TechnologyDreaming

Let's say you have a problem that can be solved with some electronics and maybe even a microcontroller. You gather up your parts and prove the idea on a breadboard, a sort of blank canvas for prototyping projects. Then what? A common solution is to solder everything to a blank perforated circuit board, but that still leaves you with a fragile mess of wires that looks like a disaster and takes a long time to assemble. The better idea: get a circuit board professionally printed. Too spendy? Think again. I've had about 10 different boards printed for all sorts of projects ranging from a trampoline that shoots fireballs to much less complicated boards that spells text on my bicycle wheels. These circuits are still working great fours years later and didn't break my wallet. Follow the jump to see my tips for getting professional boards without breaking your wallet. READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2009-09/getting-your-circuit-boards-professionally-prin...

What makes a disease deadly in the twenty-first century? Medicine has never been more advanced; our understanding of spread and infection, never more sophisticated. And yet, we may be poised for the largest and most devastating pandemic the human race has ever encountered. Diseases that could have been effectively eradicated decades ago continue to ravage developing nations. In the wake of natural and manmade disasters, cholera, tuberculosis and the like spread even more easily, aided by tenuous medical infrastructures and close living quarters for refugees. Meanwhile, wealthy nations are no less imperiled, their citizens endangered by a massively consolidated food supply and by antibiotics prescribed so indiscriminately as to potentially destroy their efficacy altogether. READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-07/pandemic-10-deadliest-diseases

Here's our guide on how to use the new lock screen for the iPhone and iPad in iOS 10. For our complete guide to using iOS 10, head over here. The new lock screen removes the 'slide-to-unlock' option We’ll start where you do: unlocking your phone. Apple has done away with the famous “slide to unlock” function. Now, you have to either press the home button and enter a passcode, or use Touch ID to get in. While this may be annoying for some people who prefer sliding, it forces you to have additional security on your device, which is ultimately a good thing for protecting your data. READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/how-to-use-new-ios-10-lock-screen-and-widgets

Here in the U.S., our eggs mostly come in two colors: white and brown. But there are two breeds, one in Chile and one in China, that are known to lay blue eggs. Yeah, weird, right? And a new study has figured out why that happens. The Araucana chicken from Chile and the Dongxiang and Lushi chickens from China (none of which are particularly common in North America) are known to lay pale-blue eggs. This is rare for a chicken; while bird eggs can come in all sorts of colors and patterns, chicken eggs are almost always white or brown. So what's the deal? A new study found that a single gene, called callee oocyan, is responsible for the odd coloration of these blue chicken eggs. But how did it get there? Turns out that these chickens have a high incidence of a particular retrovirus, called EAV-HP. Retroviruses are a type of virus that integrates its own genetic data into the host in an unusual order. Instead of transcribing DNA into RNA and then into protein, retroviruse...

cA wrongful-death lawsuit filed last week against the makers of Monster energy drinks claims that 14-year-old Anais Fournier drank two 24-ounce cans of Monster in the day before she unexpectedly died late in 2011. The coroner's report described "caffeine toxicity" as contributing to her death. Just what does it take to ingest a lethal dose of caffeine? The answer is hard to pin down, in part because it happens so rarely, but it's clearly a hell of a lot. In an email, Jack James, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Caffeine Research, says that overdose for adults requires roughly 10 grams of caffeine. (People typically ingest just 1 to 2 mg/kg of caffeine per beverage.) A 2005 Forensic Science International article on two fatal caffeine overdoses in New Mexico pegs the figure closer to about 5 grams--an amount that would still require drinking more than 6 gallons of McDonald's coffee. Whereas a normal cup of coffee might bring the concentration of caffeine in...