It’s not expensive or difficult to produce large numbers of untraceable firearms in the United States. Whether for private use, sale on the criminal market or arming violent extremists, it’s actually startlingly cheap and easy to mass-produce firearms that police can’t track – what are often called “ghost guns.” For just over US$2,000 I can...
When President Joe Biden took Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup for a test drive in Dearborn, Michigan, in May 2021, the event was more than a White House photo op. It marked a new phase in an accelerating shift from gas-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles, or EVs. In recent months, global auto manufacturers...
The bombing of Gaza may have ended, the sirens in Tel Aviv silenced for now. Yet as concern over a planned June 15, 2021 march by right-wing Israeli nationalists underscores, the threat of violence in Israel is never far from the surface. It is sustained and fueled by what is at the core of the...
When nature vanishes, people of color and low-income Americans disproportionally lose critical environmental and health benefits—including air quality, crop productivity and natural disease control—a new study in Nature Communications finds. The University of Vermont research is the first national study to explore the unequal impacts on American society—by race, income and other demographics—of projected declines in nature,...
Many employees have come to prefer working from home after being forced to do so more than a year ago when the pandemic started. By some estimates, at least one-quarter of employees will still be working remotely multiple days a week at the end of 2021. For those whose jobs allow it, being untethered from the office...
Women in three Latin American countries who rely on fish for protein and live in proximity to gold mining activity have been found to have elevated mercury levels in their bodies, according to a new study, Mercury Exposure of Women in Four Latin American Gold Mining Countries. The study was conducted by the International Pollutants Elimination Network...
Microphones are perhaps the most common electronic sensor in the world, with an estimated 320 million listening for our commands in the world’s smart speakers. The trouble is that they’re capable of hearing everything else, too. But now, a team of University of Michigan researchers has developed a system that can inform a smart...
Purdue University engineers have developed a method to transform existing cloth items into battery-free wearables resistant to laundry. These smart clothes are powered wirelessly through a flexible, silk-based coil sewn on the textile. In the near future, all your clothes will become smart. These smart cloths will outperform conventional passive garments, thanks to their miniaturized...
For older adults, participating in social activities can protect against physical and mental signs of aging, but it may also pose risks, especially for women. A new analysis of national data led by University of California – San Francisco (UCSF) found that older women who were broadly engaged in social activities before the COVID pandemic...
Stanford University computer science graduate student Mackenzie Leake has been quilting since age 10, but she never imagined the craft would be the focus of her doctoral dissertation. Included in that work is new prototype software that can facilitate pattern-making for a form of quilting called foundation paper piecing, which involves using a backing made...