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Showing posts from July, 2018

Try these 10 awesome virtual-reality apps for Google Daydream View

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If you want to experience virtual reality without breaking the bank, you may have considered Google's $100 Daydream View headset, which relies on a smartphone to bring the wearer into new worlds. Once you purchase your new toy, you'll want to download the best games and apps for the device—and we've handpicked some of our favorites. First, you will need a Daydream-compatible phone to install and run these apps inside the headset. That means you must own any Pixel phone, or a Samsung Galaxy S8, Samsung Galaxy S8+, Galaxy Note 8, LG V30, or Moto Z2 Force. You can find a full list of compatible phones here. You'll control most of the games with the help of a hand-held remote that comes with the headset. With the hardware out of the way, let's get to the apps. These will all run on last year's original Daydream View, as well as the upgraded 2017 version. Wonderglade Wonderglade provides a collection of fun carnival games with a VR twist. You might play a fe...

Do animals have orgasms?

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MONKEY BUSINESS Monkey Business. Noneotuho via Wikimedia Commons Ah, the age-old question. When animals are going at it like, uh, animals, how does it end? Is there an animal version of the Big O? It's a bit hard to say, actually. "The short answer is that we don't know much about orgasms in other species -- in fact, scientists are still studying the significance/evolution of female orgasms in humans," Marlene Zuk, a professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota, wrote me in an email. Unlike humans, animals can't tell us they're having orgasms, so we can't truly know what their experience is like. For the most part, we assume that male animals orgasm because there's an ejaculation--though one can happen without the other, they usually go hand-in-hand. (Or something in hand.) The question of female orgasm is, as usual, more hotly contested, though all female mammals have clitorises. Scientists can infer that...

Helix Sleep Review: 7 Nights On A Custom-Made Mattress

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HELIX SLEEP MATTRESS Helix Sleep customizes your mattress to account for how you sleep, your body type and more. Here's how it compared to our old mattress. Xavier Harding We spend a third of our lives sleeping. That's a truism we all accept—and neglect. The fact is, few us are geting the right kind of sleep—quality, deep sleep that repairs bone and muscle, boosts the immune system, and ensures we wake up energized. Plenty of modern mattress-makers like Casper and Leesa offer to get us there by promising us the perfect mattress. But bed startup Helix Sleep says no such straight-from-the-factory mattress exists or will ever exist. Their counteroffer: a bed that you can customize, in your home, to fit your body and accommodate your sleeping preferences. The Premise Helix Sleep’s founders—Jerry Lin, Kristian von Rickenbach and Adam Tishman—started their company on a single premise: Each sleeper needs a fully tweakable mattress to account for all sorts ...

FYI: How Does Nuclear Radiation Do Its Damage?

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BOY IS SCREENED FOR RADIATION Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, March 16, 2011 Tayama Tatsuyuki/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Ionizing radiation—the kind that minerals, atom bombs and nuclear reactors emit—does one main thing to the human body: it weakens and breaks up DNA, either damaging cells enough to kill them or causing them to mutate in ways that may eventually lead to cancer. After last week's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are now damaged and releasing radiation. Workers trying to keep the reactors from getting worse are themselves being exposed, while the Japanese government has called for anyone within 20 kilometers of the plant to evacuate. Nuclear radiation, unlike the radiation from a light bulb or a microwave, is energetic enough to ionize atoms by knocking off their electrons. This ionizing radiation can damage DNA molecules directly, by breaking the bonds between atoms, or it can ionize w...

Why Having A Liquid Nitrogen Pool Party Is A Bad Idea

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LIQUID NITROGEN ADDED TO THE SWIMMING POOL AT A JÄGERMEISTER PARTY Screenshot from LiveLeak So you probably know it's not a good idea to swim in a pool with liquid nitrogen. You might not know exactly why—we'll discuss this further ahead—but it just sounds like a bad idea, right? Right. German liquor company Jägermeister recently hosted a party in Mexico, during which staffers poured what appeared to be numerous 10-liter dewars of liquid nitrogen into the water, creating a foggy effect. In videos, you can hear partiers "Woo!"-ing… and then, not two minutes later, those not in the water pointing and saying, in Spanish, "Somebody's fainted. Someone else has fainted." Another video shows partiers jumping into the pool to pull limp bodies out of the water. What happened? Not what others have reported, according to ChemBark, a blog by St. Louis University chemist Paul Bracher. Fox News Latino, the U.K.'s the Daily Mail, KTLA and others have said...