BlingTechnology

The following is an excerpt from ADAPT by Amina Khan. The sea cucumber is not exactly the beauty queen of the seas. Named for the long, tubular vegetable with a clean smell and a crisp flavor, the animal looks more like a pickle with an unmentionable skin disease. It crawls along the bottom of sandy floors; depending on the species, it can look like a ridged, knobbly, or even spiked giant sea slug. The animal has no brain—just a ring of nerves around its oral cavity that extend both to the tentacles around its mouth and also down the length of its body. It gobbles up the detritus that falls to the seafloor, extending long tendrils that are modified versions of the tube feet it shares with starfish. Depending on the species, these feeding tube feet can be gorgeous and ornate, like the branches in a tree or the delicate ends of a neuron. These animals hold their feeding arms up to catch particles in the water, or they plow them into the sand and chow down, pooping out the clean s...

TABLE SALT Healthy in moderation Shardayyy via Flickr, CC by 2.0 Salt does more than just make your food taste more delicious—it’s important for your body to function properly. Sodium, one of the key ingredients in table salt, regulates blood flow and pressure, and helps transmit messages between nerves and muscle fibers. Chloride, the other chemical in table salt, aids in digestion. Foods in your diet need to have enough salt replenish these nutrients to keep you healthy. But too much salt can be bad for you. Processed foods are packed with the stuff; restaurants add more salt to their food to make it taste better. As a result, more Americans are eating high-sodium diets (sometimes without even knowing it), which has some pretty drastic effects on their health. When you consume too much sodium in your diet, your body holds extra water. That’s because the kidneys, which filter out waste from the blood, maintain a special ratio of electrolytes, such as sodium to potassium,...

Bite-sized science knowledge for your hungry ears. By Rachel Feltman  May 21, 2018 This post has been updated, and will probably be updated again, because that's how best-of lists should work. I love podcasts, you love podcasts, your grandma probably loves podcasts. Looking for some science you can enjoy while your eyeballs do stuff that isn't reading? Perhaps hoping to regurgitate something that sounds smart while sitting around with family on a summer vacation? Great. Read on. Flash Forward Half science, half fiction (which is why it also made our list of the best sci-fi podcasts): Every week, host Rose Eveleth picks a fictional future and has real experts explain how it might work. What if all drugs were made legal? What if antibiotics stopped working? What if the internet suddenly disappeared? Episode recs: Micro But Mighty, The Altered State, Bye Bye Binary 30 for 30: On the Ice This is another Rose Eveleth creation, so if you like the work she's done w...

I started using the iPhone as my personal device in the 4S era of 2011. I liked the hardware and the fact that it let me avoid all the tricky Android version and compatibility issues. Since then, I have waited for an Android phone that could sway me to the other side, away from the iOS life I chose for myself many years ago. I have used some great Android phones along the way, from the original HTC One to the versatile Moto Mods system, but nothing has convinced me. The Pixel 2, however, is as close as any phone has come to making me join the green text bubble crowd. The Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL aren’t the biggest or most powerful phones—and they lack a few features that would certainly be nice—but what’s there congeals together into a very pleasing smartphone package. Here’s a rundown of everything I liked and didn’t like about Google’s new phones, mostly so I can consult my own notes when it’s time to upgrade in a few months. Things I liked — Both Pixel phones have ide...

Gadgets Thermacell's Radius Zone mosquito repellent keeps your blood inside your body 71 percent off a Bluetooth speaker and other good deals happening today Last week in tech: Google's AI gets chatty and Nerf has new laser tag blasters The best gear for an epic picnic Exclusive first look: Nerf’s AR-Powered Laser Ops Pro blasters Five rad and random games to play this Fourth of July Security Staying secure in the modern world is more difficult than ever. Every day, we face threats to our identities, our personal information, our data, and even ourselves. From malware attacks to phishing schemes, we survey the security landscape. It takes a lot more than some anti-virus software to stay safe. We go beyond the sensationalism to assess which threats could pose the biggest problems and dig into the repercussions that ripple through our lives once security has been compromised. KEEP GOING AI Sure, artificial intelligence can generate hilarious song titles and pai...