Identifying Poisonous Plants

Being a Southern Californian, I typically miss out on the incredible springtime bloom of flowering trees in the East. But not this year. By some stroke of luck, I was in Boston early last week, and witnessed the most spectacular trees and foliage at their prime—lilac, magnolia ...more

For my sake, for your sake, for everyone's sake: I hope it never comes to this, but you never know. Dire times call for dire measures. Robert Xyster, an Iraq war vet and survivalist instructor, explains the why and how behind urine consumption: "It’s called Urophagia -- the ...more

Behavioral ad targeting companies are diving deeper into the realms of your subconscious with a new approach to serving adverts to you online—and they're using your television. Many web surfers peruse the internet at home while they're watching television. You might even be d ...more

After getting slammed with a crazy-big earthquake/tsunami, the Japanese nuclear plant Fukushima Daiichi might be on the brink of meltdown. Not as bad as Chernobyl, but maybe as bad as Three Mile Island. Nobody wishes such a disaster on anyone...anywhere in the world. In the US ...more

Dactyloscopy isn’t going anywhere. Forensic science has much relied on fingerprinting as a means of identification, largely because of the massive amount of fingerprints stored in the FBI’s biometric database (IAFIS), which houses over 150,000 million prints. And thanks to the ...more

There is a secret world hidden just beneath the surface of every pond, lake, and stream. Those waters are filled with wails of hideous creates murdering other hideous creatures for food and sport. Beautiful animals like dragonflies and damselflies that you see in the light of ...more

This words will help you identify terms that are brought up in reviews. You can also use them when writing your own review to be a bit more descriptive. Orthodox: accepted, traditional 2. Admirable: worthy of admiration; inspiring, approval, reverence, or affection. excellen ...more

In this article, I will be showing you how to make a crude form of aspirin from the bark of a willow tree. It is a great remedy for headaches, hangovers, and other minor pain. The use of the willow tree as a mild pain reliever goes back to the Native Americans, who used it in ...more

Anyone remember Google Goggles? Well, it's back with a new name: Google Lens. But this time, there's more machine learning and it's integrated into many different Google apps and services. The latest is the Google app for iPhones. Adding Google Lens visual search to the Googl ...more

When you encounter a mysterious laundry care symbol or alarming vehicle indicator light, you might just ignore it rather than ask somebody, search online, or open a user manual for the answer. If you have an iPhone, there's an easier way to decipher the meanings behind perplex ...more

Citrus greening disease — caused by a bacteria spread by psyllid insects — is threatening to wipe out Florida's citrus crop. Researchers have identified a small protein found in a second bacteria living in the insects that helps bacteria causing citrus greening disease survive ...more

Honda president Takahiro Hachigo has just announced that Honda will complete development of fully self-driving cars by 2025. While the company aims to have level 3 — or conditionally autonomous cars requiring human intervention only in emergencies — on the road in time for the ...more

Hops have always been known as the driving force behind beer, but now they're starting to grow their own culinary wings. Slowly but surely, this bizarre and bitter plant is showing up on more and more menus across the country as it catches on as a trendy and up-and-coming ingr ...more

Four months after unveiling the latest productivity apps for the HoloLens, Microsoft now has a series of compelling real-world use case videos showing how the augmented reality device and its apps are helping oil giant Chevron. In particular, Chevron has benefited from using ...more

Google Lens has easily been one of the more useful AR apps and a tantalizing tease of life with smartglasses in the not-so-distant future. Now, Apple has its own version of Lens, dubbed Live Text, built right into iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Like Lens, Live Text can copy text from ...more

A promising new antibiotic has been discovered in, of all things, another bacteria. Burkholderia bacteria live in diverse habitats, including soil, plants, and humans where they thrive by knocking out other microbes that compete with them for resources or threaten their existe ...more

Tequila is a hard liquor that's often been misunderstood. Produced from the agave plant, this aged spirit has complex flavors that bloom the longer it's aged and can rival the finest scotch. Yet tequila has a terrible reputation for inducing hangovers, which is untrue, accord ...more

Google just rolled out a revolutionary feature to its Pixel devices — Google Lens. Previously, Lens had only been available in the Photos app, but now, whenever you want to learn about something in the real world, you can just bring up Google Assistant, turn on the camera, the ...more

When the climate changes, so do all the things that rely on the climate, including people, plants, and pathogens. A European study recently took a broad look at what kind of microorganisms are most likely to be affected as climate change heats, cools, dries, and wets the world ...more

For as long as 14,000 years, the First Nations people of the Heitsuk Nation have made their home along the Central Coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia. Among the territory's inlets, islands, rivers, and valleys lie a clay deposit on the north side of Kisameet Ba ...more

Everything from disposed of drugs to hormones and disease-causing bacteria — anything that is rinsed or flushed down the drain — can contaminate wastewater. A group of researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada was the first to measure the effects of waste-contamin ...more

We know that healthcare-related facilities can be fertile ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but recent research suggests your produce aisle might be too. In a presentation at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers from California State Univers ...more

We've worked hard to reduce the flow of toxic chemicals into our waterways, which means no more DDT and other bad actors to pollute or destroy wildlife and our health. But one observation has been plaguing scientists for decades: Why are large quantities of one toxic chemical ...more

Fighting fire with fire, scientists are harnessing the adaptability of helpful microbes to challenge the adaptability of deadly microbes. What are we talking about? Hunting with phages — viruses that attack and kill bacteria. Bacteriophages are small, skeletal viruses that at ...more

A disease called "citrus greening" has devastated and permanently altered citrus production in the United States, but a vaccine that could protect orange trees may be part of a winning strategy to beat the bacteria that is killing the trees. Citrus greening, also known as Hua ...more

Termite poop and biofuels — what's the connection? New research into termites' intestinal comings and goings describes a process that may speed the development and lower the cost of fuels made from plant matter. Energy sources are a big deal, and the global economy currently ...more

Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment, but it is also one of the most commonly found heavy metals in wastewater, deposited there by inappropriate disposal and arsenical pesticides, for example. Whether by nature or contamination, an estimated 200 million people worldwid ...more

Marijuana is legal to use for medical purposes in 28 states and the District of Columbia, but the quick development of this new industry could have left some regulation issues in the lurch. Recently, a California man died of a fungal infection after using marijuana to help al ...more

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but one annoying invasive weed may hold the answer to treating the superbug MRSA. Researchers from Emory University have found that the red berries of the Brazilian peppertree contain a compound that turns off a gene vital to the dr ...more

Transmitted by ticks, Lyme disease is a serious infection that is probably headed your way. A recent study confirms the pathogen that causes Lyme disease is now established in nine national parks in the East, including Acadia and Shenandoah National Parks. Ticks are arachnids ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! The Holy Grail of any hacker is to develop a zero-day exploit—an exploit that has never been seen by antivirus (AV) and other software developers, as well as intrusion detection system (IDS) developers. In that way, you can exploit systems ...more

Spiders are common pests that typically prefer to live outdoors. However, insects and warmth will eventually attract them into our houses. They like to spin their webs in corners, crevices and unused areas of your house. Most species are harmless and even act as a natural repe ...more

WhatsApp has a new sticker-making tool in the iPhone app that lets you create custom stickers directly in chats using your own images, eliminating the need to rely on third-party apps to make them. The new sticker maker, which first appeared in late February, works with Whats ...more

If you have a taste for sweets, you have at least one thing in common with mosquitoes. While too much sugar is unhealthy for humans, a new product makes sweets deadly to mosquitoes. At a presentation at the 254th meeting of the American Chemical Society, in Washington DC, res ...more

Type 1 diabetes is an attack on the body by the immune system — the body produces antibodies that attack insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Doctors often diagnose this type of diabetes in childhood and early adulthood. The trigger that causes the body to attack itself ha ...more

Bed bugs are parasites not yet known to spread disease — but they cause plenty of irritation. As scientists and landlords search for new ways to deal with the pests, a new study examines how we can deter bed bugs without so many chemicals. While they don't infect us with anyt ...more

Before you bite into that beautiful tomato in your garden, the tomato fruitworm, or the Colorado potato beetle, might have beat you to it. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), researchers explained how microbes inside the gu ...more

Exposed to hormones, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals, the beautiful wild fish in Canada's Grand River have taken on some pretty odd characteristics—they're turning into females. A long-term study suggests using bacteria to manage polluted water could turn the tide for fem ...more

As researchers learn more and more about our intestinal bacteria—also called the gut microbiome—we're finding out that these microbes aren't just influencing our health and wellness, they're a useful tool for improving it, too. The bacteria in our intestinal tract must proper ...more

You just sat down, coffee in hand, and the day is ready to start. Now that you have taken a few sips, let me pose a question: What is living in that coffeemaker of yours? The answer might make you dump that coffee down the drain pronto. Extremophiles are rugged microbial indi ...more

Have you ever had a great meal at your local restaurant and wondered how to make it yourself? Or perhaps you've found yourself stumped at what to make for dinner based on the random provisions in your kitchen? Now, you can discover solutions to these food-based problems via Sn ...more

If left unattended, a hacker with a USB Rubber Ducky and physical access to the computer can infiltrate even the most secure computer. Such attacks often go undetected without the use of a tool like USBRip, which can provide you with assurance that your device hasn't been comp ...more

With a tiny computer, hackers can see every website you visit, exploit services on the network, and break into your Wi-Fi router's gateway to manipulate sensitive settings. These attacks can be performed from anywhere once the attacker's computer has been connected to the rout ...more

A router is the core of anyone's internet experience, but most people don't spend much time setting up this critical piece of hardware. Old firmware, default passwords, and other configuration issues continue to haunt many organizations. Exploiting the poor, neglected computer ...more

To say we're a nation of coffee-lovers is putting it mildly. Americans consume 400 million cups of joe in one day alone, but how well do we actually know our morning BFF? We know it comes from a bean, and that more coffee drinks exist than there are ways to skin a pig, but wha ...more

If you're not planning to upgrade to a new iPhone 13, the new version of the iPhone operating system will breathe some new life into your iOS device. Last year, the migration of widgets to the home screen stole the show for iOS 14. This time around, Apple has made some big ch ...more

Apple's upcoming iOS 17 is expected to include many new features first seen on Android, but there are also some exciting, unique features that Android needs to steal pronto. It's common practice for Apple to adopt new features for iOS that were first seen on Android, but the ...more

I've covered augmented reality apps for about three years now and the most useful mobile app I've encountered over that time is Google Lens. In brief, Google Lens can recognize and interact with text and identify a wide spectrum of objects, turning your smartphone's camera in ...more

With a cheap computer, smaller than the Raspberry Pi, an attacker can create a remote hacking device. The device can be attached to a target router without anyone's knowledge and enable the hacker to perform a variety of network-based attacks from anywhere in the world. As th ...more

Give an 18-month-old a shoe, check back 10 minutes later, and it's a very big maybe he will have it on his foot. But give him your smartphone, and in a mere five minutes, he can take 100 pictures of the carpet, send weird messages, and delete essential apps. Imagine what your ...more