At the 44th Tokyo Motor Show preview today, carmakers—mostly Japanese—rolled out their visions of future mobility. They are efficient, autonomous, connected, and, of course, completely chill. Here’s our top ten from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Russula emeta. Spores from a similar mushroom in this genus were used in the study.

Dohduhdah [http://bit.ly/1iisQbG], via Wikimedia Commons

Fungal spores are all around you. Even now, as you read this, there are likely spores floating and dancing around your head. Millions of tons of them are dispersed into the atmosphere every year. Some spores, such those from molds, can be harmful to breathe in, but the majority are harmless.

Fungi are crucial to nutrient recycling in almost all environments, but it turns out their masses of spores carelessly tumbling through the air might also be beneficial. Recent evidence suggests that spores released into the air from mushrooms act as nuclei for the formation of raindrops in clouds. This may promote rainfall in ecosystems—like those in the tropics—heavily populated by mushrooms and other fungi.

Spores are how mushrooms reproduce. (A mushroom itself is actually a sexual structure, but that’s another matter.) They are single-celled particles that, like seeds, are dispersed to eventually develop into new fungal organisms.

Mycologists (scientists who study fungi) from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and Mount St. Joseph University were looking at how spores are able to hold onto water droplets when they discovered that the spores may contribute to the local weather.

Lactarius hygrophoroides. Spores from this species were used in the study.

Dan Molter (shroomydan) at Mushroom Observer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Among basidiomycetes—a giant group of fungi (some 30,000 described species) that includes mushrooms—the “Buller’s drop” method is a common form of spore dispersal. Named after A.H.R. Buller, the “Einstein of mycology,” the method involves the launching of spores by a catapult mechanism of sorts that uses droplets of water as the counterweight.

Here’s how it works. Nestled within the gills or pores that line the underside of a mushroom’s cap are billions of tiny spores sitting in anticipation on top of tiny little stalks. Water vapor in the air condenses on a spore’s surface. One droplet of water pools in a ball at the base of the spore and waits. As more water condenses on the spore, it slides down its sides and collects on the ball of water at its base. Eventually the drop of water gets so big that all of a sudden it drops off the spore. The sudden displacement of mass is so big the spore is catapulted into the air at roughly 3 feet per second.

Some mushrooms store their spores in gills, or pores, like these pictured here. Suillus brevipes

After collecting spores from various species of mushrooms gathered from the wilds of Ohio, the researchers put the spores into a chamber where they could control the relative humidity. As they cranked up the levels of water in the air they observed how the spores collected droplets under an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope. What they found was that sugars on a spore’s surface attract and hold water from the surrounding environment. When the relative humidity was 100 percent or more, noted the mycologists, “liquid water formed a thin shell around the entire spore.” As the humidity increased, they collected more and more water, like a snowball rolling down a hill (or like the video game aptly titled Spore, for those who are familiar).

A single gilled mushroom can shoot out up to 30,000 spores every second, adding up to billions of spores a day. Depending on air currents, they can be carried up as high as 50 miles up in the atmosphere. Spores reaching heights like that can be in the air for any amount time. With this prolific level of spore production, it’s not hard to see how millions of tons of these tiny somersaulting balls could collect enough water in clouds to cause rainfall. As the Ohio mycologists note in their study, “mushroom-forming basidiomycetes are vital to the productivity of many forest ecosystems supported by heavy rainfall.” They don’t believe that the rainmaking abilities of mushrooms is an intended adaptation, but just a lucky coincidence that happens to benefit them, since mushrooms thrive in moist areas.

The positive feedback loop it creates, does, however, has other implications as well. Just as fungi that need rain for growth shed massive amounts of spores that promote rainfall, a lack of rain could result in lower numbers of fungi that disperse lower amounts of spores—thus not helping rainfall. If changes in climate reduce rainfall, this hitherto hidden system could upend, possibly exacerbating drought.

Trixi Skywalker

Mole mapping, the process of charting your moles through regular skin checks, has just gotten easier—and potentially more reliable—thanks to MoleMapper. The app, which is free and available on iTunes, allows users to map, measure and monitor moles with the help of an iPhone camera and digitally share these images with a doctor.

“Being vigilant about your moles – the size, shape, color, and patterns—is the best way to catch melanoma when it's most treatable and a cure is likely,” says Sancy Leachman, MD, Ph.D., director of the melanoma research program at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland.

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. If it's recognized and treated in its earliest stage, the five-year survival rate of people with melanoma is 97 percent. But once the cancer spreads to other parts of the body, that rate drops to as low as 15 percent.

The MoleMapper uses an Apple-Maps-like interface, allowing users to add and drag pins to chart each mole. After users take a close-up photo of a mole, the app then records the dimensions of each mole when compared to reference points—a dime, a penny, a nickel, for example—and alerts users to changes that may signal a malignancy.

Dan Webster, Ph.D., a research fellow in cancer biology at the National Cancer Institute, created MoleMapper for his wife, who is at high risk of developing melanoma. “She has several risk factors for melanoma, so we kept track of her moles by taking pictures between appointments. I wanted to empower others to do the same,” he said.  

Webster then partnered with OHSU and Sage Bionetworks, non-profit biomedical research foundation in Seattle, to build an-app based study to quantitatively track moles and help detect early signs of melanoma. All app users are invited to take part in the study and given the opportunity to electronically consent to participate. Researchers hope that, by studying mole images from a large number of people, they can develop new ways of evaluating moles and potentially inform treatment options.

“We want to know if a regular iPhone camera could provide us with images that have value in determining moles that should be removed? If it can, we then want to know if we can train a computer to predict what moles should be removed based on how they look in a digital image,” said Andrew Trister. MD, Ph.D., senior physician at Sage.  

Images and mole data from those who join the study data will have identity info removed before they are collected by Sage for use by the study team. These data will also be used in OHSU’s Melanoma Community Registry, a centralized resource of melanoma survivors and their families are interested in donating their health data to research. Study participants are also given the option to share their data more broadly with other qualified researchers.

“Right now it's not possible to determine whether a mole should be removed by looking at a photo. There's just not enough data, but this app changes the scale of the data we can collect,” said Dr. Leachman.

Researchers say data provided over time will prove particularly useful in contributing to knowledge about the disease. “What will really help is if people report back what moles they had removed because the size of the scars will indicate how big the melanoma was. This information will help us learn what moles actually are melanoma,” said Dr. Trister.

The MoleMapper is the latest addition to Apple’s ResearchKit, an open-source framework designed to help medical researchers expand their study candidate pools and collect more accurate data. Other ResearchKit apps include ones to better understand Parkinson's disease and long-term health after treatment for breast cancer.

As with other apps included in the ResearchKit suite, the success of the MoleMapper study depends on broad participation. “Anyone with an iPhone and Internet connection can contribute to research on a disease,” said Leachman. “Everyone can do their part.”

Moon

NASA/Apollo 11

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, announced yesterday that it plans to send humans back to the moon in 2029.

News organization RT reports that the mission would take place in a new spacecraft, which will begin test flights in 2021.

The announcement comes just a few weeks after Roscosmos announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to send a robotic mission to the moon in 2020. And that isn't the only partnership that Roscosmos is forging. RT also reports that the Russian government was in talks with China over a potential collaboration on a scientific lunar base. NASA is planning on heading back to the moon, too, but instead of a crewed mission it will send small satellites there in 2018 to measure the amount of water ice on the moon.

Why all the focus on the moon? For one thing, it's there, and we haven't done it in a while. (The last person to walk on the lunar surface was Eugene Cernan in 1972.) But trips to the moon are also thought of as a stepping stone to larger space projects, a chance to develop technologies that could one day set up colonies on the Moon or Mars, or even build gas stations for other missions by breaking down lunar water into oxygen and hydrogen (a.k.a, rocket fuel).

Sounds like fun. Last one to the moon is a rotten egg!

Hugh Herr

Nigel Parry/CPi Syndication

After getting caught in a blizzard while mountain climbing at age 17, Hugh Herr lost both his legs to severe frostbite. That hasn’t slowed his pace.

Now at 51, the inventor and engineer is a member of IEEE and the co-director of MIT’s Center for Extreme Bionics, where he designs prosthetic legs (including his own), along with feet, ankles, knees, and hips which push the limits of human capabilities. Herr’s prosthetics have helped him to climb even more treacherous icefalls, and to continue clearing hurdles in the field of bionics.

In his own words:

Shortly after my amputation in 1982, I was fitted with prosthetic limbs. Their lack of technology shocked me, so I decided to design my own—ones that would enable me to return to mountain climbing. I quickly abandoned the notion that a prosthesis has to have a human shape and began optimizing function. I developed legs with adjustable heights so I could reach hand- and footholds.

I had all sorts of attachments: feet to stand on rock ledges the width of a coin, and feet that would penetrate rock fissures. Within 12 months, I was climbing better than I had before my accident.

Wearing artificial limbs in the vertical world of climbing is quite comical. One time I fell, and my foot tumbled down the mountain. It would be devastating if someone’s biological foot broke off. I just go to the repair shop, and in a day I have a new foot. It’s upgradeable.

But in our culture, we tend to view the artificial, when it’s attached to a human, as unholy. We think that our bodies are better than the devices we conceive and construct. I think that belief will disappear. Just because something is made of titanium and silicone does not mean that it’s somehow less than human.

Even today, humans are very augmented: We hop in airplanes and go tremendous distances over a short period of time; we have mobile devices that improve our communications and memory. The same will happen with bionics—they will give humans transcendent capabilities.

I’m intrigued by the possibility of embedding humanity—our ideas and our creativity—into designable bodies. The artificial limbs we create can be just as beautiful and expressive as our own bodies made of innate cells. In my lifetime, I’d like to be able to feel my synthetic legs in the way that you feel your biological legs.

Hopefully I’ll experience motor inventions that are superior to biological muscle tissue. To me, it’s not scary; it’s the natural progression of our evolution.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of Popular Science under the title “Hugh Herr On the Future of Bionics.”

Creature the cat. Courtesy Chelsey Coombs

Chelsey Coombs doesn’t understand her cats. Her 18-month-old male tuxedo cat, Creature, “follows you into the bathroom—you can take a bath or a shower and he just sits there and watches,” she says. He jumps around a lot, meowing insistently whenever a door is closed. While Creature is too invasive, her year-old female tortoiseshell cat, Aurelia, is much more timid: “She rarely ventures outside my room,” Coombs says, “She will try to go up to people but when they try to touch her she runs away.” Sometimes Aurelia drags her owner’s clothes into her litter box or food bowl, much to Coombs’ chagrin.

Many cat owners have similar stories of bizarre feline behavior. So it’s only natural that frustrated cat enthusiasts might try to create a high-tech solution to better understand their pets.

In 2003, Japanese toy company Takara Tomy released a handheld gadget called the Meowlingual Cat Translation Device. Equipped with a microphone, the device can purportedly interpret over 200 words from “cat chat” to Japanese, and glean 21 distinct emotions from a cat’s movements and behavior. More recently, severalsmartphone apps have popped up, claiming to help pet owners better understand their cats' feelings by translating their hisses and meows.

Cat researchers are skeptical that these techy translators work as their manufacturers claim. The key to understanding our feline companions, they say, lies in a better comprehension of their personality traits that make them the temperamental creatures we know and love.

“I don’t think anyone fully understands cats, but everyone seems to be fascinated by what they are doing,” says Kurt Kotrschal, the head of the Konrad Lorenz Research Center, which focuses on animal behavioral research, at the University of Vienna in Austria.

The Meowlingual Cat Translation Device. Credit: Japan Trend Shop

Most people would say that dogs are easier to understand than cats (although Takara Tomy also sells the Bowlingual translator). This is because, inherently, dogs and cats socialize differently, Kotrschal says. Dogs are descended from wolves, which conform to each other in packs, cooperatively hunting and raising their young. So when he lives with a person, a dog’s first inclination is to conform his behavior to his owner. “Cats not are less socially intelligent, but their social lives seem to be more varied,” Kotrschal says. Cats are equally happy living in packs or a more solitary existence, so whether or not they conform to their owner’s behavior comes down to how much they like their owners.

Because cats tend to be more individualistic and don’t aim to please, researchers have been stymied for decades as they tried to do various laboratory tests with the persnickety kitties. “If you try to do standardized cognition tests, [cats] do not want to participate, they refuse to conform,” Kotrschal says. Even with studies of domestic cats in their homes, the researchers had no guarantee that the test subject would even “feel” like hanging out, while their canine counterparts can be reliably commanded to sit and stay. But fascination with cats has grown over the past 25 years, and more researchers have devoted their energy to unraveling the mysterious felines, according to Dennis Turner, the director of the Institute for Applied Ethology and Animal Psychology in Hirzel, Switzerland. Now, researchers understand more about cats’ behavior—and their relationship to people—than they do even about dogs, he says.

Cats have their own way of expressing themselves, and learning to read their cues takes time. “The way cats communicate their emotions, often with movements of the ears and tail, is pretty universal—you can generalize from one cat to the next,” Kotrschal says. Cats also make about 10 different vocalizations, Turner agrees, but we still don’t understand them perfectly; many of the sounds are unique to each individual cat, and researchers don’t understand even what a purr means.

Aurelia. Courtesy Chelsey Coombs.

Because not all cat sounds are universal, cat lovers should be wary of any device that claims to translate them, Kotrschal says. “If it’s basic vocalizations, it could be kind of okay, but sometimes cat behavior is not so easy to predict,” he adds. But a gadget that translates very basic cat vocalizations to human speech might actually work.

Turner isn’t convinced. “I don’t think something like this would ever work,” he says, unless some very qualified cat researchers helped develop the device. Cats are very expressive creatures, he says, and if owners spend enough time with them and learn their unique vocalizations and body language, they should be able to understand their pets without a gadget.

“I don’t think anyone fully understands cats, but everyone seems to be fascinated by what they are doing.”

If offered a cat communication device guaranteed to work, Coombs would want to decipher the motivations behind her cats’ quirky behaviors. But Turner says that owners themselves may be unwittingly encouraging their cats’ idiosyncratic behaviors that they find most beguiling. “If the cat jumps on the toilet, the owner might actually scream for fear [the cat] might jump in,” Turner says. “But if the cat is seeking additional attention, that might be a reward—they got it, in a way.”

Although cat research has progressed since the Meowlingual translator first hit the market, it's not quite advanced enough yet to reliably interpret cats' emotions. Turner and Kotrschal agree that future research into cat communication will focus on their cognitive abilities—“Do they think? What do they think? What kind of decisions do they make?” Turner asks. Kotrschal also suspects that future work will answer more questions about how they socialize and attach to their owners.

But for now, researchers and cat owners alike face similar issues as they try to wrangle their reluctant felines. “They’re very stubborn and hard to understand,” Coombs says. Nonetheless, if she were given a way to verbally communicate with her cats, “I think I would tell them that I really love them.”

The Suspect

Max Goldberg/FlickrCC by 2.0

A bear like this one may have cut power to a seismic station in Alaska. This particular bear is innocent until proven guilty.

There are plenty of risks to doing fieldwork in the Alaskan wilderness, including the possibility that your innocent equipment will be destroyed by a bear.

That's exactly what happened to a seismic station monitored by the Alaska Earthquake Center on October 21.

Seismic stations are places where instruments are set up to monitor how much the ground shakes during an earthquake. But they can also pick up other ground-shaking events that are more localized, like thousands of fans jumping and screaming during a football game, or a bear deciding that it doesn't like the look of that seismic station and needs to take it out.

On this particular day, the station recorded a large burst of activity just before it stopped sending data. The shaking wasn't caused by an earthquake, and based on the pattern, the researchers think that it was probably a bear.

Apparently, wildlife interfering with these seismic stations isn't that uncommon--happens a few times a year. "This same station was damaged last year by what we think was a goat," field engineer Scott Dalton told KTUU news. "That time the solar panels had been crushed and we think a goat had rammed into it."

Dalton said that repairs would have to wait until next year, when a team can travel to the remote outpost and assess the damage. In the meantime, the Alaska Earthquake Information Center will continue to monitor earthquake data from a network of over 400 seismic stations in the region from Canada to Russia.

The motive of the bear is still unknown.

Nintendo app Miitomo

Nintendo

Nintendo is diving into the smartphone app world. First with the Mii app Miitomo

Miitomo will mark Nintendo’s first foray into the smartphone app world.

The Japanese gaming giant has long been known for its first-party games and dedicated hardware to go along with them. Nintendo’s recent change of heart is a result of the their partnership with DeNA—a smartphone gaming company that powers popular mobile titles like Star Wars Galactic Defense and Blood Brothers 2. Nintendo has put their trust in DeNA to bring Mario, Zelda and other possible first-party IP to the iPhone and Android. But Nintendo is keeping a tight lid on which actual games they plan on bringing to our phones. For now, the company is only willing to dish on Miitomo.

Nintendo's Miitomo

Nintendo

Miitomo will be a free-to-play app that allows players to create a Mii—much like the Nintendo avatars gamers can create on the 3DS and Wii U. Similar to the 3DS title Tomadachi Life, the app will allow gamers to use their Miis to socialize with other players’ digital selves. It isn’t quite the next great Nintendo game that many hoped for, and we can’t be sure whether it utilizes the clever StreetPass function for meeting new Miis. But many are thankful for Nintendo’s decision to make iPhone and Android software at all.

Along with Nintendo’s embracing of the future, Pokémon titles are coming to mobile as well. Starting with Pokémon Shuffle—the freemium puzzle matching game—the Pokémon Company isn’t stopping at just one Candy Crush-like title. With the help of Ingress-creator Niantic, Pokémon Go will come to phone-owners sometime in 2016. The title will be the first full Pokémon game to come to mobile that isn’t a Pokédex app or trading card game. By using your real-world location, Pokémon Go will challenge players to catch pocket monsters and battle fellow trainers using their smartphone. While augmented reality isn’t confirmed to be a part of the game, the trailer hints at a world where we actually see Pikachu virtually appear in the world around us. Perhaps a HoloLens-style headset is next on Nintendo’s list of ambitious plans.

In addition to Miitomo, Nintendo announced something else for their gaming fans—an upgrade to the company’s account system. Previously, accessing a single account across different Nintendo devices was difficult, if not impossible. The new My Nintendo membership service, as the company is calling it, gamers will be provided one login for all their hardware: Nintendo-made and other smart devices. Redeemable points from purchases and personalized offers will sit well with former Club Nintendo fans. The new account system will arrive alongside Miitomo in 2016.

But most interestingly, Nintendo "plans to release a total of five smart device applications by the end of March 2017 and will consider any and all Nintendo IP as candidates for future apps, as previously announced,” according to a statement from the company sent to Popular Science. What remains most interesting from this announcement is not the Mii-Maker, Tomadachi Life-like game coming to phones, but the potential for Nintendo fans to finally access the company’s games on their mobile devices. Let’s just hope we see Link in Unreal engine come to the iPhone like we all desperately want.

Nintendo’s Miitomo will come to smartphones in March of 2016.

Before this week, the Museum of Food and Drink was largely conceptual. In the mind of Dave Arnold, an author, food history obsessive, and the founder of groundbreaking New York City bar Booker & Dax, MOFAD was not only already built, it had already begun planning future exhibits that could tour the country and enchant the public.

But MOFAD had to first open, which it did earlier this week. The 3,000-square-foot space in the heart of Williamsburg (it used to house a parking garage), on which the museum holds a five-year lease, is far removed from the museums of elementary school class trips. "We wanted MOFAD to look like Willy Wonka meets the Eameses," says Peter Kim, the museum's executive director.

The launch has been promised ever since Arnold birthed a Kickstarter in 2013 to raise funds for a MOFAD pop-up. Those contributions helped build MOFAD's first exhibit, a pop-up called 'BOOM! The Puffing Gun and the Rise of Breakfast Cereal,' but Arnold wanted to establish a permanent brick-and-mortar location for his culinary deep dives.

"We are not a science museum," he told me by phone. "Science is just a lens. We are concept- and experience-driven, and we wanted to showcase the grand story of how our food system got to be the way it is."

The first exhibit, titled 'Flavor: Making It and Faking It,' is an expansive look at the modern age of the flavor industry, which began in the late 19th century when German chemists discovered vanillin, the primary chemical compound of the vanilla bean. When the MOFAD team first began to workshop ideas, which also included an opening exhibit on food on the battlefield or a look at food from farm to toilet (says Kim, "That didn't seem like the best first course"), the concept of flavor was much more broadly defined.

Monsanto Vanillin

Paul Adams

On display at the Museum of Food and Drink.

Flavor was the starting point, but once MOFAD began to consider the physiology, the cultural nuances, and subjectivity of flavor, Arnold and co. realized the museum's scope had to be both narrow and broad. "There is no way to imagine the modern food system without flavoring," he says.

The entire exhibit is contained in one room, which helps the museum's flow. MOFAD claims a few current museums as inspirations (Arnold and Kim both named the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens), and it follows the current trend overtaking museums, a tactile and immersive experience that encourages guests to interact with each of the dozen stations.

There are modified gumball machines dotted throughout the room, each filled with a different flavor tablet that MOFAD specifically designed. Want to know the difference between vanilla and vanillin? Turn a machine's knob and out pops an sample taste of the chemical (MOFAD is careful to explain that all flavor is chemically identifiable — "whether it comes from a lab or from a lemon or from lemongrass," says Kim).

Seaweed

Paul Adams

Streamers of glutamate-rich kombu seaweed stretch from ceiling to floor

Taste MSG in its unadulterated state, and then sample its umami effects in tomato, mushroom, and seaweed tablets. "Umami and MSG helped the flavor industry ride the coattails of the processed food industry," notes Kim, "but we couldn't just talk about umami and say, 'This is what it takes like. Trust us!' Let's actually give people umami."

MOFAD's most striking exhibit, and what makes the $10 single-admission tickets worth the cost, are the Smell Synthesizers, which were designed (with an assist from the olfactory laboratories of the Monell Chemical Senses Center) and created by Arnold. "He was working around the clock for months," says Kim.

There are several smaller synths, which allow a visitor to explore individual smell experiences: whether a concord grape smell is natural or artificial, for instance, and how a combination of furfural (known as the 'skunk note') and coffee concentrate yields a Taster's Choice moment of freshly brewed java.

Smell Synth

Paul Adams

Matt Giles inhales a custom combination of scents from the synth

Arnold also designed a synth with 19 different olfactory components that creates smells as varied as ripe (or green) banana and vomit. "We wanted to show how combinations can create surprising results," says Kim, "but also explain the notion of how flavors are built. This a cheat sheet — imagine what a flavorist could do with 400 compounds?"

(To ensure the space didn't become a stink bomb, the MOFAD team researched marijuana forums and installed a scent-hiding device used by weed farms that pumps air through activated charcoal.)

What's next for MOFAD has yet to be determined. An optimized version of the Flavor exhibition could go on the road, which would then open up the space for whichever concept MOFAD wants to investigate next. "We have a list a mile long for what we want to do," says Arnold.

We've come a long way since the first German vanillin. And we're glad that, after years on the drawing board, there's now a place where one can spend an afternoon touching, smelling, and learning how flavoring has evolved from early canned vegetables to Doritos Loco Tacos and kiwi strawberry drinks, and become a $25-billion industry.

Chinese couples would now legally be allowed to have another child

True_Guowei via Pixabay

Chinese parents will soon be legally permitted to have two children if they want to, according to an announcement released today on Xinhua, the Chinese government’s news agency.

That’s a change from the controversial One Child Policy, implemented in 1980 and intended to limit the country’s exploding population growth and strain on resources. Officials estimate that in its 35 years, the policy has prevented 400 million births. That’s a significant number, even in a country with a population of 1.3 billion.

But the policy had a number of unintended consequences on Chinese society. First, there are now significantly fewer women than men—if a family was limited to one child, many wanted to stick to conservative values and bear a male heir, so many female children were killed or aborted.

Then, also, there’s the 4-2-1 problem. As the Chinese population ages—more than a quarter is expected to be over age 65 by 2050—an only child will have to care for his parents and, likely, his four grandparents as well. That could put a huge financial strain on the primary breadwinners and could cause further slowdown in an already sluggish economy.

Pundits suspect that ending the One Child Policy is a way to heal some of China’s social and financial woes. In 2013, the government added a few caveats to the policy that would allow some couples to have more than one child, but it didn’t create the surge in births officials expected. This policy shift is much more far-reaching.

Yet some experts think that allowing Chinese families to have two children is still too restrictive, and that the government shouldn’t be telling families how many children to have at all. Others note that this is hardly a panacea for China’s economic failings—a report from a Beijing-based security company states that making workers more productive and making legal allocations for the market to exert a stronger force on its economy would do more to stimulate financial growth, the L.A. Times reports. And it will take a while for the demographics to reflect this change, as single-child households are still the social norm, one demographer tells the Guardian.

Despite these concerns, many experts believe that the Chinese population will welcome this shift. The Chinese government is expect to release details about the policy’s implementation soon.

Auto mechanics, California

photo by T. Voekler, via Wikimedia

Last spring, we asked an important question: "Do You Really Own Your Car?" According to Auto News, one federal agency has now provided a definitive answer, which will make tinkerers and tuners happy -- if the decision doesn't get upended by federal law, that is.

HOW WE GOT HERE

For as long as there have been cars, people have been customizing them. Some tweaks have been cosmetic (e.g. bumper stickers, fuzzy dice,questionable paint choices), others have been more substantial (e.g. upgrades to headlights, suspensions, and engines). But one place that shade-tree mechanics haven't been allowed to poke their noses is in the code powering the onboard computers that control most modern vehicles.

Then, something important happened. Earlier this year, the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office began considering whether automotive software was protected by copyright law.

General Motors, John Deere, and other equipment manufacturers insist that code falls under the protection of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They argue that the DMCA already protects videogames, music files, and e-books, so the same standard should be applied to other digital content -- namely, their software.

Consumer groups, industry watchdogs, and others stand firmly on the opposite side of the issue. Their arguments vary wildly: some insist that inspecting code ensures the safety of consumers, others say that there are profound differences between, say, the code found in entertainment products like videogames and the code that powers our vehicles.

Tuners, of course, have long been hoping to get the green light to amend the code on their vehicles. Chris Kersting, president of the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) had this to say after the ruling came down:

"SEMA has always maintained that the right to access vehicle systems to utilize, maintain and upgrade vehicles is legal as fair use under copyright law, as are activities undertaken to achieve interoperability with aftermarket products."

CONGRESS BUTTS IN

But the celebrations at SEMA could be short-lived. A bill proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives would make tinkering with automotive software a violation of federal law.

While the bill (PDF) contains some good provisions -- like requiring automakers to send out recall notices by email -- section 302 contains this important sentence:

“It shall be unlawful for any person to access, without authorization, an electronic control unit or critical system of a motor vehicle, or other system containing driving data for such motor vehicle, either wirelessly or through a wired connection.”

Now, on the one hand, that makes sense -- especially in light of recent stories about vehicles being hacked. But let's not forget: those software loopholes were uncovered by good-guy hackers who, under this bill, would be breaking the law. As the Federal Trade Commission has said in reference to the bill, giving individuals and organizations access to automotive software can actually improve public safety:

"We support the goal of deterring criminals from accessing vehicle data. Security researchers have, however, uncovered security vulnerabilities in connected cars by accessing such systems. Responsible researchers often contact companies to inform them of these vulnerabilities so that the companies can voluntarily make their cars safer. By prohibiting such access even for research purposes, this provision would likely disincentivize such research, to the detriment of consumers’ privacy, security, and safety."

The bill is new -- it's not even showing up on GovTrack yet -- so there's plenty of time for it to evolve, but as it stands now, the language seems a bit too broad for our tastes.

OUR TAKE

We can see both sides of this issue.

On the one hand, America has created robust systems to protect intellectual property, whether that property takes the form of copyrighted novels or patented backscratchers. Those protections encourage innovation by promising companies and individuals working in many fields that the things they dream up will remain their property. GM and John Deere deserve those protections, too.

Furthermore, we understand that the software that underpins our cars keeps us safe. Tinkering with it could endanger our own lives or those of other motorists and passengers.

On the other hand, having access to the code in our cars could help improve it or even detect wrongdoing. Heck, how much earlier could Volkswagen's emissions-test-cheating software have come to light if it had been more accessible?

Also, it's important to note that when the Library of Congress said it was okay to customize automotive software, it didn't cover every part of the vehicle. In fact, the areas most often attacked by hackers -- telematics and infotainment system -- were excluded from the ruling. So, concerns that the Library of Congress has opened the door wide to bad-guy hackers may be overblown.

(FWIW, the ruling also applies only to owners, not to garages or other third parties who might want to diagnose and repair cars. Making the ruling applicable to those parties would take an act of Congress -- literally.)

If the ruling stands and the aforementioned bill fails, it would give owners the ability to diagnose problems with their vehicles, fix those problems, and apply upgrades without fear of breaking copyright laws. That doesn't mean that automakers couldn't void warranties, though.

More From The Car Connection
2017 Porsche 911 R Spy Shots
Nissan Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo Debuts In Updated Form At Tokyo Motor Show
Nissan IDS Concept Hints At Next-Gen Leaf: Live Photos & Video
Bob Lutz Asks: Is Tesla Doomed?

For the artful new book Ingredients, Dwight Eschliman photographed the mostly powdery ingredients that go into all our favorite foods. Above are the ingredients of a Snickers bar. Below, a close-up on one ingredient in particular: soy lecithin.

Soy Lecithin

Dwight Eschliman

from Ingredients: A Visual Exploration of 75 Additives & 25 Food Products (Regan Arts, September 2015)

Soy Lecithin

Lecithin is ubiquitous in the natural world. At least trace amounts of it are found in almost all living cells. Once considered a waste product from soybean oil processing, it is now one of the most common emulsifiers in food processing. French scientist Maurice Gobley was the first to identify lecithin, back in 1805. He found that egg yolks are about 30 percent lecithin. Gobley named his discovery after the Greek word for egg yolk, lekithos. European industrial soybean oil processing did not start in earnest until around 1908. In 1920, more than a century after Gobley’s discovery, German food scientists identified the stinky, dark brown waste sludge left over from that processing as lecithin. Lecithin additive is refined from that sludge, which is slightly heated to remove water until it resembles molasses. The processors further refine it into clear liquid or mix it with a little oil to make granules and powders. Since it’s much easier to extract from soy than from eggs, soy lecithin became one of the very first industrially produced emulsifiers used by commercial bakeries.

Ingredients

Buy the book!

Lecithin often works in concert with its synthetic counterparts, mono- and diglycerides and polysorbate 60. Lecithin seems indispensible to bakers, as it improves dough handling, moisture retention, texture, volume, browning, and shelf life, all while improving the effectiveness of shortening and reducing the need for expensive and perishable egg yolks. It also serves the delectable purpose of keeping chocolate smooth and reducing “bloom,” that white haze of fat that sometimes forms on the surface of chocolate confections. Lecithin is also used to smooth out and bind ingredients in ice cream, chewing gum, and peanut butter as well as whipped topping, processed cheese, and dry beverage mixes. This is merely a short list of its emulsifying abilities: wetting agent, instantizer (helping things dissolve), release agent (in cooking spray), antidusting agent, and more. On top of that versatility, it’s high in polyunsaturates, cholesterol-free, and totally safe to eat.

Not surprisingly, lecithin has many nonfood uses as well. It emulsifies paint pigments, water-based printing inks, plastics, and the coatings on videotapes; it works as a skin softener in cosmetics, helps oil penetrate leather, and plays minor roles in paper coating, waxes, adhesives, lubricants, and explosives. This useful goo has risen to far surpass its former tag as a waste product.

Great Pyramid of Giza at night

Paweesit/Flickr CC By ND 2.0

It's no wonder the Great Pyramid of Giza is considered one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World." It's 4,000 years old and scientists are still wondering how it was built, and what secrets it may be hiding.

To try to solve some of these mysteries, researchers have organized the "ScanPyramids" initiative. Armed with thermal imaging, muon detectors, and drone-mounted laser scanners, the scientists hope to get a good look inside and build 3D models of four pyramids, including the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The search could uncover previously unknown internal structures, and maybe some hidden passages and chambers. One scientist on the team is even hoping that a secret door in Tutankhamen's tomb might lead the way to Queen Nefertiti's burial chamber.

The muon detectors will essentially take an x-ray of the pyramids, explains Jennifer Ouellette over at Gizmodo--except muon rays are able to pass through dense objects such as stone. Depending on how many muons are able to pass through the structure, scientists will know how dense different areas are, which is helpful if you're looking for secret chambers.

Motherboard notes that the project will kick off in November 2016.

Civil War Beard Styles By Side

Matt J. Michel

Civil War generals are as known for their beards as they are for their tactical ineptitude. While reenactors devote great attention to recreating this facial fur, the beardiness of generals is an understudied field. Fortunately for us all, Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science (PNIS), a part-serious, part-satirical journal, yesterday published the first half of a study on the beards of the Civil War. We now, at last, have an answer to the question probably no one was asking: which battle had the most total facial hair combined between commanders?

Confederate General Albert G. Jenkins

Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The answer, it turns out, is the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain, a relatively small struggle over control of a rail line between Virginia and Tennessee in 1864. A Union victory, the battle takes home the crown of “most combined facial hair of any pair of combatants in the entire war” thanks to the staggeringly long beard of the Confederate Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins (the beard was almost three times the size of his face) and the trim mustache combined with untamed short beard of Union Brigadier General George R. Crook.

To reach this conclusion, study author and PNIS editor-in-chief Matt J. Michel used photos of the commanders, finding 124 Union commanders and 95 Confederate ones, and choosing the beardiest possible picture they could find of each officer. From this, they mapped the non-eyebrow facial hair of each commander, and compared it to the total area of the rest of the commander’s face. In the process, Michel discovered some interesting stylistic variations between the combatant sides:

Some styles were evenly split between the two different sides (like long beard and moustache) but there were also styles with big disparities, like short beard (29 Union to 12 Confederate), clean shaven (5 Union to 14 Confederate), and the muttonchop derivations (14 Union to 4 Confederate).

We see an important difference between the North and South. Northern officers tended to sport the styles that required some amount of trimming and/or design, like the short beard, the different types of muttonchops, and, to some extent, the Van Dyke.

Part two of the study, set to be released next week, will delve into the relationship between facial hair and victory. We're just bristling with anticipation for that one.

Brains! Some parasites love 'em.

Neil Conway/Flickr

Your monthly roundup of infestations, contagions, and controls from around the web.

In disease news

The Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine went to researchers who discovered treatments for tropical diseases.

Researchers from the U.S. picked up a tropical disease during a research trip in Honduras, after getting bitten by sand flies.

An Oregon teen was diagnosed with plague. Although plague is rare in the U.S., we’ve seen a jump in cases this year.

These owls aren’t going to give you plague.

And speaking of plague, new researchsuggests that it may be much older than previously though.

In vaccine news

The World Health Organization recommended a new malaria vaccine for small pilot trials. But other recent research suggests that a mismatch between the targeted malaria proteins may decrease the vaccine’s effectiveness.

A clinical trial will test a new AIDS vaccine candidate.

An anti-vax group apparently funded a study that showed the opposite of what they were hoping: there is no link between vaccines and autism.

New research pointsout the weak component in the flu vaccine.

And here’s why you should get a tetanus shot.

In agriculture news

California has new—and strict—laws to curb antibiotic use on farms.

Which produces higher yields: Organic or conventional farming? Well, it’s complicated.

Researchers in Korea have figured out a way to use CRISPR to engineer plants yet potentially bypass safety rules.

In creepy crawly news

New research suggests that Lone Star ticks may be spreading an illness that was previously mistaken for the deadly Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Researchers are considering using ivermectin, one of the drugs involved in this year’s Nobel Prize, against malaria mosquitoes.

And just in time for Halloween, here are some parasites that are after YOUR BRAAAAAAAINS.

The device sticks on the skin like a temporary tattoo; the metal part at the end connects it to a computer cable

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Eurekalert

The blood coursing through your arteries and veins bring necessary nutrients to organs throughout the body as well as take waste away. But conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, and certain types of inflammation can limit blood flow to various parts of the body and lead to permanent damage that is often hard to catch early on. Now a team led by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has developed a flexible electronic sensor that can measure blood flow on top of the skin or, can possibly be implanted onto the tissues themselves, according to a study published today in Science Advances.

The devices are made from a thin array of metallic wires that are oriented around a central sensor and map blood flow as well as pick up on the slight temperature increase that each pulse of blood brings. They are coated in a thin layer of silicone, so they are flexible and can stick to the skin like temporary tattoos. For now, the devices need to be attached to a computer using a thin cable, but could someday connect wirelessly via Bluetooth, as do other flexible electronics from the same lab. Those devices, which have been tested in the lab, are also capable of measuring blood flow, however this new device could be the most promising one to one day make it to the clinical setting.

A 3D rendering of the device monitoring flow in a blood vessel below the skin. The inset graph on the left is a map of the blood flow; the graph on the right shows changes in flow over time.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Eurekalert

Lightweight, wireless devices could be a big improvement on those currently used at healthcare facilities, which are bulky and uncomfortable, and sometimes even produce inaccurate readings. When the researchers tested their device on the surface of the skin of a few participants in the lab, they found that the readings were just as accurate and sensitive as the bulkier ones, showing where and how fast the blood was flowing. And since the devices are so easy and inexpensive to manufacture, they lend themselves well to large-scale distribution.

The researchers have not yet tested the sensors abilities when implanted below the skin as the devices would need to be totally wireless in order for that to make probable sense. But the scientists hope that future iterations of the stretchy, flexible device could be used directly on internal organs to diagnose and monitor various medical conditions that may alter blood flow.

An infrared image of the device on a volunteer's arm. The white dot is the thermal sensor.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Eurekalert

The SALT gun

SALT

The premise behind the SALT gun is right there in the name: it’s a gun that shoots salt, designed as a “Safe ALTernative” to a lethal gun, for people to keep as a home defense weapon that incapacitates but doesn't kill an attacker. Developing such a weapon is tricky, and funding it is now a challenge too. Yesterday, SALT’s IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign opened, but after nearly $30,000 in under 24 hours, the project was removed. What, exactly, happened?

First, the project. SALT is a gun, but one that fires a unique type of ammunition. Instead of the cheap and deadly metal bullets common to handguns, SALT uses a proprietary salt, encased in small spherical pellets. According to their maker, these “SALT rounds cause temporary debilitation, including blindness, lung constriction and intense contact irritation, all without permanent harm.” It looks like this:

As planned, these effects hit within seconds but wear away in 15 to 30 minutes after use, hopefully enough time for an alternative resolution to the situation to happen. In appearance, the SALT gun looks like a fairly standard all-black polymer construction pistol. The rounds exit its barrel at over 200 mph, with an accurate range of 150-200 feet. Instead of gunpowder, the rounds are propelled by compressed air from CO₂ capsules, much like in paintball guns. When it hits, it bursts into a cloud over 4 feet in diameter, so accuracy doesn’t have to be perfect.

Its gun-like nature create some legal hurdles for potential SALT buyers in a few places in the United States. In the District of Columbia, it has to be registered after purchase. Shipping restrictions make it hard to get SALT to Hawaii. In Massachusetts and New York, people wanting to buy it would have to go through a licensed dealer, of which there are none yet but could be in the future. California law, likely the section prohibiting civilian use of tear gas or tear gas weapons means that SALT cannot be sold or shipped there.

In a statement, Indiegogo said they took the gun down because:

The Salt campaign has been removed because it did not comply with Indiegogo's Terms of Use. Our Terms prohibit the offering of "any weapons, ammunition and related accessories" as perks. The Salt campaign was offering the product as a perk. All pledged contributions will be refunded to the contributors.

In response, the SALT campaign has set up its own site to crowdfund development and production of the weapon instead. It can be pre-ordered for $279, with an expected retail price of $349. The funding goal is to raise $75,000 so they can ship the product. The ultimate goal is to create a tool that replaces the handgun for self-defense, without endangering lives.

As long as we have been human, we have looked at the stars and wondered if anything like us exists elsewhere out there. More recently, we’ve found new ways to try to answer that question, by capturing images of far-off worlds or sending our own envoys to into the great beyond. Finally, after millennia of waiting, intelligent alien life has come to Earth. How do we react to these extraterrestrials? Do we attack them, or infect them, or do we try to make peace with them? What do we want to know from them, and what does that say about us as humans?

To be clear, intelligent life has not yet come to Earth. But in the new film The Visit, you can play out the scenario to see what might happen if they were to do so. Part documentary and part science fiction, this film is about an event that hasn’t happened yet. It features interviews with experts who delve into the policies and pragmatic measures that global and national organizations actually have in place, by running through a hypothetical scenario wherein extraterrestrials arrive on Earth. But it’s also a contemplation on humanity—how we see ourselves and our inability to cope with uncertainty.

“This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for many years,” Michael Madsen, the film’s director, tells Popular Science. “It would be the most significant event for mankind to experience—there’s nothing else that would so dramatically change human perception on ourselves and on the universe.”

Scientist Chris Welch imagining the inside of an alien spacecraft

Random Media

The film, which took about four years to make, has a cast consisting of experts and officials from the United Nations, British Ministry of Defense, and NASA. (Yes, there are real organizations with protocols in place that outline governments’ response to an alien visit.) Each person looks into the camera and answers Madsen’s questions as if they were addressing the aliens themselves.

That unique perspective does a couple of important things for the film—for one, experts can play out this scenario that they’ve thought about, anticipated, and planned for much of their professional lives. They ask all the questions you might expect—Why are you here? What do you know about the universe? How does your brain work?

But Madsen also noticed a sense of relief in how the scientists played into the scenario. “It’s more than the fact that these experts have been thinking about these things—there’s tremendous longing at play in these questions,” he says, “All of us have been looking at the stars and wondering if there’s life, there’s this quasi-religious notion here that, if there’s something out there and if it sees me, I will gain some kind of extended existence. I will be seen.” Identity is at the heart of that desire, he adds—the same reason we post constantly on social media. If others see us, maybe we can get a sense of where we fit in the universe.

Why are you here? What do you know about the universe? How does your brain work?

But when experts are speaking to aliens and the audience watches, viewers become alienated as well. “The experts are there as experts but we see them in a way from the outside, from an alien perspective, and that makes us observe them in a different way,” Madsen says. Astrobiologists know a lot more than the average person about what kind of alien might truly be out there, but unlike in a scientific paper on the subject, the film enables viewers to read the concern on their faces, to read their humanity.

By taking this hypothetical seriously, the experts had to consider how we understand beings that are so dramatically different from ourselves. One of the most fantastical elements of The Visit is an interview with Chris Welch, an astronautics professor at International Space University who has agreed to be the first human inside an alien space ship. Madsen wanted him to imagine and describe what it would be like inside an alien spacecraft, without falling subject to our presumptions that all aliens look like little green men.

“If we were able to meet something from another world, there’s only one thing we can say for certain: It’ll be beyond our comprehension, it’ll be so radically different that we will have nothing to compare it to,” Madsen says. Welch assumes that if a superior being came to Earth, it would present itself in a way we could understand or recognize, so he describes how he imagines the inside of the alien spacecraft might smell, look, or feel in a way that feels familiar and yet completely foreign.

A scene from The Visit

Random Media

Alien beings would bring so much uncertainty to anxious earthlings. One of humanity’s ugliest sides comes out when we do not understand or don’t have control. There are a lot of things officials won’t know if aliens visit Earth, and not knowing the facts allows our fears to germinate and chaos to ensue. Though we would be curious about the aliens, some humans would rather attack them than surrender our grip on control and knowledge. This, Madsen says, is one of the things that struck him the most when making The Visit—the thin line between civilization and chaos. “If people are afraid, it’s scary how easily the varnish of civilization can be penetrated,” he says. “So little has to happen before things go into Armageddon.”

One of humanity’s ugliest sides comes out when we do not understand or don’t have control.

At its heart, the film is a meditation on what it means to be human—how we construct our identities, which parts of ourselves we are most comfortable with, and our unrelenting need to be in control.

The Visit recently premiered in the United States and Denmark, and will soon be released all over Europe. So far, the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. But Madsen knows this isn’t a film for everyone—some people say it’s too slow, or aren’t willing to suspend their disbelief enough to play into the hypothetical. Madsen’s goal isn’t to make a film that is escapist, but rather to create space for the audience to retreat into themselves and see those beautiful and unsettling parts of humanity with clear eyes.

“Some people think [the film] is too unreal to take seriously. But nothing can be unreal because we can imagine it,” Madsen says. “That imagination is worth taking note of. I think that’s what Neil Armstrong was talking about—that giant leap is in our imagination so that we can see the world in a different way. That includes aliens coming to Earth—it would give us a totally different way to view the universe and ourselves.”

You can buy or rent The Visit on iTunes.

Countering drones is a an expensive proposition. Quadcopters are cheap, but the lasers to melt them, the sensors to track them, and the special rifles to jam their signals are all pretty pricey. Maybe what drone defense really needs is a fast goalie with a strong right foot:

The footage comes from New Zealand. An aerial photography company was filming a promotional video when a soccer player decided instead to create a viral sensation. “Kid kicks ball at drone (Drone Crashes)” now joins the ranks of “Fireman blasts hose at drone” and “two minutes of animals attacking drones” in the annals of bad things happening to hapless quadcopters.

Watch the whole seven-second video below: