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New York, United States, 21st April 2026, CyberNewswire

A simple way to apply futarchy to for-profit firms is profit-futarchy: make markets that estimate total firm market value given key firm choices, like who is CEO, what are key acquisitions, or what are key firm policies. Then do what such markets advise. But a big problem with this approach is that top people, like the CEO, often do not see their personal success as maxed by firm success. For example, they tend to be wary of losing control over key firm choices, even if that would make such choices more profitable.

So CEOs block the application of futarchy to firms. You might think that investors could just force CEOs to use futarchy, if that would max investor gains. But investors also can’t seem to prevent the adoption of poison pills, which also cut investor gains. It seems we must accept that top managers have power sufficient to induce firm outcomes that don’t max profits. Investors do not in fact fully control firms.

Okay, then what if we flip this script, and set decision markets to the task of directly achieving the selfish managerial ends that likely drive managerial power politics? Create a metric of the total success of an individual manager over their future career, and then make advisory power-futarchy markets that estimate this personal success given key choices under that manager’s power. And to discourage sabotage, give everyone who that might be able to act to greatly hurt this success a positive stake in that success, a stake they aren’t allowed to trade to below zero.

Would this supercharge power politics, via better informing political strategies? Plausibly this would improve both offensive and defense political choices, and also make political info more symmetric. Managers could less often win via strategies that rely on rivals not noticing their plans until too late. So might power-futarchy actually cut harms from firm politics? Maybe, relative to the alternative of no markets at all, helping managers have successful careers also on average helps firms to max profits.

Of course such markets may advise top managers to not create power-futarchy markets to aid their subordinates several levels below them. Such markets might even say to instead give such subordinates futarchy markets tied to key firm or division outcomes. If so, that might usefully limit the scope of power-futarchy. Yes, this might over time undermine support for power-futarchy, but maybe not before current managers achieved great success from it.

Some kinds of power politics strategies may be hindered by open markets estimating their power effectiveness. But we needn’t have such markets regarding all possible managerial choices. Though, yes, the choice to not create such a market on some key choice might be taken as a bad sign about the politics behind that choice. No doubt there would be many new tricks to be found when playing power-futarchy.

Tesla chip partners will help them resolve shortages of cpu, gpus and memory for the next 2-4 years. Intel is critical for CPUs Nvidia for GPUs. TSMC, Samsung for production of AI5 and AI6 chips. Samsung for memory.

Tribes contain factions. Tribe members mostly interact with and emulate other members of their same tribe, while faction members do these things more often with members of other factions. Tribes tend to have distinct moral norms and status markers, while factions tend to share the norms and status markers of their tribe. Factions often differ on status, income, professions, and on symbolic markers like food, clothes, languages, holidays, and artistic styles. Factions also often disagree on directions to change shared tribe policies and norms. The distinction between tribes and factions is a matter of degree.

Our dominant world culture hates tribes, but loves factions, especially factions who we see as “down”. We hate groups who disagree with world elite consensus on school, medicine, democracy, gender equality, sexual freedom, legal due process, rules of just war, and norms of good parenting. And we hate tribe supporters for their self-favoritism and habitual hostility toward outsiders. About these things we see our dominant world tribe as just right, and the others evil.

But we love factions within this main tribe who embrace distinct symbols, and who fight for tribe norm reforms. We call this love “tolerance”. At least we love factions who we can plausibly see as “down” relative to “up” rivals. (We presume “up” illicitly hurts “down”.) We hate “up” faction members who promote their factions, and accuse them of actually representing hated tribes. We moderns tend to channel our instinctive human tendencies to be tribal into our factional conflicts. Not noticing how we need tribes far more than factions.

The big problem is that in history our moral norms and status markers came mostly from cultural group selection acting on tribes, not factions. By crushing all but one dominant tribe, we now mostly block such evolution from preventing the decay of shared norms, or their adaption to changing context. We now see this most clearly in the decay of norms supporting fertility, but such decay is plausibly also happening across all our key norms. Selection acting instead on factions can’t do this remotely as well. If such decay continues long, our civilization will fall, to be replaced by others.

Unfortunately, we find it hard to see this problem, as our moral norms and status markers seem to us as just obviously true, and thus good bases for any analysis. In contrast, we can see and appreciate fights among factions, as we can frame these in terms of our “obvious” shared norms. But that doesn’t help much to ensure that the winners of faction fights are more adaptive.

Instead of trying to repress competing tribes, as we usually do, we might try to instead promote them. But even that seems quite insufficient, as the main underlying reason that the world has over centuries been merging toward one big tribe is the increasing ease of distant trade, travel, and talk. Such merging has achieved great scale economies of production and innovation, and a great reduction in conflict harms, such as via war, due to increasingly shared norms. Most people really like having a world community with shared norms..

There are a few today, like the Amish and Haredim, who care enough to treat themselves as distinct tribes, and are willing to forgo many gains of world cultural integration to achieve this. Such folks insulate themselves culturally from the large world, and so are the folks today whose descendants are mostly likely to replace our dominant world culture. But few groups today are this devoted to becoming tribes. Most of the folks today interested in cultural variety, like “network state” folks, are not remotely this devoted, and so have little chance of creating new tribes.

I can see only three ways for our main world civ, which I treasure in many ways, to avoid being replaced like this. The first solution is to somehow greatly raise the status of tribes, relative to factions. Convince the world to fragment into far more tribes, not just factions. Tolerate and even encourage groups having quite deviant views on democracy, gender equality, etc. to favor themselves and isolate from outsiders.

The second solution is to leave the world mostly integrated into one big tribe, but to find new ways to control and govern how key moral norms and status markers are changed to become more adaptive. Such as via competent governments held strongly accountable to increase adaption futures estimates, or via using a competent futarchy to pursue sacred adaption-achieving goals like when a million people live in space.

The third solution is to vastly increase the role of for-profit orgs in setting our moral norms and status markers. The evolution of firm cultures has long been quite healthy, as firms form quite distinct groups facing strong capitalists selection pressures. And for-profit orgs competing to give customers key numbers and observable outcomes have quite consistently improved on such outcomes. Each area they came to control, such as buying and running governments, or paying parents to make kids they could in effect sell, would likely become more adaptive.

As you can plainly see, these are all big long-shots. Our situation is quite desperate. And not likely to get better until a lot more people start to think about it.

Based on what the orbit appears to be. 20kg of fuel they can only raise it part of the way. ASTS admits the satellite is too low and cannot be saved, During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle. ...

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn NG-3 mission launched successfully this morning (April 19, 2026) from Cape Canaveral, carrying AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 (Block 2 FM2) satellite. After the launch and booster recover, the mission continued for 90 minutes or so. UPDATE – ASTS admits the satellite is too low and cannot be saved. Planned second-stage profile ...

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In the latest episode of old museum collections revealing new discoveries, two researchers in Australia have solved a paleontological mystery with an Ice Age fossil first discovered over  100 years ago.

The fossil was found in  the underground Foul Air Cave in Buchan, Victoria, Australia. It’s the partial skull of an Owen’s giant echidna (Megalibgwilia owenii), a now-extinct giant echidna that weighed 33.1 pounds and grew up to 3.3 feet-long. The genus name, Megalibgwilia, consists of “mega” (great or mighty in Ancient Greek) and “libgwil” (the Wemba Wemba word for echidna). 

“The apparent absence of the extinct large-bodied Owen’s Giant Echidna Megalibgwilia owenii from Victoria is unusual in light of its wide distribution across the continent’s southeast including Tasmania,” the researchers write in a paper recently published in the journal Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. “It is the first example of Megalibgwilia identified from Victoria, and reconciles the taxon’s otherwise disjunct southern distribution across mainland Australia.”

Though the fossil was retrieved from a cave in Buchan, researchers identified it in Museums Victoria’s Palaeontology Collection. Tim Ziegler—collection manager of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute—initially spotted it in 2021, and found it came from a 1907 expedition by Frank Spry, a naturalist and museum officer. 

The Megalibgwilia owenii fossil. Image: Museums Victoria

“Museum collections preserve the link between science, heritage and people,” Ziegler, lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Over a century ago, Spry along with scientists and locals investigated Buchan’s caves with little more than ropes and kerosene lamps, and they inspired us to carry on their work.”

Ziegler and his co-author Jeremy Lockett, a Deakin University vertebrate palaeontology student, investigated modern and fossil echidnas in other Australian museum collections, presumably comparing them to the one from the Museums Victoria. Its characteristic straight-beaked snout, with which it would have crushed big insects and dug into Ice Age Australian soils, verified it to be an Owen’s giant echidna.

“Previous research by Museums Victoria has shown the Buchan Caves preserve an exceptional record of Australia’s unique megafauna,” Ziegler said. “The next amazing discovery could come from inside the museum, from continued fieldwork, or the keen eyes of a citizen scientist.”

Today, echidnas are egg-laying, spiky-looking, long-nosed mammals that live in places including Australia and Indonesia. They grow 14 to 30 inches long, weigh 5.5 to 22 pounds, and are endangered. And sometimes, these hedgehog-like creatures end up in shark vomit. 

The post New megafauna looked like spiky, 30-pound hamster appeared first on Popular Science.

Who doesn’t love a brownie? It’s the ultimate comfort food—beloved around the world and even beyond it. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have brownies on their menu too.

But what makes a perfect brownie? That depends on who you ask. Some like a light, cake-like crumb. Others want a dense, fudgy center or a chewy bite. 

To tailor your brownies to your taste, you need to understand the science behind them. “Each ingredient has a specific role, and the ratios between them determine whether the brownie turns out fudgy, cakey, or chewy,” explains Dr. Lesa Tran, a chemistry professor at Rice University. 

What each ingredient really does Flour

Flour is the backbone of your brownie. When mixed with water, its proteins (gliadin and glutenin) link up to form gluten, a network that gives structure, explains Tran.

The more flour you add—and the more you mix it—the stronger that network becomes. The result? A lighter, more cake-like texture. Use less flour and mix minimally, and you’ll keep your brownies dense and fudgy.

Sugar

Sugar does far more than sweeten.

In the oven, it breaks down (or “caramelizes”) and reacts with proteins, a process known as the Maillard reaction. These processes create deep, complex flavors and aromas, says Tran. 

Sugar also locks in moisture by binding to water, keeping brownies soft.

And that shiny, crackly crust? That’s sugar too. In the oven, sugar dissolved in the brownie mixture rises to the surface and re-forms into crystals, which create that signature crust, explains Tran.

If you use less flour in your brownie batter, you’ll end up with fudgier brownies. Image: Getty Images / Mint Images

For chewier brownies, use more brown than white sugar, Tran suggests. This adds more chew because it has more molasses (thick, dark brown syrup obtained from sugar beet and sugar cane plants).

If you want to cut back on sugar without sacrificing taste and texture, try using a finer sugar like caster sugar instead of granulated sugar. Scientists studied the effect of different sugar particle sizes on chocolate brownies and found that brownies made with smaller sugar particles tasted sweeter, and were also softer and moister than those made with larger sugar crystals. So if you want a fudgy brownie with less sugar, go for caster sugar.

Fat

Should you use butter or oil? Science has the answer.

A study comparing butter to nut oils (like almond, pistachio, or walnut oil) found that, compared to butter-based brownies, oil-based versions are softer, more elastic, and moister—and often preferred in taste tests. They’re also higher in heart-healthy unsaturated fats, and lower in unhealthy, saturated fat.

Whether you use butter or oil, more fat means a richer, fudgier brownie, says Tran.

Eggs

Eggs pull double duty, adding structure and richness. Like flour, they contain proteins that set when heated, giving structure to the brownie, explains Tran. 

Egg yolks also contribute fat, making brownies richer and fudgier.

“Adding more egg whites provides more proteins to create a lighter, cakier texture,” says Tran, “while more egg yolks provide more fat to give a richer, denser result.”

Chocolate

What’s best: melted chocolate or cocoa powder? It depends on what texture you’re after. 

Melted chocolate contains cocoa butter, which solidifies as it cools—giving brownies a dense, fudgy bite. Cocoa powder, with less fat, produces a lighter, drier crumb.

If you use cocoa powder, choose wisely: natural cocoa is more acidic and sharp in flavor, while Dutch-processed cocoa, which is chemically treated to reduce its acidity, is smoother and mellower, says Tran.

Some people like to add chocolate chips to their brownies. The chips’ fat-crystal structure helps them hold their shape somewhat so you get little melty pockets inside the brownie, similar to what happens in chocolate chip cookies.

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Salt

A pinch of salt doesn’t make brownies salty—it actually makes them taste sweeter by helping your taste receptors detect sugar more effectively.

Leavening agent

Baking soda or powder introduces air into the brownie batter, creating lift and a cakier texture, says Tran. Skip them entirely if you want dense, fudgy brownies. 

Science-backed baking tips

The kind of baking pan you use matters. Metal pans heat quickly, resulting in faster bake times and firmer brownie edges, says Tran. Glass and ceramic conduct heat more slowly and retain heat longer, which can lead to uneven baking.

How long you leave the brownies in the oven also affects the end result. Brownies continue to cook when removed from the oven—a phenomenon known as carry-over cooking—because of the heat held within the food itself. 

“For a fudgy center, remove them when a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownie comes out with a few moist crumbs,” says Tran. “For a cakier center, remove them when a toothpick comes out clean.”

The bottom line

To create your perfect brownies, follow one of these formulas: 

• Fudgy: less flour, more fat, more egg yolks, use melted chocolate, no leavening agents. Mix lightly and slightly underbake.
• Cakey: more flour, less fat, more egg whites, use cocoa powder, plus a leavening agent. Bake until fully set.
• Chewy: don’t skimp on sugar (brown not white!) and fat.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post The best brownie recipe, according to science appeared first on Popular Science.

Tesla has 70+ robotaxi vehicles parked in Dallas and another 30+ in Houston. They are identified by camera washer hardware, matching Texas manufacturer/test plates, and behavior (simulated pickups/dropoffs in testing). A few individual sightings (service center cars) have visible Robotaxi markings or logos on the rear. The parked vehicles with hardware and plates and some ...

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How did our society decide how much to count things like education and artistic taste when evaluating prestige and status? How did we pick key moral norms and values, such as democracy, gender equality, legal due process, rules of just war, and norms of good parenting? Yes, such choices are weakly influenced by our DNA, and also by cultural evolution selection pressures on individuals. But mostly these things came from cultural evolution of groups.

You may have heard that such *group selection* never happens, but that’s wrong. Not only do most cultural evolution scholars see group selection as a key force, group selection also seems to important in DNA evolution, where species are groups. The fact that more species today descended from fragmented habits like rivers, coral reefs, and rainforests, where habitats were smaller, suggests that group selection of species has actually mattered more for DNA than individual selection within species.

I’ve said previously that healthy cultural evolution for stuff like norms status markers depends on four key parameters: enough cultural variety, strong enough selection pressures on cultures, slow enough internal cultural drift, and slow enough rates of environmental change. But I have to admit that this first “variety” parameter is a sloppy way to talk about it. Counting the number of cultures would make sense if, as with species for DNA, there was only one clear scale at which people are joined into cultural groups. But in fact cultural behaviors cluster together at many different scales.

However, I’ve been doing some reading, and have found that for decades cultural evolution scholars have had a less-sloppy substitute concept: “network structure”. If you look at the details of who people interact with, and who they are likely to copy their behaviors from, the shape of the network of such ties matters a lot for cultural group selection.

For example, the network feature that most promotes group selection seems to be “modularity”, roughly how many more ties there are within clusters, compared to between clusters. It also matters how similar are people within clusters, how much overlap there is between interaction and emulation networks, how well prestige tracks adaptiveness, how much conformity pressure there is for a behavior, and how much that behavior effects visible outcomes that people care about.

Each different type of behavior can have its own different network, and its own different coordination scale, requiring group selection at that cluster scale or above in order to select adaptive versions of that behavior. But it seems clear that relevant scales for many kinds of behaviors have greatly increased over the last few centuries, greatly reducing the effective “variety” for the purposes of cultural evolution. And this is plausibly cutting the effect strength of group selection, likely enough to cause net maladaptive change to our norms and status markers.

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Can you measure the weight of a human soul? No, but that didn’t stop Duncan MacDougall from trying.

In the early 20th century, MacDougall put dying patients on a scale to try and prove the existence of a soul. One of MacDougall’s first test subjects was a tuberculosis patient. He was placed on the bed as he neared death. With doctors watching over, the man died, and MacDougall noticed the scale’s counterweight dropped with surprising quickness. The scales displayed the weight that had been lost upon death: ¾ of an ounce, or 21 grams.

Had MacDougall solved a mystery that had plagued philosophers, theologians, and medical professionals for millennia? Not exactly.

The “21 Grams Experiment,” as it’s come to be known, is the fascinating topic for our latest Popular Science video. While MacDougall’s experiment was deeply flawed, the idea behind it remains so appealing, more than a century later. We keep coming back to the 21 grams experiment because we’re still looking for the answer to his original question: Does any part of us continue after death?

If you’d like to see more Popular Science videos, subscribe on YouTube. We’ll be bringing you explainers and explorations of our weird world.

The post One man’s obsessive quest to weigh the human soul appeared first on Popular Science.

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Birds in Hawaii are stealing from each other, and this bird-on-bird crime even extends to members of the same species. It’s an example of kleptoparasitism, or when an animal steals things from another. Specifically, these colorful, winged kleptoparasites are pilferring nest-material, sometimes causing the demise of the depleted nest. 

Researchers documented this behavior while observing over 200 native canopy-nesting birds nests on the island of Hawaii—aka the Big Island. The birds included the apapane (Himatione sanguinea), the i‘iwi (Drepanis coccinea), and the Hawai‘i amakihi (Chlorodrepanis virens).

Though there has been anecdotal evidence of such theft, a study recently published in The American Naturalist represents the first instance of it being tracked and quantified in nature.

“People working in the field have seen this behavior for years, but it’s never been documented at this level,” Erin Wilson Rankin, lead-author of the study and an entomologist at University of California, Riverside (UCR), said in a statement. “Now we can say who’s doing it, who they’re stealing from, and what happens to the nests afterward.” Wilson Rankin’s husband, UCR biologist David Rankin, is also a co-author. 

The Hawai‘i amakihi. Image: Jessie Knowlton/UCR.

Most of these birdy crimes took place between nests sitting at similar heights from the ground, aligning with the so-called “height overlap hypothesis”—that birds might be stealing from nests they come upon as they forage. Both the thieves and the victims were most commonly the apapane, and this is probably because of its significant numbers in the forest. 

“What’s fascinating is that this behavior is happening within species as well,” Wilson Rankin said. “Apapane were stealing from other Apapane.” 

This kleptoparasitism is risky behavior. While snagging nesting material might make it faster and easier to construct a nest, the material could also bring disease or parasites along with it. Stealing could also lead to violent confrontations with the wronged bird, though Hawaiian birds are usually non aggressive. 

While most of the thievery was carried out on abandoned nests, around 10 percent of cases involved nests that were either being built, or already carrying eggs or chicks. Around five percent of the nests in the study“failed” in the wake of a theft because the bird parents left or damage was done to the nest structure. 

These outcomes are new warning bells for species already suffering from disease, habitat loss, and climate change. Sprinkle in risks like avian malaria, and understated threats of this kind could accelerate population decline. The birds in the study aren’t endangered, but they are members of a diminishing group of native birds retreating to higher elevations because of human-introduced mosquito-borne diseases. These kinds of forests might be becoming more and more packed and competitive for birds.  

“This kind of behavior could be more common if nesting materials or safe nesting sites become scarce,” Wilson Rankin explained. “It’s something we should measure.” 

Identifying the most at-risk birds and figuring out when kleptoparasitism is most likely might contribute to better conservation strategies as habitat continuously breaks up. 

“If we can predict when and where this behavior happens, we might not be able to stop it, but we can intervene in other ways to support at-risk species,” she added. “That’s a benefit of this work.”

The post Hawaiian forest birds are stealing each other’s twigs appeared first on Popular Science.

Business deals with Intel, Samsung and TSMC will boost Tesla and XAI supply and demand challenges. How will Terafab and Teralab fit into the plan. Accredited Investors can sign up for educational discussion and Q&A with Brian Wang https://forms.gle/sdDwj852Fnfxkkan8

Quick: What’s your first memory?

Was it a birthday party? A family camping trip? Or choking on a hard candy (more on that later)? 

Even though little kids remember plenty, most of us lose access to key memories as we get older. It’s something scientists call childhood amnesia. 

But what gives? Why can’t we remember anything before age three and only hazy things before age six?

We explore just that in a recent episode of the Ask Us Anything podcast, delving into the science behind why our brains forget our earliest memories.

Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything podcast (as well as our written series of the same name) answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions—from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. So, yes, there’s a reason dogs tilt their heads and you’re right, candy does taste different now. If you have a question for us, send us a note. Nothing is too silly or simple.

This episode is based on the Popular Science article “Why we forget our childhoods” by R.J. Mackenzie.

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Full Episode Transcript

Sarah Durn: What’s your first real memory? 

Edith: My earliest memory is waking up to see Big Elmo. The stuffed animal!

Dan: My earliest memory is sitting on my mom’s lap while she played Super Mario Brothers.

Katherine: Being in my grandma’s kitchen and I’m sitting on the counter and she’s combing my hair. And it’s just a very warm, happy memory of me and my grandma.

Dale: My earliest memory is of a grapevine in my parents’ backyard when I was probably three or four years old.

Alex: My earliest memory was petting my dog. She was a big fluffy akita and I was a tiny baby.

SD: Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science where we answer your questions about our weird world from “why do we need braces” to “were there any venomous dinosaurs?” No question is too bizarre or too basic. I’m Sarah Durn, an editor at Popular Science.

Annie Colbert: And I’m editor-in-chief Annie Colbert. I have a little bit of a head cold today.

SD: Here at PopSci, we can’t resist a quirky question,

AC: And this week’s question feels a little existential: Why can’t we remember being babies?

SD: You learned how to walk, talk, recognize faces—arguably some of the most important things your brain will ever do.

AC: Yes. So the big question is: If we’re forming all of these memories, where do they go? Are they just gone forever or are they hiding somewhere?

SD: That’s exactly what scientists are trying to figure out, and the answer might be less about losing memories and more about not being able to access them.

AC: Okay. So it’s not that baby-you had a bad memory. It’s just that adult-you can’t get the files open.

SD: Yeah. Some scientists even think that losing access to those early memories could help us reset and adapt as we grow up.

AC: Wow. So your brain is basically Marie Kondo-ing your memories.

SD: Yeah. That’s what early research is telling us.

AC: Fascinating. I love this question

SD: Right? Now before we dig into all the reasons you don’t remember learning to use a toilet, we want to know what questions are keeping you up at night. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to know, submit your question by clicking the “Ask Us” link at popsci.com/ask.

Again, that’s popsci.com/ask, and click the “Ask Us” link.

AC: We want the weird ones. The strangest questions you have brewing.

SD: Yes, especially the weird ones.

AC: All right. When we come back, we answer the question: Where did your childhood go?

SD: And is it possible it never really left?

Welcome back! Okay. Before we get into the science, Annie, I feel like we have to start at the beginning. What’s your earliest memory?

AC: Yes. Happy to share. I will give a pre-warning that it’s a little scary. My earliest memory was something traumatic, which probably explains why I remember it. I was, I think, three or four.

And I was sitting in a tent in Michigan on a family trip, and I choked on a piece of hard candy and one of my parents’ friends jumped into action. They dislodged it, I assume, with some kind of Heimlich maneuver, but how it was resolved, I don’t remember. I don’t remember that part. But what I do remember very vividly is the color of the tent. It was blue and that moment of fear. 

When I think of it, it’s almost like a live photo memory. You know, like when you take a live photo on your iPhone and it’s a short video instead of a photo. That’s what I see when I think about that moment.

SD: Man, that’s intense. I’m glad you’re okay.

AC: Yes, yes, I am okay now.

It was definitely maybe not the best childhood memory, but certainly I heard a lot about it as I was growing up and my mom was very paranoid about me eating hard candies for the rest of my childhood. Um, how about you?

SD: Yeah, I mean, mine isn’t as traumatic, which is good, I guess. 

AC: Good.

SD: But it is a little weird.

So the first thing I can really clearly remember isn’t like a birthday or learning to ride a bike or something. It was watching The Neverending Story when I was about six. And for years I thought I had made it up.

AC: Wait, what?

SD: Yeah, like I fully convinced my brain had just invented this whole fantasy world, which, you know, wasn’t totally out of the ordinary for me, but I remembered these super vivid images: a kid flying on this giant white dragon, this glowing, childlike empress, this terrifying force called the Nothing that’s basically swallowing the world. 

Yeah. It all felt so real, but also kind of, you know, slippery like a dream you can almost hold onto, but not quite.

AC: Yeah, that’s kind of amazing. But also probably was scary as a kid.

SD: A little bit. I even remember where I was. Like I was sitting on my grandmother’s leopard print carpet in her bedroom.

AC: Nice.

SD: In front of this big, clunky old school TV. Just locked in. I think it was like lunchtime and my grandma was calling me, but I remember I was like, I can’t leave.

Yeah, and it just kind of feels fuzzy around the edges. Like it exists somewhere between something that happens, something I imagine and something I maybe dreamed.

AC: Which feels very on theme for this episode.

SD: Exactly, because that weird dreamlike quality. That’s actually really typical of early memories.

Most of us don’t have crisp, detailed memories from when we were really young. Instead, we get these flashes, you know, like little fragments, a blue tent, a leopard print carpet, the live photo, you know, and anything before about age three is basically gone.

AC: Which brings us to the big idea here, which is it’s not just you. This is a universal human thing.

SD: Yeah. Scientists actually have a name for this phenomenon: childhood amnesia. It describes how most of us can’t recall much, if anything, from before age three and why even our early childhood memories feel really blurry and despite how strange it feels. It’s something almost everyone experiences.

AC: Okay, so let’s break that down. What exactly is childhood amnesia?

SD: So scientists actually make a small distinction here. There’s infantile amnesia, which is the total blackout from before age three, and then there’s childhood amnesia, which is that kind of blurry, incomplete period from about three to six.

AC: So like before three, nothing. Three to six vibes only

SD: Exactly. Six year olds are just vibing.

AC: Yes. From experience, yes. But here’s what I don’t get: Babies are learning so much. They’re learning faces, language, walking, how the world works. So how are they not forming memories?

SD: That’s the thing. They are. And this is where things get really interesting.

Studies show that babies and even very young children can absolutely form memories. Their brains are recording experiences. The problem isn’t that nothing is being saved. It’s that later on we can’t access those memories.

AC: So it’s not that the hard drive is empty. It’s that the password is just gone.

SD: Exactly. Or the file format changed and adult-you just can’t open it anymore.

AC: Okay. That’s both comforting, that it’s still there, but deeply frustrating that we can’t access it.

SD: Yeah. Yeah. Like your first birthday party might still be in there somewhere. You just, you can’t get to it.

AC: So. How are scientists even studying this? Like babies can’t sit down and describe their memories?

SD: Oh, my babies can. No, I’m kidding. Yeah, so that’s one of the biggest challenges here. So researchers have to get creative.

AC: Mm-hmm.

SD: Sarah Power, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, built a whole playroom lab and that room could be turned into either an underwater kingdom or a dense jungle through projections on the wall, which sounds so cool.

Power then hid a really cool toy in the room. Then she’d bring in toddlers between one and a half and two years old to find the toy. Later she’d bring the child back and see if they remembered where the toy was.

AC: That sounds like the world’s cutest memory test.

SD: I know all these toddlers trying to find a cool toy in a jungle playroom.

What researchers are trying to figure out is how long do those memories last? At what age do they start to stick?

AC: Okay, but there’s another wrinkle here, right? Because human memory is not exactly reliable.

SD: Oh, yes. Yeah. Enter false memories.

AC: Hmm.

SD: So sometimes people are convinced they remember something from when they were like two years old, but in reality that memory might come from photos or stories their parents told them or things they’ve just heard over and over again.

AC: So basically you’re remixing secondhand information into a memory.

SD: Exactly. And every time you think you remember this memory, it gets reinforced in your brain, whether it’s real or not. So your earliest memory might not actually be your memory.

AC: Cool. Love that nothing is real.

SD: Or at least you know, some things aren’t real.

But even when memories are real, they’re fragile in early childhood. There’s this fascinating study where researchers had kids talk about specific events with their parents at age three. Then the researchers check back years later.

AC: And?

SD: yeah, kids around five to seven remembered about 60 percent of those events.

AC: Okay.

SD: But by eight or nine, that dropped closer to 40 percent.

AC: Oh, so it gets worse with age.

SD: Yeah. Which suggests those early memories don’t just fade. They kind of fall apart over time. And interestingly, kids remembered more when their parents helped them build the story: asking questions, adding details, making it more of a narrative.

AC: So the storytelling actually helps lock in the memory.

SD: Exactly. Which as someone who thought she invented The Neverending Story feels very relevant.

AC: Okay. So we’ve got fragile memories, missing memories, possibly fake memories, but why is this happening? Why would our brains be designed to forget something that’s so important?

SD: Yeah. I mean, that is the million dollar question, and this is where the new research comes in.

AC: All right, hit me with the science.

SD: So a recent study that Sarah Power also worked on actually looked at something called microglia. These are basically tiny cells in your brain that act like a cleanup crew,

AC: A cleanup crew?

SD: Yeah. They help shape the brain as it develops. They trim connections between neurons, get rid of what’s not needed, and basically help organize all your neural circuits.

AC: So microglia are kind of like your brain’s pruning shears.

SD: Yeah, and what this study found is that microglia might actually play a role in why we forget early memories.

In experiments with mice, scientists actually turned down microglia activity, and those mice actually kept their early memories longer than they normally would.

AC: Wait. So the forgetting didn’t happen.

SD: Exactly. Which suggests that microglia aren’t just passive cleaners. They might actively be involved in making those early memories inaccessible.

AC: So your brain is basically editing itself and it’s moving memories into longterm storage. So basically the plot of Inside Out was right.

Joy: That’s what I’m talking about. Woo! Another perfect day. Nice job, everybody! Let’s get those memories down long term.

SD: Yeah. Yeah, go Pixar! So during early development, your brain is changing really, really fast, forming tons of connections, then pruning them back. And in the process, some of those early memory pathways might get disrupted or reorganized.

AC: So it’s not that your memories are being deleted.

SD: Yeah. It’s more like the wiring that lets you find them is getting rearranged.

AC: Okay. That is wild. But also, it kind of makes sense because babies are learning so much that maybe their brain just can’t keep everything?

SD: Right. Another idea is that this forgetting actually helps us. It might act like a kind of reset, you know, clearing out early messy information so we can build more stable memories later on.

AC: So your brain is like we’re starting fresh here.

SD: Right.

AC: So to bring it all together, we don’t remember being babies, not because nothing happened…

SD: But because our brains were too busy developing to preserve those memories in a way we can access later.

AC: Got it. And tiny brain cleanup crews might be part of the reason those memories fade out of reach?

SD: Basically. Yeah.

AC: Which means somewhere, deep in your brain, there might still be a memory of you learning to walk or saying your first word?

SD: Or watching a fantasy movie and thinking you invented it or choking on hard candy.

AC: Fascinating.

SD: Right? And with that, it’s time for a quick break.

AC: But when we come back, let’s talk about the flip side of forgetting.

SD: Yeah. Because while your brain is busy losing access to your early memories, there are some things that it basically refuses to let go of.

AC: Like riding a bike.

SD: Exactly. More on that when we come back.

Welcome back. So we now know that many of us don’t remember our third birthday, but if you learned how to ride a bike as a kid, odds are you could hop on one today and figure it out pretty fast.

AC: Which is very cool. But why is it though that we can remember how to do things like ride a bike or speak a language? Things that we learned when we were little, but can’t remember the actual memories. We can’t even remember related memories like the learning to ride a bike or starting to speak, but we’re still maintaining those skills.

SD: Yeah, it’s a very valid question and something a recent Ask us Anything story by Adam Kovac actually got into. It turns out memories of events and learning how to do something, they’re actually totally different.

AC: Okay. But why?

SD: So earlier we were talking about episodic memory, those personal lived experiences, like your earliest memory or that camping trip or choking on a hard candy.

AC: Yes. The ones that disappear.

SD: Exactly, but skills like riding a bike, playing guitar, or, you know, even typing those live in something called procedural memory.

AC: Procedural meaning your brain knows how to do something even if you can’t remember learning how.

SD: Yeah, it’s like your brain switches to autopilot and those memories are stored in totally different parts of the brain areas that are way easier to access.

AC: So that’s why you can forget what you had for dinner yesterday, but still know how to balance on two wheels.

SD: Exactly. Your brain treats those skills as essential. Things worth holding onto.

AC: I mean, I guess it’s comforting that we don’t forget everything.

SD: Right? And also explains why, you know, practice matters. The more you repeat a skill, the stronger those pathways get until it’s basically second nature.

AC: So even if your childhood memories are fuzzy at best…

SD: Or completely gone…

AC: Yes. The things you learned during that time might still be with you.

SD: Yeah. Your brain might not remember the moment you learned how to ride a bike,

AC: But it remembers how.

SD: And honestly, that’s way more useful.

AC: I like that your past self is looking out for you just in a different way.

SD: Exactly.

AC: And that’s it for this episode. But don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of episodes of Ask Us Anything live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to Ask Us Anything by Popular Science wherever you enjoy your podcasts. And if you like our show, please leave a rating and review.

SD: Our producer is Alan Haburchak, and this week’s episode was based on an article written for Popular Science by R.J. Mackenzie.

AC: Thank you team for all of the memories, and thanks everyone for listening.

SD: And one more time. If you want something you’ve always wondered about, explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask, and click the “Ask Us” link. Until next time, keep the questions coming.

AC: Another thing: Why can’t I remember the plot to any movie? But I can remember every celebrity baby name?

The post Why don’t we remember being babies? appeared first on Popular Science.

The PVC pipe potato gun is a staple of many science-oriented (and frequently unsupervised) childhoods. There are plenty of variations to that starchy shooter, but the basic elements are invariably the same: load a potato inside the pipe barrel, fill the rear chamber with either combustible gas or compressed air, then fire away.

In theory, you can launch any similarly sized object using the contraption.Why not swap the potato for something that can save lives? That’s what YouTuber Emily the Engineer pondered during a recent video entry.

“The only thing that modern medicine has lacked in is a more efficient way to distribute this medicine. Do you see where we’re going with this now?” she asks her viewers.

Her final result is the EpiPen Launcher, a custom-built device that lives up to its name. Also known as an epinephrine autoinjector, the EpiPen is a relatively recent invention that’s saved countless lives. The simple but effective tool was approved by the FDA in 1987, and injects a fixed dose of epinephrine (aka adrenaline) to people suffering from allergen-induced anaphylaxis. Medication is delivered either through a spring-loaded or carbon dioxide-driven needle that activates when pushed against skin.

Emily the Engineer’s EpiPen Launcher aims to deliver the vital medicine from afar—but is it safe, practical, or even particularly effective? The answers vary, but it’s certainly fun to watch Emily and her pals figure out how to build a “pew pew that shoots,” as they call it.

This is no mere single-shot gun, either. Knowing accuracy may be an issue during a distant (admittedly ludicrous) allergic reaction scenario, the team constructed a 3D-printed bolt-action attachment that holds a magazine of up to four EpiPens. To ensure each unit receives the right amount of continuous pressurized air, Emily even rigged an air compressor inside a backpack that hooks into the launcher.

After numerous trial and error runs using tester EpiPens, the team finally delivered (at least some) epinephrine into a slab of ballistic gel from across a garage. Outside, the launcher also hurled a pen around 105 feet, although it looked pretty unlikely that it retained enough velocity to push the injector needle into someone’s skin. Sure, the EpiPen Launcher will never become a staple of emergency medicine—but you can never be too prepared, right?

The post Woman builds EpiPen cannon, because why not? appeared first on Popular Science.

The ancient Roman city of Perge—in present-day southern Turkey—was one of the region’s most prominent urban centers. By the 2nd century CE, the hub was so large that it even supported a sizable stadium for communal gatherings and athletic events. However, these events took a much darker turn only a couple hundred years later. Based on recent archaeological evidence examined at the site, Perge’s stadium received renovations during the Late Roman period (the 3rd through 6th centuries CE) to facilitate deadly gladiatorial fights. The sites were also used for Damnatio ad Bestias—public executions by wild animals. These structural additions even included five specially designed gateways researchers nicknamed the “Doors to Death.”

The findings are detailed in a recently published study in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology from a team led by Istanbul University archaeologist Sedef Çokay Kepçe. While the stadium was originally designed to seat thousands of attendees, their taste in entertainment shifted as the empire transitioned into the Late Roman period—an era known for the  rise of Christianity as well as the eventual collapse of Western Roman Empire in 417 CE.

The five doors were likely opened to release wild animals into battles. Credit: Arkeoloji Haber

The city’s architects knew that, like any sensible urban planning project, the more efficient and economical strategy wasn’t to tear down the existing arena and replace it with an entirely new facility. Instead, they simply needed to design upgrades to accommodate the public’s evolving (and bloodier) spectacles.

According to the archaeologists, the designers didn’t skimp on renovations. These features closely resemble those seen in other Roman amphitheaters specifically known for their public executions. Newer additions to the stadium included elevated stages, complex gate assemblies to help with crowd control, and enclosed spaces likely used to hold animals. Combined with the additional evidence of animal bones and relevant iconography, researchers believe it’s a near-certainty that Perge’s stadium became a venue for public executions.

Archaeologists plan to continue excavating at the stadium. Credit: Arkeoloji Haber

At the same time, these weren’t free-for-all battles. The most intriguing discovery at the site is an array of five entrances spaced near one another. Dubbed the “Doors to Death” by the study’s authors, these entryways were likely opened at specified times during an event to release wild animals like lions, leopards, and other predatory big cats. This arrangement isn’t widely documented at other Roman stadiums, making it especially striking.

Archaeologists plan to continue exploring the ruins at Perge, including the stadium. As Arkeonews noted, the city’s amphitheater today functions as a remarkable metaphor for ancient Rome’s complex cultural values and history—a society responsible for impressive technological innovation, as well as inhumane violence.

The post ‘Doors to Death’ reveal how Romans upgraded a stadium for bloodsport appeared first on Popular Science.

When the four-person Artemis II crew safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, they landed with a deeper understanding of what it will take to finally bring humans back to the moon. Those of us inspired by their mission back home on Earth also have  greater appreciation for some everyday skills that prove especially useful in space.

Decades of experimenting with humans in space have revealed a number of odd, sometimes unexpected skills that may come in handy while hurtling away from our home planet. Here are a few.

Napping in weird positions 

Even under the best conditions, sleeping in space is easier said than done. Long days can blend into nights, and the constant checklists of to-dos and sensitive experiments can make long stretches of sleep unrealistic. Then there’s also the impending dread of realizing any number of things could go wrong and result in your crew hurtling through the cold, empty void.

If that weren’t enough, sleeping (or more realistically, napping) has to be done strapped into a bed, Houdini-style, to prevent their bodies from floating around in microgravity. That leads to astronauts having to sleep like bats, often upside down or facing sideways. None of that’s exactly conducive to restful sleep.

“Every time I was dozing off last night, I had that image that I was tripping off a curb and I was waking myself up,” NASA Commander Reid Wiseman told CNN. 

Crying the right way

It might seem off to think there is a “right” or “wrong” way to shed a tear, but that’s apparently the case in space. The same lack of gravity that sends astronauts and their toothpaste floating also prevents teardrop from falling down their checks. Instead, tears pool across their eyes, forming blotching bubbles. 

So, unless they want giant blobs of liquid sadness (or moon joy) clouding their vision, astronauts have to be armed and ready to immediately recognize a tear and wipe it. Or, if they can, hold off from crying entirely. 

Tinkering with amateur dentistry

Dental problems are never fun and that’s especially the case for astronauts who are separated from the nearest professional dentists by tens of thousands of miles. Astronauts are actually required to maintain excellent dental hygiene, both prior to and during missions. That’s especially important for people on longer extended stays on the International Space Station. A sudden dental emergency caused by negative oral care could force them to end their missions early. 

But for the times when tooth issues are unavoidable, there’s usually someone in the crew who’s trained to extract a tooth. Astronauts will learn this by practicing extracting a tooth on a model. 

An astronaut practices tooth extraction on a model. Dental emergencies are considered one of the top five conditions having a negative impact on long-duration missions. Image: NASA.

It’s not exactly the most ideal solution, but when emergency strikes, it’s good to have someone with dental training on board, even if their tools amount to little more than a sharp instrument and elbow grease.

Learning the kinks of space plumbing

One of those crafts was immediately relevant during their 10-day journey: plumbing.Though astronauts are no strangers to relieving themselves in microgravity, this mission marked the first time a crew had a real toilet installed for a flight. That’s great in theory, but the fancy space toilet lavatory showed its limitations almost immediately.  While the Artemis II crew was still in Earth’s orbit on day one of the mission, the toilet (called the Universal Waste Management System) had a controller issue that temporarily prevented it from being used for solid waste.

That issue was resolved relatively quickly, but another plumbing problem arose days later when frozen urine clogged one of the toilet’s vent lines. NASA mission specialist Christina Koch reportedly had the idea to warm the frozen line by rotating the capsule so that the frozen urine faced the sun. It worked, though the astronauts were initially only able to restore toilet function  “for fecal use only.” Koch, meanwhile, earned the moniker “space plumber.” 

Being patient with tech support (also applies to Earth)

Around that same time as the crew’s toilet troubles, they grappled with a headache all too common back on Earth: glitchy tech. During the mission, several of the astronauts reported recurring issues with their Microsoft Surface Pros. It turned out the problem stemmed from Outlook. Commander Wiseman had to call the ground team and have them remotely connect to the device to solve the issue. It turns out that even in the dark remoteness of space, patience with IT support still goes a long way.

The Artemis II crew – (clockwise from left) Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover – take time out for a group hug inside the Orion spacecraft on their way home. Following a swing around the far side of the Moon on April 6, 2026, the crew exited the lunar sphere of influence (the point at which the Moon’s gravity has a stronger pull on Orion than the Earth’s) on April 7, and are headed back to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on April 10. The crew was selected in April 2023, and have been training together for their mission for the past three years. Image: NASA. Brushing off those wilderness skills 

While we may not always associate space with the great outdoors, the most prepared astronauts know their way around starting a fire. In addition to training to withstand G-forces during takeoff and stay sane in space, astronauts are also given a crash course in survival techniques in the event their landing back on Earth doesn’t go quite as planned. In the past, astronauts have practiced these survival skills in the deserts of Nevada, working together to gather food and water and even build shelters and clothing out of parachutes.

“I definitely see people learning skills they didn’t already have,” Veteran NASA astronaut Shannon Walker said of one astronaut class in an Army blog post. “This is a chance for the astronaut candidates to really get to know themselves, know how they operate under stressful environments, because space can be a very stressful environment.” 

The post From crying to dentistry: 6 odd skills astronauts need to go to space appeared first on Popular Science.

What’s big, rare, and smells like literal death? If you guessed a corpse, you’re not wrong. The pungent flower in question is a tropical plant called titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), a species of corpse flower. Appropriately, people say it smells like rotting flesh. 

The stinky plants are rare and native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Nevertheless, a corpse flower named “Pangy” calls Massachusetts’ Mount Holyoke College home, where it has just bloomed, according to the Associated Press.

“Terrible,” “horrible,” “putrid,” and “rotten” are just some of the one-worded descriptions the blooming has inspired, per a Mount Holyoke College social media video. One person has a more inspired take: “Impressive. I don’t think I’ve smelled a flower that smells like that anywhere, so very impressive.” 

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The chances to be impressed by a titan arum are few, however, because its blooming cycle is brief and occurs every five to seven years. Researchers reportedly discovered the chemistry behind its pungent odor in 2024. 

“A few people who have come in since have described the smell as being unbearable, tangy, like a trash can — it’s overwhelming,” Tom Clark, director and curator of the Mount Holyoake College Botanic Garden, told the Associated Press. “But that odor is there for a purpose. It’s there to attract pollinators, flies in particular.”

Here’s everything you wanted to know about corpse flowers but were afraid to ask.

What makes corpse flowers so smelly?

Several chemical compounds contribute to this smell. Sufides are the key odorant. Dimethyl trisulfide gives the flower its rotting animal-like sulfury odor. Dimethyl disulfide is a lesser, but still present smell like garlic. Additionally, a chemical found in sweaty feet called isovaleric acid and compound that smells like a mix of garlic and cheese called methyl thiolacetate are also present. The last scent to hit your nose before the flowering structure collapses after a few days is trimethylamine. This compound smells like dead fish.

What else makes corpse flowers stick out?

That signature smell isn’t the only striking feature of this plant. The titan arum creates the biggest unbranched cluster of flowers on earth. If you’re thinking to yourself, I only see one flower, that’s because the structure you’re looking at is not a flower. It’s a spadix (the tall pole-looking thing) and a spathe (a kind of leaf). There are many small flowers at the bottom of the spadix. Speaking of the spathe, regardless of what inspired the species’ genus name (Amorphophallus) its resemblance to the male genitalia is self-evident. 

How big are corpse flowers?

Amorphophallus titanum has the largest known unbranched inflorescence in the plant kingdom. The bloom can grow up to eight feet tall, according to the United States Botanical Garden with some individual plants reaching heights of 12 feet. 

Why do their flowers disappear so quickly?

Generally, corpse flowers can take about seven to nine years to bloom. Some will only bloom once every few decades. They also do not have an annual blooming cycle like many other plants, and will only bloom when it has enough energy to do so.

The corpse flower stores its energy in a swollen base at the stem–called a corm–that weighs about 100 pounds. Corpse flowers have the largest known corm in the plant kingdom. If it is a non-flowering year, one leaf about the size of a small tree will shoot from the corm. The leaf will then branch out into three sections, with each part growing more leaflets. After several years, the plant will finally gather enough energy needed to bloom. The bloom can then only be held for about 24 to 36 hours before collapsing. 

Are corpse flowers endangered?

Like in botanical gardens, corpse flowers are rare in nature as well. The species Amorphophallus titanum is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Some botanists estimate that there are fewer than 1,000 individual plants in the wild. The IUCN also estimates that the population has decreased by more than half over the past 150 years. Logging and turning the plant’s habitat into land for palm oil plantations are believed to be the reasons behind the decline.  

Are they dangerous to more than just our noses?

According to the Chicago Botanic Garden, each corpse flower can produce over 400 fruits with two seeds. The fruits will go from a gold color to a rich crimson. They are fully ripe about six months after pollination. 

However, don’t eat them. Their fruit is poisonous to humans. Large, orange-beaked birds called the rhinoceros hornbill typically eat the fruit and disperse the seeds. 

The post Rare rotting-flesh smelling flower blooming at a Massachusetts college appeared first on Popular Science.