Science

Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, went missing Jan. 31 from her Arizona home in a disappearance case that’s captured significant national attention. Folks at the FBI say they don’t have any suspects in her potential abduction, but video and still images from a Nest surveillance camera released on Tuesday show a masked figure at Guthrie’s door that morning. The new images have led to something that happens in virtually every high profile criminal case these days: Social media users are running the images through generative artificial intelligence tools like xAI’s Grok, trying to get a proper looking picture of the suspect without his mask. But that’s just not how AI works. Better than nothing? Matt Wallace, a popular distributor of misinformation on X...

Grasshopper Manufacture has just released ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN on PC. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC. For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 591.86, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 26.1.1 drivers. Grasshopper Manufacture has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Global Illumination, Foliage, Shadows, and more. The game also has support for AMD FSR 3.0, NVIDIA DLSS 4, and Intel XeSS 2.0. However, the in-game settings are completely broken. Let me explain what I mean. For some strange...

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are heavily altered industrial products that contain added fats, sugars, starches, salts, and chemical additives such as emulsifiers. Common examples include sodas, packaged snacks, and processed meats. During manufacturing, many natural nutrients are removed, leaving foods that are very different from their original form. These products often include ingredients the human body has not historically encountered. Today, ultra-processed foods make up nearly 60% of the average adult diet in the United States and about 70% of children's diets. Previous research has shown that people who eat large amounts of ultra-processed foods are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome. This condition includes overweight and obesity, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol le...

Windows 11 KB5077181 is now rolling out, and it’s this year’s second update, after a disastrous run in January. February 2026 Update adds features like ‘Cross-Device resume’ for Android phones, and more. It’s available via Settings > Windows Update, but Microsoft has also posted direct download links for KB5077181 offline installers (.msu). KB5077181 is a mandatory update for Windows 11 25H2, and it’ll begin downloading automatically on all PCs unless Windows Updates are manually paused for seven days or longer. Windows Latest observed that the February 2026 Patch Tuesday shows up as “2026-02 Security Update (KB5077181) (26200.7840)” and takes approx 10 minutes to download at a 200 Mbps internet connection. After installing KB5077181, your system bumps to Windows 11 Build 26200.7840 (2...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:The quantum property of superposition is commonly observed in tiny photons and small atoms, but scientists do not yet know the maximum possible size of a quantum particle.A new experiment using matter-wave interferometry found that a relatively large clump of 7,000 sodium atoms displayed superposition.The particle’s size, which is close to that of the smallest modern transistors, makes it the largest object ever to display this quantum property.This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.According to our best understanding of the universe, life appears bifurcated into two overarching realms. The first is the realm of classical physics and the intuitive laws that govern our everyday lives. Then, there’s the quantum realm—the domain of t...

iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will launch this fall, and alongside packing a handful of new features, there are three design changes reportedly coming. Here’s what the latest rumors say. #1: Unified rear glass and aluminum colors Among the iPhone 17 Pro’s several design changes, colors have clearly been a big hit, and no one seems to mind the full-width camera plateau. One design decision, however, has been a bit more polarizing: the two-tone rear glass and aluminum. Fortunately, it sounds like Apple plans to address that with the iPhone 18 Pro. Weibo leaker Instant Digital recently wrote: The iPhone 18 Pro series features a redesigned back glass that minimizes color difference between the glass and the aluminum back panel. A seamless, unified look. I’m in the c...

The University of Arizona has a well-earned reputation for its ability to defy gravity.Long before the hit musical "Wicked" entered the public consciousness, U of A research paved the way for several of the most impactful NASA space missions – mapping the moon, photographing Mars, collecting the potential building blocks of life from the dust from an asteroid – while the university's men's basketball team rode the high-flying dunks that became commonplace during the Lute Olson era to the 1997 National Championship, along with several deep NCAA Tournament runs and multiple future NBA draft picks. (From left) Patricia Prelock, provost and chief academic officer, Marcia Rieke, Regents Professor of astronomy, President Suresh Garimella and R. Ken Coit Directo...

While the MacBook Pro is stealing headlines, Apple’s most popular laptop is also set to get an upgrade soon. Here’s everything we know about the next-generation MacBook Air. The new MacBook Air will be a spec bump Apple’s new MacBook Air isn’t expected to be a major revamp. Instead, Apple is focusing on improved performance once more. The new MacBook Air will be powered by the M5 chip, an upgrade from the current generation’s M4 processor. What does this mean in terms of performance? When Apple announced the M5 MacBook Pro last year, Apple touted that M5 offers “4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4, featuring a next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, a more powerful CPU, a faster Neural Engine, and higher unified memory bandwidth.” ...

New Mexico lawmakers advanced a cloud-seeding pilot program in 2024, but it stalled in the Senate, sparking renewed interest in the technology.ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – New Mexico lawmakers advanced a cloud-seeding pilot program in 2024, but it stalled in the Senate, sparking renewed interest in the technology.Chief Meteorologist Eddie Garcia explains that cloud seeding is not about weather control but enhancing existing clouds to produce more precipitation.Cloud seeding uses particles like silver iodide to help super-cooled water droplets freeze, leading to more precipitation.This is not weather control. It can’t make rain on demand. It can’t steer storms, and it definitely can’t create clouds out of clear skies.Cloud seeding has been shown to increase precipitation by 5–15%, which can mean mil...

One of the places AI has really made an impact is on app coding, opening new doors both for professionals and the casual user. “Vibe coding,” as it’s come to be known, is exactly what you can do with Nothing’s new “Essential Apps,” which lets you create homescreen widgets, “apps,” using text prompts and the help of AI – but I’m not fully sold just yet. First previewed back in September, “Essential Apps” are the first step towards Nothing’s “Essential OS” goal, which it views as the future of the smartphone. As of today, that first step is hitting beta. Nothing has launched “Essential Apps” in beta with access “expanding gradually through a waitlist” that will land in batches. A full release will apparently come sometime later this year. “Apps” is a bit of a misnomer, thou...