpoons, which would have anchored the lander to the surface, the lander seems to have bounced to a height of about half a mile. After a second, smaller bounce, it settled down on an unknown site likely half a mile away from its intended target. This region is a jagged landscape near what appears to be a steep cliff.

I’m in the shadow of a cliff on #67P. Where exactly? That’s what my team is in the process of finding out! #CometLanding

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 13, 2014

Ulamec: @Philae2014 thought to be in blue area, 1st touchdown close to planned landing site (in red) #CometLandingpic.twitter.com/3TjkChhKoX

— ESA (@esa) November 13, 2014

Because of the shadow from the cliff, the lander is only getting a few hours of sunlight per day. That’s a problem, since it’s 60-hour battery needs to recharge via solar panels.

One of Philae’s feet is not touching the surface of the comet, and the other two have not screwed in. This means the lander is not anchored, and probably will not be able to drill into the comet’s soil without causing damage to the probe. If mission control tries to deploy the harpoon anchors now, it might send the lander flying into space again.

BBC reports that the ESA may try to move the lander to a new location. 

The $1.4 billion Rosetta mission traveled 10-years and 4 billion miles to reach the comet. By studying its dust, gas, and ice content, the mission hopes to learn about the conditions of the early solar system and whether comets could have carried molecules that helped life on Earth develop.

Despite the unexpected circumstances, ESA is optimistic that the mission will still return valuable science.

BioDrone's Fungus Body

CNASA/Ames

Small, cheap drones make appealing cameramen for a variety of tasks -- from a research apparatus to a tourist's plaything. Light, unmanned aircraft, especially those piloted by amateurs, pose a new danger to the environment, however. What happens if a gust of wind or pilot error sends the drone into, say, a beautiful and delicate geothermal hot spring? The bio-drone, developed by researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, is a biodegradable solution to this issue.

The bio-drone's body is made of mycelium, a fungal mass specifically grown into this shape by New York’s Evocative Design. Mycelium is hardier than people might expect from mushroom fibers, and Evocative Design has used it for packaging and insulation. The circuits were made using silver nanoparticle ink, which can be printed on biodegradable material. If lost, a lot of the bio-drone will harmlessly decompose, rather than pollute the environment.

But not all of it will. The current bio-drone only has a biodegradable body and circuits. The motors, battery, sensors, and rotors that give the drone power and the ability to move were borrowed from a commercially-made quadcopter. Researchers hope to make the sensors biodegradable next. If lost right now, the body and the brains of the drone would break down, but its mechanical guts wouldn’t, leaving a drone skeleton in its place.

[NewScientist]

A Test Of Mental Endurance.

The new SAT is the longest yet—stretching to 3 hours 50 minutes with the optional essay. Here's how it compares to the existing test (middle ring) and the pre-2005 version (inner ring).

Michelle Mruk

In spring 2016, teenagers worldwide will encounter a new­ college entrance exam. A major difference between the existing and redesigned tests is is how questions are framed. The College Board, which administers the SAT, tasked its assessment team with creating questions that shift the emphasis from rote memorization to skills that are taught in the classroom. 

“We’re making sure that each question is clear, unambiguous, and that students know what’s being asked of them. We don’t want to trip kids up. When we began the redesign we said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have kids walk into the test and feel they’re familiar enough with it to be comfortable?’”

––Cyndie Schmeiser, the College Board’s chief of assessment, who is tasked with creating test questions that measure knowledge more effectively

Here's a taste of what they changed:

This article originally appeared in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science.

November 1989

Popular Science

It's Throwback Thursday, which means its time for another foray through our archives. This week we peered 25 years back to November 1989, when unsafe muscle cars ruled and weird houses sprung up in the desert.

Unhappily Vrooms The Car With Driver's-Side Airbags

Fall 1989 saw the American car industry rolling out safety features in a big new way. All new cars would come with driver's-side airbags or automatic seatbelts (a now-discarded technology). "This development is happening quietly after decades of controversy and millions of dollars worth of litigation that resulted from strenuous opposition to air bags by car manufacturers." (Apparently airbag factory explosions were a serious problem.) By model year 1995, driver's side airbags would become the universal standard.

This Guy Seems Pretty Happy Though

Pendulum Trike

Popular Science

Our reporter trekked out to visit the three-wheeled Micro and its designer, Edmund Jephcott. The slim, tall body would normally have been too top-heavy for the road, toppling on its first sharp turn. But a pendulum-like feature fixed the rollover problem nicely. "Our automatic-tilt mechanism eliminates that risk," Jephcott told our reporter. "The swing in either direction can be up to twenty-five degrees. That gives exceptional cornering stability."

When he got a chance to try the car himself, our reporter says he was surprised not to feel the usual centrifugal force of a turning car. Instead, as the Micro leaned, he just sunk deeper into his seat. While three-wheeled cars, leaning and otherwise, have failed to catch on in the U.S., automakers keep trying out new models. We took a look at Nissan's exciting three-wheeled sportscar concept, the BladeGlider, in our 2014 Car Disrupted feature.

We're having trouble imagining how they'd fit air bags into this one though.

The Ultimate Energy-Efficient House?

Stealth House

Popular Science

Ancient Egyptians weren't the only pyramid-builders in history. This strange monolith in the Mojave Desert was in fact the home of legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan. Despite its scorching locale, the Rutan Pyramid keeps comfortable with relatively little power, thanks to its massive stone walls and a foundation that deflects heat during the day, and slurps it up at night. Rutan, the eccentric mind behind Scaled Composites and the ill-fated SpaceShipTwo, built the cast-epoxy frame in his airplane factory and shipped it out to the desert. Its clear Rutan regarded the $340,000 ($650,000 in 2014 dollars) home as a kind of passion project, telling our reporter about flaws in its design and upcoming upgrades (it got a bit too warm on the hottest days). Rutan, now retired, still lived in the building as recently as 2009.

Rutan At Home

Popular Science

Toss This

We're Pretty Sure He's Wearing Trunks

Popular Science

Remember disposable cameras? (For the under-20 set, those are the flimsy plastic film shooters that produced all the discolored images of your early childhood.) Despite recent resurgence among the millenial quirky-hat-wearing set, the single-use camera has mostly gone the way of the 8-track: an analog innovation rendered irrelevant by the digital age.

Still, in a series of developments that presaged today's GoPro, Kodak put out a line of resilient and otherwise creative disposable cameras. The Weekend 35, pictured, was rated for submersion in up to 12 feet of water. Can your cell phone camera do that?

The Most 80s Tech Ever Built

A VCR Pricier Than An iMac

Popular Science

In the late 80s, the biggest problem we had with VCRs was apparently that we couldn't carry them with us everywhere. Sony's "Video Walkman" managed to compress 1,600 parts into a package small enough to carry on the subway. At the time of our publication the latest model, with a 4-inch screen, retailed for $1,500 ($2,900 in 2014 dollars) -- a lot to spend on a device that, we pointed out, would soon be rendered obsolete by LCD models and 6.5-inch screens. Other entertainment innovations in this issue: a machine that could play one tape while recording a TV show on another, and "interactive CDs".

Click here to read the full November 1989 issue.

The Evolution Of littleBits

Photograph by Sam Kaplan

Every electronic module in a littleBits kit is, well, little. Their small size and ability to snap together in nearly any combination make them useful prototyping tools: Engineers often use them to build rough versions of a new product. In order to pack a variety of functions into the streamlined modules, or “bits,” the company has to do some prototyping of its own.

Bits range in complexity, from a button to a mini keyboard. But they all start out the same—as electrical schematics. Take the direct current (DC) motor module, for example. The engineering team, led by Geof Lipman, first modeled the circuit on a computer. “Simulations really reduce the number of times you have to mess with stuff,” Lipman says. Next, the team launched into the physical design process—just like the one used by DIYers everywhere.

1. Prototype

Engineers build the first prototype on a breadboard, a plastic board used to quickly connect circuits. Once the prototype is functional, the design team works to make it more consumer-friendly. Breadboards don’t require soldering, so engineers can easily adjust the parts to incorporate suggestions from designers.

2. Product

The next step is to shrink the mess of wires down to a manageable size by soldering smaller versions of the components onto a circuit board. If this chip doesn’t function well, its design is tweaked again. Finally, the circuit is assembled on littleBits’ trademark white board, creating the completed module.

3. Project

Through prototyping, the littleBits team replaced the DC motor module’s manual forward-reverse switch with an electric one. This modification enables it to fluidly propel projects like the remotely controlled FaceTime tank, which lets video chats go mobile—or anything else you dream up.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science, under the title "From Concept to FaceTime Tank."

Open up, Sun

Jason Schneider

It’s easy to understand the theoretical minimum temperature: absolute zero. The absolute maximum, on the other hand, is squirrely. “We just don’t know whether we can take energy all the way up to infinity,” says Stephon Alexander, a physicist at Dartmouth University. “But it’s theoretically plausible.” 

The most straightforward candidate for an upper limit is the Planck Temperature, or 142 nonillion (1.42 x 10³²) Kelvin (K)—the highest temperature allowable under the Standard Model of particle physics. But temperature comes about only when particles interact and achieve thermal equilibrium, Alexander explains. “To have a notion of temperature, you need to have a notion of interaction.”

Many cosmologists believe the hottest actual temperature in the history of the universe was several orders of magnitude cooler than the Planck Temperature. In the first moments after the Big Bang, expansion occurred so rapidly that no particles could interact; the universe was essentially temperatureless. In the tiny slivers of a second that followed, Alexander says, ripples of spacetime may have begun to vibrate with matter and forced that matter into thermal equilibrium. This would have caused a quick reheating of the universe to something like 10²⁷ K. It has been continually expanding and cooling ever since.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science under the title, "What's the hottest temperature possible?"

Hawaii Lava

USGS

Lava is still approaching the Hawaiian town of Pāhoa. It already destroyed a house (see below; the red-roofed structure still standing is a garage) and is continuing its march, oozing slowly towards other structures, including the town's solid waste transfer station (a garbage facility) and power lines. In the picture above, the billowing smoke isn't coming from the lava, but from the asphalt parking lot that it is burning. Here are some of the more amazing pictures from this week, taken by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Lava flow

House destroyed by lava flow in Pahoa, Hawaii

USGS

Lava flow

In case you were wondering how large the lava flows were, here's a geologist for scale.

USGS

Thermal Comparison Lava

USGS

Molten lava in Hawaii

USGS

If even these pictures aren't enough to satiate your desire to see lava, check out videos of the lava flow from The Guardian or NBC.

The Selfie Flow

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science.

BOWN

Popular Science

1,800: super-pressurized depth below the Earth’s surface that geophysicists are re-creating in the lab. They have found a way to turn food stuffs like peanut butter into diamonds by recreating the extreme temperatures and pressures found in this inner area of the Earth.

Peanut Butter

So that's where the crunch comes from...

Steve Jurvetson and certified su via Flickr CC BY 2.0

23: number of pet kitties whose genomes were sequenced for a study on the genetic evolution of the domestic cat. Turns out felines have genes to help them digest fat better than other carnivores do, which is good given their uber-high-fat diets.

10: active sea-faring aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy. While this arsenal is impressive, DARPA wants to shift its focus from the ocean to the sky, requesting information from the online community on how to best make airborne aircraft carriers. Avengers helicarrier, anyone?

Drone Aircraft Carrier Artist's Concept Cropped

DARPA

355 billion: total gallons of fresh and salt water used by American power plants, factories, farms, and homes in 2010. While that number may seem like a lot, water use levels were, in fact, significantly low that year, reaching levels that hadn’t been seen since 1970.

1: number of comets visited by a manmade spacecraft. On Wednesday, the Rosetta space probe’s Philae lander touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, marking a historic first for mankind. However, Philae still has some obstacles to overcome as it attempts to obtain samples from the comet's surface.

Philae's New Home

The Philae lander snapped this picture of comet 67P on its way down to the surface.

ESA

289: number of people in New York City who are being contact traced for the Ebola virus. These people include individuals who have recently traveled from Liberia, Guinea, or Sierra Leone, or those who interacted with Dr. Craig Spencer – the first Ebola patient in the city – while he was symptomatic.

Go Further With Interstellar

Paramount Pictures

20: lesson plans devised by Google that are based on the science fiction epic Interstellar. The objectives of the lessons run the gamut from students creating their own biospheres to students mapping out comparisons between Matthew McConaughey’s character and the classical Homeric Greek hero.

3 hours and 50 minutes: time allotted for the revamped SAT, which teenagers will begin taking in the spring of 2016. With three sections and an optional essay, it’s the longest rendition of the exam yet, and administrators of the test claim its questions will be more clear and unambiguous. Do you believe them? Take our sample SAT quiz to find out for yourself.

A Test Of Mental Endurance.

The new SAT is the longest yet—stretching to 3 hours 50 minutes with the optional essay. Here's how it compares to the existing test (middle ring) and the pre-2005 version (inner ring).

Michelle Mruk

142,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000: temperature in Kelvin (give or take a couple of zeros) that may be the highest temperature allowable in the Universe, according to physics.

Open up, Sun

Jason Schneider

US Temperature Map, 7 AM November 14, 2014

At least Miami looks nice today.

National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration

There's an unwelcome guest on your doorstep, America.

It comes from the north, dragging frigid air and awful commutes like an terrible shroud over the continental United States, from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Atlantic. While the East Coast saw temperatures about 10 degrees below average, snow hit much of the Midwest following a 40 degree drop over just a couple days in Chicago, and a region stretching from Denver to Montana saw sub-zero chills and record lows.

This morning, in the stairwell of an apartment building, even New York City's relatively mild mid-30s weather prodded a father into a shouting match with his weeping child: "But I don't want to go to school today! It's too cold to go outside!""Put your coat on, now!" And in the halls of climate research centers and weather stations across the nation, the cold snap is spurring a more technical, but no less divisive debate -- one that matters to millions of Americans who remember the last awful winter: Is this the new normal?

Ice, Alaska, And Damned Typhoons

(Typhoon Nuri Joins The Most Powerful Storms On Record In The Bering Strait. Credit: National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration)

With nearly two weeks left before Thanksgiving, this should be a time for tweed and brisk walks through vibrant fallen leaves. Instead, if you live anywhere from Chicago to Appalachia you've likely found yourself breaking out the Gore-Tex for a slog through accumulating snow and ice, with more likely coming this weekend, and its all because of a storm on the other side of the world.

Typhoon Nuri formed in the West Pacific and surged north, peaking with sustained winds around 180 miles per hour -- one of the strongest typhoons or hurricanes of the year. As it moved past Japan and into the Arctic it weakened, but its powerful remnants still delivered tropical storm conditions to Alaska's Aleutian Islands, Eastern Russia, and the Bering Strait.

You'd think a mega storm careening off into the underpopulated Arctic would be a kind of best-case scenario, and in many ways it is. There are fewer houses and people out in those cold places, and local damage was minimal. But those sparse communities share air with the polar vortex, a muscular current of air that circles counter-clockwise high in the atmosphere between the warmer air masses of the mid-latitudes and the much colder northern reaches.

Several scientists who disagree on most other issues surrounding polar vortex events (including whether "polar vortex" is an acceptable or ridiculous name for these Arctic air surges) came up with just about identical analogies for what happened when Nuri slammed into the jet stream: a taut rope snapping. All that frozen air normally locked in a tight spiral snapped south between an air pressure ridge over the Rockies and Greenland. The resulting arctic wave sunk temperatures far below average along the American continent, and they'll likely remain low for a couple of weeks.

Polar America

Martin Hoerling, a scientist (and according to some of his colleagues, a contrarian) studying climate change with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), says fears of frozen winters future are fair but unfounded.

He says, "If I were a member of the public I'd be thinking, 'Oh God, I barely survived the last winter and now it's getting cold again? Is this what I can expect from now on?'" But Hoerling says this pattern of typhoon-induced cold fronts is not new, it's just been given the new, scary, "polar vortex" branding.

If anything, he says, the warming world will see fewer extreme weather shifts because the Arctic and mid-latitudes will be nearer in temperature.

But Jennifer Francis, a researcher with the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University who studies the impact of Arctic warming on the global climate, disagrees. Her research predicts that as Arctic warms (and it is warming extraordinarily quickly) the jet stream will weaken and narrow. "When you have a strong jet stream it's like a thick rope. You can give one end a tug and not much happens." But as it weakens, she says, it's more like a string. A shake (or a typhoon) will send waves all along its length, causing the Arctic monster to move south more often.

While Hoerling dismisses Francis's research as "pure conjecture", and points to early failures to verify her predictions, other meteorologists and climatologists look at several recent studies and are more convinced.

James Overland, also of NOAA, says he leans toward Francis's view. "In the last five years we've seen more of the wavy [jet stream] patterns in January and December than we did before," he says. In his view, it makes sense that a warmed Arctic would break down the jet stream's regular tight ellipse.

Francis acknowledges that her research does not fully account for everything that will impact this winter and those that follow. "All these are pieces to the puzzle," she says.

The debate might seem academic, but its consequences go far beyond discomfort. Last year's harsh winter cost the economy billions, and revealed just how unprepared much of the country is for even slight shifts in storm patterns. More winters like the last could mean more deaths, widespread damage, and economic sluggishness.

So, About January?

All other things being equal, meteorologists expect a weak but warming El Niño effect to render this winter a relatively mild one, though forecasters have lowered the probability from 65 to 58 percent at last measure.

Hoerling, along with most other researchers, says there's no reason to expect the current cold snap to portend a trend this season. But Francis isn't so sure.

"It all depends on what happens with El Niño -- if it does form, what we're seeing right now will probably end," she says. But she says it looks more and more likely that won't happen. "The pattern of surface temperature in the North Pacific look a lot like last winter."

In other words, let's hope that unwelcome guest packs up and leaves for good. But if it comes back, bringing with it plunging mercury, snot-icicles, and general misery, you'd best be ready. *Shiver*

Parasite Drone Concept

The drones perch on billboards during the day, and then fold their wings to obscure the ads at night.

NAS-DRA

Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news: the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

Concept Billboards

Design collective NAS-DRA has a concept for parasite drones that flutter about cities, attaching themselves to billboards and using sunlight during the day to feed the plants embedded in the drone’s wings. Like a flower in reverse, the wings of these drones will fold completely around a billboard at night, protecting people below from the ads and filtering the air. It’s a beautiful concept and commentary on both pollution and public space, it all seems a bit more ambitious than technology currently allows. Plus, if the term “drone” has a bad reputation, the term “parasite drone” might just send people indoors forever.

Parasite Concept Perched On Billboard

At day, it will stretch out to catch the sun. At night, the wings will close around a billboard.

NAS-DRA

Dronecraft Carrier

The history of aircraft that carry airplanes is surprisingly long and mostly filled with failure. Vehicles big enough to carry other vehicles through the air are either giant targets or are only capable of carrying small fighters.  On Monday, we covered a new DARPA project that aims to change that. DARPA wants a plane that can release drones from the sky and have them return to their airborne mothership for refueling and repairs.

Professional Photographer

This week, major commercial drone company DJI announced their brand-new Inspire quadcopter. Looking like a futuristic, cyberpunk reboot of their classic DJI Phantom quadcopter, the Inspire breaks away from the level construction of most quadcopters and embraces the verticality of being an aircraft, with rotor arms angled up from the body and a camera pod suspended below. It comes with a new, improved camera, a dedicated controller, and an app. Ideally, it will make everyday filming with a drone as easy as OkGo. Watch it fly below:

Mushroom Corpse

The biodrone is a concept in sustainable droning: With a body made from mushroom fibers, the drone doesn't pollute the environment if it's lost; it eventually decomposes down into nothing. Or, well, almost nothing. As Popular Science wrote earlier this week, the current version uses regular quadcopter engines and rotors, so it leaves a drone skeleton. Future versions of drones inspired by the biodrone could save scouts the hassle of destroying their equipment if it gets lost.

Nuclear Onlookers

The ongoing saga of drones buzzing around French nuclear reactors continued this week, despite the arrest of a few hobbyists found with a small drone earlier this month. Now some French government sources are claiming that the special police that guard nuclear reactors are authorized to shoot down the drones. As drone flights continue, however, none have been shot down.

Did I miss any drone news? Email me at kelsey.d.atherton@gmail.com.

WorldView

Are you bored of eating at Michelin-star restaurants and flying in a helicopter to work everyday? Do you have so many piles of cash sitting around that they're cluttering up your second vacation home? Sounds like you need a real vacation.

Hop into your private jet and check out these extreme, geeky, and sometimes absurdly pricy experiences.

Cameras.

Sam Kaplan

You’ve mastered the art of Instagram, and you’re ready to swap your smartphone camera for something more serious. Five years ago, that meant choosing between the quality of a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera or the low cost of a point-and-shoot. But that’s no longer the case.

Mirrorless cameras, which have been around since the digital camera boom of the early 2000s, are catching up to DSLRs in terms of quality. Their smaller bodies formerly meant grainier photos. That’s because they required the use of smaller image sensors, which receive less light than the full-frame sensors used in DSLRs. In recent years, camera-makers have found ways to place larger sensors in mirrorless cameras, pairing them with high-powered image processors. To boot, many mirrorless cameras now include interchangeable lenses for shooting in different environments. That means a pro-grade camera in a point-and-shoot body is finally a reality—and it’s available for a reasonable price. 

Sony α5100

Sony a5100.

Sony

The camera’s full HD video support puts it in a class above most other mid-tier mirrorless cameras.
Megapixels: 24.3
Max resolution: 6,000 x 4,000
ISO range: 100–25,600
Price: $699
Weight: 283g

Panasonic GX7

Panasonic GX7

Panasonic

A Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system accepts DSLR lenses when fitted with an adapter—a nice perk if you have them.

Megapixels: 16
Max resolution: 4,592 x 3,448
ISO range: 200–25,600
Price: $1,099
Weight: 402g

Olympus OM-D E-M10

Olympus OM-D E-M10

Olympus

Wi-Fi connectivity and touchscreen controls make this MFT camera best suited for Internet dwellers.

Megapixels: 16
Max Resolution: 4,608 x 3,456
ISO range: 100–25,600
Price: $699.99
Weight: 396g

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science, under the title, "Pro Quality in a Small Package".

The steampunk insect

photochem_PA, CC BY 4.0

Stink bug. As names go it is a PR disaster, each of the words alone hardly endearing, and, in combination, wholly off-putting. Which is a shame because stink bugs have a perky charm, a distinctive style and, for an insect, a surprising concern for their offspring.

The trouble is that a new member of their clan is on its way to the UK: the marmorated stink bug, Hyalomorpha halys. The press is on the case, combining a distrust of anything arriving from the continent to live in the UK with dire warnings of damaged apples and nasty smells.

Ornate shieldbugs mating

Robert Flogaus-Faust, CC BY 4.0

The UK has an enchanting selection of native species, such as the forget-me-not shieldbug, ornate shieldbug and parent shieldbug. A much more enticing set of names, hinting at their often striking form and behavior.

Most are less than a centimeter long, either neatly oval or akin to a medieval knight’s triangular shield. Some such as the hawthorn and red-legged shieldbugs have sharply angled front corners to their thorax, giving a hint of 1980s shoulder pads.

Many are brightly colored, black and white or with bold yellow or red. Even the more conventionally dowdy brown or green species often sport zebra striped antennae and are edged with a black and white checkered border. The marmorated stink bug goes in for this checkered style too: marmorated refers to a marbled-effect pattern. The “marbled shieldbug”. That sounds much better.

Meet the marmorator

The marmorated stink bug often feeds on soft fruit which it probes using a long proboscis to suck the juices.

If fruit are attacked by large numbers of bugs the puncture wounds disfigure the crops and they are no longer marketable. Some bugs also have the potential to transmit crop diseases.

On the other hand this group of bugs includes many species that show devoted parental care for their eggs and newly hatched young. The adults stay close to batches of eggs, often squatting over them, to fend off predators. When the young hatch they cluster together much like a proud gaggle of primary school children on their first outing.

What provokes the greatest ire, however, is the smell. Glands between the first and second pair of legs release a foul odor if the bugs are attacked. The stink from a marmorated bug is like a nasty version of coriander and very persistent.

Over the past decade the bugs have spread from their original home in China, Japan and Korea to become established as an invasive species in the US, where they are considered a major agricultural pest.

They come into houses to hibernate and beleaguered home-owners who unwittingly try to dispose of them are left regretting their actions as the frightened bugs let rip with those armpit stink glands

Get used to the smell

I’ve had a soft spot for shieldbugs ever since receiving a letter from a member of public wondering if I could identify the strange insect she had found. Inside the letter, immaculately displayed where the sorting machine had squished it flat, was a birch shieldbug, laid out with a precision to gladden the heart of the most painstaking curator.

While many dead insects shrivel or curl, the shieldbug’s tough design holds its shape, the curves and fins reminiscent of American 1950s automobiles.

You may have seen this car in Cuba

Velela

The live bugs are even better. They tend to walk slightly high on their front legs lending an inquisitive air. They do not scuttle or jump but instead the legs on either side alternate back and forth much like a wind-up toy. Everything about them is slightly retro, a steampunk insect.

The bug is likely to be on its way to the UK. A few stink bugs have been found in passenger luggage from the US but the real invasion threat is cross channel, part of a trend for continental insects to establish in the UK in recent years.

Many have gone unremarked outside of specialist insect newsletters but others have attracted wider attention such as the willow emerald and small red eyed damselflies. This summer saw a widespread scatter of the scarce tortoiseshell butterfly, recorded only once before in the UK.

We like damselflies and butterflies. Less lovely is the spread of the bluetongue virus, a livestock disease that seems to have arrived with midges. What all these cases have in common is continental, warmth-loving species expanding their ranges north-westwards across Europe and hopping over to the UK.

The marmorated stink bug is a good flyer. It is spreading. Maybe we should start calling it the marbled shieldbug and wait to see if it is quite the nuisance that its press suggests.

***

Mike Jeffries does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

CityBridge

Even if you've spotted a payphone in the wild recently, it's probably been a while since you've actually reached out and touched one. But that may soon change: New York City is planning on replacing the old public phones with 21st century equivalents, which will even provide free, superfast Gigabit Wi-Fi Internet access.

The project, called LinkNYC, calls for the construction of up to 10,000 "Links" throughout all five of New York's boroughs, "thousands" of which will provide free Wi-Fi. CityBridge, the consortium behind the units' development says that the Wi-Fi will be "more than 20 times faster" than the average New Yorkers' home Internet access, capable of downloading a two-hour HD movie as fast as 30 seconds. The first units are scheduled to go into service by the end of 2015. In addition to providing fast and secure Wi-Fi, Links will also offer the ability to make free phone calls anywhere in the U.S. (including 911 and 311), access to city services and directions, and a free charging station for mobile devices. The units themselves, which have been created by industrial design team Antenna Design, are even compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

All of which sounds well and good, but this is the point where every savvy citizen starts wondering where the catch is. How does New York City intend to pay for such a major project?

Through ads, naturally. Take a look at Link and you'll see large, colorful displays (in the commercial-area version that it mainly touts, as opposed to the slim-profile residential-area flavor). Those screens will be used to display advertising, though they can also be utilized by the city to distribute public information, such as in the case of an emergency. Those ads are also targeted to generate more than $500 million in revenue for New York City, which helps obviate the need for taxpayer involvement.

Link

CityBridge

Ads may not be a big deal, especially to New Yorkers who already find themselves besieged by advertisements on billboards, the city's innumerable taxi cabs, and so on. The bigger concern may be security. LinkNYC says that it plans to offer an encrypted network connection between users' devices and the hotspot, as well as preventing devices on the hotspot from talking to each other. But it appears the Link project will incorporate an Android tablet, and that platform has already proved to be an attractive target for malware.

There's also a question of whether NYC's municipal Wi-Fi will run into some of the same roadblocks encountered by other cities attempting to bring Internet to its citizenry. San Francisco, for example, attempted a similar project a decade ago, which was eventually cancelled; a much less ambitious project was launched in 2013. LinkNYC would certainly be the biggest endeavor of its kind, and its success could pave the way for similar ventures around the country and world. 

As for Clark Kent? He can always change in a revolving door.

Thanksgiving Travel

Google

The folks from Mountain View pulled anonymous aggregate information from location-enabled Android phones, and used it to calculate just how many cars were out and about during the Thanksgiving weeks of 2012 and 2013 in 21 cities around the United States, including Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and more.

The conclusion? If you're looking to head over the river and through the woods to grandma's house, try to avoid hitting the road on the Wednesday before turkey day; it's the busiest day in most places. (Except, apparently, for my home town of Boston, where Tuesday is far worse, because we're all constantly trying to beat the rush.) If you have to travel on Wednesday, Google says you're best off leaving before 2 p.m. or after 7 p.m. to avoid the worst of the rush.

Saturday and Tuesday are also pretty busy days—and the former came in first in some places, like Honolulu and San Francisco—but it turns out that Black Friday traffic is surprisingly light. (Probably because everybody's at the mall.) And when you're looking to make a return trip, you're best off driving on Sunday, as Saturday has up to 40 percent worse traffic.

Google also analyzed Google Maps search trends during Thanksgiving week to see what kind of locations people are looking for. Unsurprisingly, Wednesday's top queries include people searching for last minute directions for the ham shop, the pie shop, and the liquor store—which sounds like a pretty great Thanksgiving all on its own. Thanksgiving Day saw people prepping for Black Friday shopping ("outlet mall"), picking out their Christmas decorations ("tree farm"), or somehow avoiding leftovers ("buffet restaurant"), while the top Black Friday searches included "Christmas tree farm,""festival," and "outlet mall."

If you prefer your Thanksgiving travel information in easy-to-digest—see what I did there?—graphical format, the company's put together an infographic, embedded below, that breaks down your best travel bets for the holiday week.

Of course, if everybody were to follow Google's travel advice, then we've got a whole new set of traffic problems. I guess we'll find out the consequences of that next year.

Thanksgiving Infographic

Google