• End-to-end encryption, which will prevent Apple and any other third party from being able to read messages and attachments while they are being sent between devices, as has always been the case with iMessage


• In-line replies


• Edit messages


• Unsend messages


• Full-fledged Tapback support for RCS messages, with no special workarounds

• Trombone


• Treasure Chest


• Distorted Face


• Hairy Creature (Bigfoot/Sasquatch)


• Fight Cloud


• Apple Core


• Orca


• Ballet Dancers


• Landslide

The National Alliance to End Homelessness and Women’s Development Corp. have sued the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), prompting a judge to issue a temporary restraining order that bars HUD from using newly created funding criteria that calls on cities to align with Trump administration priorities.

According to an article by Ryan Kushner in Smart Cities Dive, “HUD’s grant criteria blocks applications from entities that “operate in jurisdictions with policies the Trump-Vance administration disfavors,” the organizations argue, including states and cities that offer sanctuary protections or inclusive policies for transgender people.” Disqualifying criteria also include jurisdictions that offer “harm reduction” programs for drug users.

On September 5, HUD opened a new notice of funding for previously awarded grants based on the new criteria. The lawsuit claims HUD does not have the authority to limit funding based on political alignment. According to a press release from Women’s Development Corporation Executive Director Frank Shea, “By implementing jurisdictional criteria that a non-profit applicant doesn’t control, the administration is drawing lines around towns and entire states that will no longer be able to compete for federal funding.”

• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• HUD
• Federal Funding
• Housing Assistance
• Homelessness
• Housing Programs
• Trump 2.0

A young seagull found in Cape Cod bit off a bit more than he could chew. The veterinary team at the New England Wildlife Center recently removed a large fishing hook from the bird’s GI tract. It’s likely that the bird thought that he was getting an easy meal courtesy of a fisherman’s catch, but swallowed the bait along with the hook and tackle.

The lesser black backed gull (Larus fuscus) was found in Cape Cod with a bobber hanging out of its mouth. Injuries or death due to improperly discarded fishing gear is a serious matter. Birds, fish, and marine mammals can accidentally eat or get tangled in discarded lines.  

The X-rays on this gull indicated that the hook firmly attached to the line in his mouth. The hook’s barbed tip had even made its way through the stomach lining and into the body cavity.

“The occurrence of gulls with hooks are actually very common,” New England Wildlife Center veterinarian Dr. Priya Patel tells Popular Science. “We frequently see the birds when the hook is still in their mouth or neck, so it’s easier and safer to get it out. Not many gulls that swallow hooks completely like this one survive long enough where surgery is an option.”

Unlike humans, birds have a solid keel plate bone instead of a sternum. It offers excellent protection for their internal organs and serves as a type of scaffolding for their large flight muscles. However, this keel plate can also make surgeries like this one incredibly difficult since it covers a good part of the stomach.

“The most challenging part was making sure when we entered the body cavity exactly where the hook was located so we didn’t have to make a big incision,” says Patel. “Birds have an intricate respiratory system containing air sacs that are distributed around the body cavity and to access the stomach you have to cut through these air sacs. We didn’t want to do more damage than necessary to find the hook. It’s because of this that this type of surgery in birds is risky.”

Using X-rays and a veterinary endoscope, Patel was able to get a good visual on the hook so that she could make the incision right at the correct spot. Then, the team clipped and removed the hook and gently pulled the remaining fishing line out through the bird’s mouth.

“With a hook this large there is usually a lot of internal damage that also occurs,” says Patel. “This gull got very lucky!”

Within just a few hours, the gull was standing up and vocalizing (gulls certainly do love to squawk). There were no signs of compilations such as internal bleeding. 

“Birds are very fast healers so after a week the incision had healed and we were able to move him to an outdoor enclosure where he could finish out his medication course,” says Patel. 

The gull has since been released into the wilds of eastern Massachusetts. 

When fishing, be sure to remove extra lines before you leave, watching out for gear that may have gotten snagged on tree branches, submerged vegetation, or logs. If you happen to see any stray gear, safely remove it from the water and discard it in a secure container. 

The post Seagull survives swallowing a giant fish hook–thanks to local vets appeared first on Popular Science.

The latest Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) data reveals that driving trips are down in the United States, with the trend driven largely by younger people. “On a per capita basis, Americans are still driving less, down 2.3% since 2019,” writes Chris McCahill in the State Smart Transportation Initiative blog.

As McCahill points out, travel demand had flattened out even before the pandemic. “ow the data points to a new normal in which growth is slower, uneven, and increasingly shaped by changes in how people work, shop, and spend their free time.” Today, the average American drives 5 percent less than they did in 2004.“From 2017 to 2022, average daily trips among young adults fell nearly 50%, and their personal travel mileage dropped by 41%.”

According to the study, young people take fewer car trips that are longer on average, keeping their total VMT since 2017 roughly the same. “This pattern suggests people may be trading shorter, more frequent trips for fewer but longer ones—a shift consistent with Marchetti’s constant, the idea that the time people devote to travel each day tends to remain steady over time.”

For McCahill, this points to an opportunity for transportation planners to “rethink road design and investment priorities—planning for a future where traffic grows slowly, if at all.”

• Driving
• Cars
• Transportation Habits
• Mobility
• Gen Z

• Liquid Glass - macOS Tahoe has a whole new design, and it matches the Liquid Glass that Apple brought to iOS 26. Buttons, navigation bars, widgets, the Dock, menus, side bars, and more all have a more translucent look that reflects the background underneath and refracts light. There are new icon options, including tinted and entirely clear.


• Customizable Control Center - You can rearrange the Control Center in macOS Tahoe, putting what you access most often front and center. You're also able to use multiple Control Center pages, and add third-party app controls like on iOS.


• Customizable Menu Bar - You can also rearrange the Menu Bar, plus add Control Center controls to it. Live Activities from the iPhone will also show up in the Menu Bar now through ‌iPhone‌ Mirroring.


• Spotlight Redesign - Spotlight is very different in macOS Tahoe, and it might take some getting used to. There's no more Launchpad, because the new Spotlight functionality has replaced it. There are four main Spotlight options to access apps, files, complete actions, and access the Clipboard History.


• Clipboard - Spotlight now saves what you copy and paste, so you have a log of what you've been doing that you can go back and reference. You can see your entire history for the day, but it is limited to 24 hours.


• Spotlight Actions - You can use Spotlight Actions to do all kinds of things without opening an app. You can send texts, emails, create shortcuts for features in apps, set timers, create Calendar events, make reminders, and much more, plus there's integration with the Shortcuts app to take things even further. There are quick access phrases you can assign to launch tasks quickly, like CH for bringing up ChatGPT.


• Folder Customization - You can assign colors to folders, and also add an emoji or character to help you better organize your files. Folders get a color tag, which is a useful way to group things together.


• Widgets - You can move widgets from the Notification Center to the desktop for quicker access. This works with widgets from Apple apps and from third-party apps.


• Shortcuts - The macOS Shortcuts app supports creating automations, much like the Shortcuts app in ‌iOS 26‌. You can make Shortcuts that run at a specific time of day, with a trigger action, when an accessory connects, when an action in an app takes place, when the battery drains to a certain level, when activating a Focus mode, and more. It's super powerful when paired with Spotlight's new functionality.


• Phone App - Apple brought the Phone app to the Mac, so you can make calls, accept calls, and use features like Hold Assist and Call Screening. You still need a connected ‌iPhone‌ with Wi-Fi Assist turned on.


• Journal App - The Journal app is new to the Mac, and it makes a lot of sense on a platform that has a full keyboard. It works just like the iOS version of the app, but there are also some added features like the option to create multiple journals.


• Games App - The Games app is also new to the Mac. It's a cross-platform app that aggregates Mac App Store games and Apple Arcade games with your own games library, plus it provides options for playing with friends. There's a new Game Overlay that lets you adjust game settings and connect with friends without exiting the game, and if you're on battery, there's a Low Power Mode so you can play longer.

Texas has some of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, and sprawl has so far enabled much of that growth. Now, the realization that sprawl will increasingly strain local infrastructure and water supplies means cities will need new strategies to increase density and accommodate millions of additional residents in more sustainable ways.

In an analysis for the Urban Land Institute, Jan Steingahs outlines how Houston, Dallas, and Austin, which are projected to be the three largest cities in the country by 2100, can reorient their growth patterns to address critical urban challenges. 

As Steingahs explains, “The availability of space does not mean cities can continue business as usual when it comes to planning.” For Steingahs, cities like Dallas must focus on creating “interconnected urban centers” that form “vibrant secondary and tertiary hubs beyond the central business district.”

Adaptability is crucial for creating vibrant, sustainable urban centers. We can no longer rely on traditional construction, as in standalone office buildings, residential complexes, or typical mixed-use developments.

Steingahs suggests cities must embrace an even more diverse definition of mixed use, which will help densify urban cores and “create vibrant urban centers where buildings will work in sync with one another and ensure that new mixed-use buildings create synergies.” The old growth model will not work for the influx of new residents expected in the coming decades. “Dallas has an opportunity to create denser urban cores, redefine mixed-use developments, and foster collaboration between private developers and municipalities.”

• Growth
• Sprawl
• Density
• Population Growth

The Justice Department reached a settlement with freight railroad company Norfolk Southern, which controls 1,140 of the Amtrak Crescent line’s 1,377 route-miles, in a lawsuit centered on Amtrak’s right of preference on shared tracks. 

As Bill Stephens reports for TrainsPro, the Justice Department alleged that Norfolk Southern violated the 1973 right of preference statute by unlawfully giving its trains priority over passenger trains on the Crescent line. “The resulting delays, the Justice Department said in July 2024, harmed and inconvenienced passengers, impeded passenger rail transportation, and negatively affected Amtrak’s financial performance.”

As part of the settlement, Norfolk Southern agreed to provide Amtrak trains the highest priority, train its dispatchers to prioritize Amtrak trains, require supervisor approval for any dispatching decisions that do not prioritize Amtrak, and provide records about delays on the Crescent line to help identify their causes. “In 2023, according to Amtrak data, 57% of Crescent passengers arrived on time, which was well below the 80% threshold required under federal customer on-time performance standards that went into effect in 2020.” In 2023, none of Amtrak’s 15 long-distance lines met the federal standard.

According to Amtrak, performance on the Crescent line has markedly improved since the case was filed, with 34 percent fewer delays caused by Norfolk Southern compared to last year. “Across all NS-hosted routes, delays decreased 26% and FTI dropped 42% year-over-year. Ridership on these routes also rose by 2%, reflecting growing customer confidence in service reliability.”

• Trains
• Amtrak
• Passenger Rail
• Crescent Line
• Freight

We typically associate sunglasses with summer, but the truth is that your eyes need protection in the winter months, too. That’s especially true if you plan on spending a lot of time outside skiing, sledding, boarding, or just making cool snow forts. Right now, REI is in the midst of its Member Days sale, which includes huge savings on sunglasses that you don’t need to be a member to get.

If you see a pair you like on sale, grab it because colors can sell out and you likely won’t get another shot at them for these prices.

This is one of the best-looking pairs of sunglasses on the market full-stop. The polarized polycarbonate lenses are very rugged and resilient so they won’t scratch easily or break when you drop them. They provide protection from 100 percent of the UV spectrum and the metal temples add flexibility that plastic pairs can’t match. The nose pads are designed to be comfortable even with all-day wear and they come with a microfiber pouch to clean them and carry them around. This is an upgrade over whatever you’re wearing now.

If you’re looking for a really budget-friendly pair, Blenders Eyewear delivers a surprising set of features for less than $40. The polycarbonate lenses are polarized and provide 100 percent UV protection. These also cover more of your face so they fit better on larger heads and they extend farther into peripheral vision. That’s important in winter with snow or when you’re on the water.

Lifestyle & Everyday Wear

• Smith Questa Polarized Sunglasses $104.73 (was $149.00)
• Smith Eastbank Metal Polarized Sunglasses $123.73 (was $205.00)
• Smith Roam ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $123.73 (was $205.00)
• Smith Monterey ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $129.73 (was $189.00)
• Smith Flywheel ChromaPop Sunglasses $129.73 (was $185.00)
• Smith Eastbank ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $134.73-$139.73 (was $195.00-$199.00)
• Smith Boomtown ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $144.73 (was $209.00)
• Smith Wander Polarized Sunglasses $144.73-$149.73 (was $205.00-$215.00)
• Smith Ruckus ChromaPop Sunglasses $159.73 (was $225.00)

Women’s Specific

• Smith Cheetah Polarized Sunglasses $109.73 (was $155.00-$159.00)
• Smith Cheetah ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $118.73 (was $199.00)
• Smith Rockaway ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses – Women’s $124.73 (was $209.00)
• Smith Caper ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses – Women’s $129.73 (was $189.00)
• Smith Monterey Polarized Sunglasses – Women’s $142.73-$174.73 (was $239.00-$249.00)
• Smith Joya ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses – Women’s $150.73-$157.73 (was $215.00-$225.00)

Water & Fishing

• Smith Shoal Polarized Sunglasses $134.73-$169.73 (was $195.00-$245.00)
• Smith Lake Shasta ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $139.73-$144.73 (was $199.00-$205.00)
• Smith Spinner ChromaPop Polarized Sunglasses $143.73 (was $205.00)

Performance & Sports

• Smith Momentum ChromaPop Cycling Sunglasses $157.73 (was $225.00)
• Smith Leadout PivLock ChromaPop Sunglasses $164.73 (was $235.00)
• Smith Shift XL MAG ChromaPop Sunglasses $165.73 (was $279.00)
• Smith Attack MAG MTB ChromaPop Sunglasses $189.73-$204.73 (was $275.00-$295.00)
• Smith Shift Split MAG ChromaPop Sunglasses $194.73 (was $279.00)

Blenders Eyewear

• Blenders Eyewear North Park Sunglasses $28.73 (was $49.00)
• Blenders Eyewear Mesa Sunglasses $34.73 (was $49.00)
• Blenders Eyewear M Class X2 Float 20 Sunglasses $34.73 (was $49.00)
• Blenders Eyewear Meister Polarized Sunglasses $39.73 (was $59.00)
• Blenders Eyewear North Park X2 Sunglasses $39.73 (was $59.00)
• Blenders Eyewear North Park X2 Sunglasses $54.73 (was $79.00)

Suncloud

• Suncloud Affect Polarized Sunglasses $33.73 (was $54.95)
• Suncloud Rambler Polarized Sunglasses $34.73 (was $54.95)
• Suncloud A-Team Polarized Sunglasses $39.73 (was $54.95)
• Suncloud Glacier Polarized Sunglasses $54.73 (was $79.95)

Tifosi

• Tifosi Tsali Sunglasses $46.73 (was $79.95)

Electric

• Electric Bellevue Sunglasses $74.73 (was $125.00)
• Electric Satellite Polarized Sunglasses $89.73 (was $150.00)
• Electric Swingarm Polarized Sunglasses $89.73 (was $150.00)

Dragon

• Dragon Ridge X Sunglasses $119.73 (was $245.00)

• Electric Bellevue Polarized Sunglasses $104.73 (was $175.00)
• Electric Crasher 49 Sunglasses $119.73-$149.73 (was $200.00-$250.00)
• Electric Portofino Polarized Sunglasses $149.73 (was $250.00)

The post REI has more than 40 different sunglasses on clearance during its annual sale appeared first on Popular Science.

For over a century, simple lactic acid bacteria has been one of the most reliable additives to keep food and drinks safe for over a century. It goes in butter, cheese, and other dairy products to help extend their shelf life. Now, a team in Denmark has uncovered some of the preservation aid’s earliest examples. Their findings, published in the International Dairy Journal, only come after a chance discovery hidden away in the bowels of a university basement.

Lactic acid doesn’t simply add an extra “zing” to foods and drinks, it helps them stay fresher longer The microscopic organisms acidify their surrounding environment, and in the process displace the other species that might otherwise make you sick. Although widespread today, Denmark was one of the first countries to enlist lactic acid bacteria’s help at an industrial scale, particularly for its dairy products.

While cleaning out a basement underneath greenhouses at the University of Copenhagen, researchers spotted a pair of bottles that contained white powder. The labels indicated that they contained lactic acid bacteria cultures that date back to the late 1800s. It didn’t take long for the team to use advanced DNA sequencing in the hopes of confirming the contents. Although it wasn’t initially clear if they would be successful, the researchers soon matched the bacteria to database examples of those used by Danish dairies after pasteurization.

“It was like opening a kind of microbiological relic. The fact that we were able to extract genetic information from bacteria used in Danish butter production 130 years ago was far more than we had dared to hope for,” microbiologist and study co-author Jørgen Leisner recounted in a statement.

Leisner and colleagues identified DNA from Lactococcus cremoris, a bacterium that is still used to acidify milk today. They also showed the culture featured the genes necessary for producing diactyl, a flavor compound associated with a buttery aroma.

“This shows that even back then, they had bacteria with precisely the properties that are desirable in the fermented milk products we have today,” added study co-author Dennis Sandris.

It wasn’t all healthy discoveries, however. Analysis revealed a heavy presence of Cutibacterium acnes, a common pimple-causing nuisance. Unlike other species, acne bacteria feature stronger cell walls in order to survive atop skin. This means it also breaks down more slowly, which is why so much of it could still be found in the bottles even after 130 years. Some other unwanted extras included DNA traces of often pathogenic bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus and Vibrio furnissii, a bacteria associated with stomach infections contracted from improperly cooked shellfish.

Co-author Nathalia Brichet added that the lucky finds are both a testament to early scientific innovations and show how far food safety has come since.

“Overall, the contents of the bottles testify to the standardization of a dairy product that every farming family used to make themselves in a jar of sour milk kept close to the stove,” she said. “But it also shows that hygiene conditions were still different from those we have today.”

The post 130-year-old butter bacteria discovered in Danish basement appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s a hot (yet also sleepy) debate that ignites twice a year in the United States: Why are we still changing the clocks? The “spring forward” every March can feel particularly volatile, with research linking that loss of a precious hour of sleep to more heart attacks and fatal car accidents. Now, a new study published today in the journal PNAS indicates that sticking with standard time may improve health. 

While many people support ending these seasonal time shifts, disagreements still persist over which policy to adopt–staying in standard time all year, or implementing permanent daylight saving time.

“You have people who are passionate on both sides of this, and they have very different arguments,” Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, a study co-author and circadian physiologist at Stanford Medicine, said in a statement.

Supporters of permanent daylight saving time claim that more evening light could save energy, deter crime, and give people more leisure time after work. According to Zeitzer, golf courses and open-air malls are big proponents of this policy. However, a trial of permanent daylight saving time in 1974 proved so unpopular that it was abandoned after less than a year. In 1986, the duration of daylight saving time was eventually increased from six months to seven months and bills proposing permanent daylight saving time have been also introduced in Congress nearly every year since 2018. However, none of these measures have passed.

Proponents of permanent standard time contend that more morning light is better for our health. Organizations including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the National Sleep Foundation, and the American Medical Association have endorsed year-round standard time.

“It’s based on the theory that early morning light is better for our overall health,” Zeitzer said of these endorsements. “The problem is that it’s a theory without any data. And finally, we have data.”

[ Related: All the ways daylight saving time screws with you. ]

In the study, a team from Stanford Medicine compared three different time policies: permanent standard time, permanent daylight saving time, and the biannual shifting we currently do. They compared how all three affect people’s health and circadian rhythms, the body’s innate clock that regulates several bodily functions. 

Changing the clocks twice a year is the worst thing we can do for our circadian rhythms, according to the team’s results. Using either permanent standard time or permanent daylight saving time would be healthier. 

However, permanent standard time also appears to benefit the most people. By modeling light exposure, circadian impacts, and health characteristics county by county, the team estimates that using permanent standard time (and not springing ahead in March) could prevent some 300,000 cases of stroke per year. By comparison, permanent daylight saving time would achieve about two-thirds of that same effect.

“We found that staying in standard time or staying in daylight saving time is definitely better than switching twice a year,” said Jamie Zeitzer.

For sleep studies, it is also important to remember that the human circadian cycle is not exactly 24 hours. For most people, it’s more like 24 hours and 12 minutes and light can alter this cycle. Light in the morning speeds up the circadian cycle, while evening light slows things down. According to Zeitzer, we generally need more morning light and less evening light to stay in sync with the 24-hour day and an out-of-sync circadian cycle has been associated with a range of poor health outcomes.

“The more light exposure you get at the wrong times, the weaker the circadian clock. All of these things that are downstream — for example, your immune system, your energy — don’t match up quite as well,” Zeitzer said.

To study light exposure under each time cycle, the team used a mathematical model based on local sunrise and sunset times and its effect on circadian burden. Circadian burden is essentially how an individual’s innate clock must shift in order to keep up with the 24-hour day. 

Over one year, they found that most people would experience the least circadian burden under permanent standard time, which prioritizes morning light. The benefits of this low circadian burden vary based on geographical location within a time zone and whether they prefer mornings to night.

Additionally, the 15 percent of the population considered to be early-risers, have circadian cycles that are shorter than 24 hours. These people would experience the least circadian burden under permanent daylight saving time, since evening light would bring their circadian cycles closer to 24 hours.

To take a closer look at specific health outcomes and circadian burdens, the team used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the prevalence of arthritis, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, depression, diabetes, obesity, and stroke. They were particularly interested in the rate of stroke and obesity, as these conditions are both influenced by circadian health.

According to their models, permanent standard time would lower the nationwide prevalence of obesity by 0.78 percent and the prevalence of stroke by 0.09 percent. However, these somewhat small percentage changes would amount to about 2.6 million fewer people with obesity and 300,000 fewer cases of stroke. 

Under permanent daylight time, the nationwide prevalence of obesity would decrease by 0.51 percent, or 1.7 million people. Stroke would decrease 0.04 percent, or 220,000 cases. 

The models did not predict any significant difference in conditions such as arthritis that have no direct link to circadian rhythms.

[ Related: Can tracking make my sleep worse? The quiet torment of sleep tech. ]

While this study did provide some concrete examples of which policy should be implemented to better health, there are still unanswered questions and different variables to consider. The team did not account for several factors that could influence real-life light exposure, including weather, geography, and human behavior. 

In their calculations, the researchers assumed consistent and relatively circadian-friendly light habits, but many people have much more erratic sleep schedules and spend more time indoors in reality. 

“People’s light habits are probably much worse than what we assume in the models,” Zeitzer said. “Even in California, where the weather is great, people spend less than 5 percent of their day outside.”

While circadian health seems to favor permanent standard time, the results are not enough to overshadow other considerations. Still, Zeitzer hopes this type of research will encourage similar evidence-based analyses from other fields, such as economics and sociology.  

Importantly, time policy is simply choosing which clock hours represent sunrise and sunset. It does not alter the total amount of light there is, and no policy will add light to those dark winter months.

“That’s the sun and the position of Earth,” Zeitzer said. “We can’t do anything about that.”

The post Ending daylight saving time could be better for our health appeared first on Popular Science.

A group of Wisconsin maritime historians and citizen scientists uncovered a Lake Michigan shipwreck “hidden in plain sight” for nearly 140 years. The team uncovered the waterlogged wreckage of the three-masted wooden schooner F.J. King in the waters off Bailey’s Harbor, Wisconsin. 

On September 15, 1886, the 144-foot F.J. King left Escanaba, Michigan, bound for Chicago with 600 tons of iron ore onboard. It sailed into a gale off eastern Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. Wicked winds and 10-foot waves ripped apart the ship’s wooden seams and the crew couldn’t pump the water out fast enough. Captain William Griffin eventually ordered the eight person crew to abandon ship.

At 2 a.m. on September 16, the crew reported that the F.J. King’s stern (or back) rose into the air. That shift sent the iron ore crashing forward so hard that it blew off the ship’s deckhouse. The ship went down bow first, plunging 137-feet down into Lake Michigan. All crewmembers were later picked up by the schooner La Petite and brought to Bailey’s Harbor.

Weeks later, Cana Island Lighthouse keeper William Sanderson reported that the masts of the F.J. King were coming out of the water and into the shipping lane. 

Since then, the F.J. King’s wreckage has developed a reputation as a “ghost ship” due to the vessel’s elusiveness. Neptune’s Dive Club in Green Bay had even issued a $1,000 reward for its discovery during this decades-long quest for this “ghost ship.”

[ Related: Fisherman discovers century-old Great Lakes shipwreck. ]

Principal investigator and Wisconsin Underwater Archeological Association (WUAA) president Brendon Baillod led the project. Twenty citizen scientists and community historians from around the Midwest participated in the exciting discovery. They used hundreds of original documents that Baillod has collected over the years and corresponded with previous searchers.

“We reasoned that the captain may not have known where he was in the 2 a.m. darkness, but the lighthouse keeper’s course and distance to the masts were probably accurate,” said Baillod. 

About two hours into their search, a large object appeared on a video screen. The WUAA’s new DeepVision sidescan sonar showed the vessel’s hatches. Baillod then used this image to measure the object. It was 140-feet-long, matching the King. 

“A few of us had to pinch each other,” said Baillod. “After all the previous searches, we couldn’t believe we had actually found it, and so quickly.”

The team deployed remote operated vehicles for a closer look at the wreckage.

“Two of our citizen scientists piloted remote operated vehicles down to the wreck and were the first people to lay eyes on it since 1886,” said Baillod.

According to Baillod, it is unusual that the F.J. King is intact and sitting upright and the hull remains “remarkably intact.” Usually, ships that were carrying such a heavy load break into pieces once they hit the bottom of the lake.

The F.J. King also turned out to be less than a half mile from the lighthouse keeper’s original account, highlighting the importance of primary source documents in searches like this. 

[ Related: What to do if you find a shipwreck. ]

The team reported the discovery to the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Maritime Archaeology program. Their staff has since also visited the wreck to document it and to create a 3D photogrammetry model.  

Future plans for the site include nominating it to the State and National Register of Historic Places. Once it is listed on the National Register, the official location should be released. Importantly, the site is protected by both state and federal laws and removing, defacing, displacing, or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime.

“Finding an historic shipwreck brings with it a great responsibility,” said Baillod. “People may not think twice about taking an artifact from an anonymous old shipwreck, but once the vessel has a name, a story and links to the community, it becomes a part of the community’s history and even a source of tourism.”

The post Wisconsin ‘ghost ship’ uncovered after 139 years appeared first on Popular Science.

It seems that every day brings a new headline about the burgeoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini—headlines that are either exciting or increasingly apocalyptic, depending on one’s point of view.

One particularly striking story arrived earlier this year: a paper that described how an LLM had passed the Turing Test, an experiment devised in the 1950s by computer science pioneer Alan Turing to determine whether machine intelligence could be distinguished from that of a human. The LLM in question was ChatGPT 4.5, and the paper found that it had been strikingly successful in fooling people into thinking it was human: In an experiment where participants were asked to choose whether the chatbot or an actual human was the real person, nearly three of the four chose the former.

This sounds…significant. But how, exactly? What does it all mean?

To answer that question, we first need to look at what the Turing Test is, and what it means for an LLM to pass or fail it.

Cameron Jones, a postdoctoral student at UC San Diego and one of the co-authors of the new paper, explains that Turing introduced the idea of the test in his seminal 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” The paper set out to address a big, fundamental question that occupied the minds of Turing’s contemporaries: “Can machines think?”

In his paper, Turing quickly rejects the question as being ambiguous and non-rigorous, because it is not clear on what either a “machine” is in this context, nor on what “thinking” is. He argues that a more nuanced and easily addressable question was required, and proposes, “Can a machine act in such a manner that its actions are indistinguishable from those of a human?” To answer this question, he proposes what he calls “The Imitation Game,” and it’s this exercise that has since come to be referred to as simply “The Turing Test.”

The test involves one person—the “interrogator”—communicating simultaneously with two hidden interlocutors, referred to as the “witnesses.” All communication is written. The twist is that while one of these witnesses is a real person, the other is a machine. The point of the game, Jones explains, “is for the interrogator to figure out which of the two witnesses is the real human.”

Jones and his team performed this experiment with four LLMs. ChatGPT 4.5 was by far the most successful: 73% of participants identified it as the real human. Another model that goes by the unwieldy name LLaMa-3.1-405B was identified as human 56% of the time. (The other two models—ELIZA and GPT-4o—achieved 23% and 21% success rates, respectively, and will not be spoken of again.)

The results for ChatGPT 4.5 and LLaMa are striking enough, but the really interesting question is what their success signifies.

It’s important to note from the outset that the test isn’t designed to detect machine intelligence. In rejecting the question “Can machines think?” Turing also neatly sidesteps the thorny question of exactly who is doing the thinking if the answer is “yes.” Consider Rene Descartes’ famous assertion cogito, ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am,” which essentially demands that the presence of thought requires consciousness.

However, Turing’s paper does argue that success in the Imitation Game means that we can’t deny the possibility that genuine machine intelligence is at work. As Jones explains, Turing “basically [argued] that if we could build a machine that was so good at this game that we couldn’t reliably tell the difference between the witnesses, then essentially we’d have to say that that machine was intelligent.”

Modern readers might well recoil from such an assessment, so it’s worth looking at Turing’s line of reasoning, which went as follows:

1. We can’t know that our fellow humans are intelligent. We can’t inhabit their minds or see through their eyes.
2. Nevertheless, we accept them as intelligent.
3. How do we make this judgment? Turing argues that we do so on the basis of our fellow humans’ behavior.
4. If we attribute intelligence based on behavior, and we encounter a situation where we can’t distinguish between a machine’s behavior and that of a human’s, we should be prepared to conclude that the machine’s behavior also indicates intelligence.

Again, readers might argue that this feels wrong. And indeed, the key question is with Turing’s premise that we attribute intelligence on the basis of behavior alone. We’ll address counter-arguments in due course, but first, it’s worth thinking about what sort of behavior we might feel conveys intelligence.

It feels like it was no accident that Turing chose language as the basis by which his “Imitation Game” would be conducted. After all, there are many obvious ways in which a machine could never imitate a human, and equally, there are many ways in which a person could never imitate a machine. Printed language, however, is simply a set of letters on a page. It says nothing about whether it was produced by a human with a typewriter or a computer with a printer.

Nevertheless, the simple presence of language comes with a whole set of assumptions. Ever since our ancestors first started putting together sentences, language has—as far as we can tell, at least—been the exclusive domain of humanity (though some apes are getting close).

This has also been the case for the type of intelligence that we possess—other animals are clever, but none of them seem to think the way we do, or possess the degree of self-consciousness that humans demonstrate. On that basis, it’s almost impossible not to conflate language and intelligence. This, in turn, makes it very difficult not to instinctively attribute some degree of intelligence to anything that appears to be talking to you.

This point was made eloquently in a recent essay by Rusty Foster, author of the long-running newsletter Today in Tabs. Foster argues that we tend to conflate language with intelligence because until now, the presence of the former has always indicated the presence of the latter. “The essential problem is this: generative language software is very good at producing long and contextually informed strings of language, and humanity has never before experienced coherent language without any cognition driving it,” writes Foster. “In regular life, we have never been required to distinguish between ‘language’ and ‘thought’ because only thought was capable of producing language.”

Foster makes an exception for “trivial” examples, but even these are surprisingly compelling to us. Consider, for example, a parrot. It’s certainly disconcerting to hear a bird suddenly speaking in our language—but, crucially, it’s also almost impossible not to talk back. (Viewers with a tolerance for profanity might enjoy this example, which features a very Australian woman arguing with a very Australian parrot over the intellectual merits of the family dog.) Even though we know that parrots don’t really know what they’re “saying,” the presence of language demands language in response. So what about LLMs? Are they essentially energy-hungry parrots? 

“I think [this has] been one of the major lines of criticism” of the Turing Test, says Jones. “It’s a super behaviorist perspective on what intelligence is—that to be intelligent is to display intelligent behavior. And so you might want to have other conditions: You might require that a machine produce the behavior in the right kind of way, or have the right kind of history of interaction with the world.”

There are also thought experiments that challenge the Turing Test’s assumptions about the indistinguishability of the appearance of intelligence and the presence of genuine intelligence.  Jones cites John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment, presented in a paper published in 1980, as perhaps the best known of these. In the paper, Searle imagines himself placed in a room where someone is passing him pieces on paper under the door. These pieces of paper have Chinese characters. Searle speaks no Chinese, but he has been provided with a book of detailed instructions about how to draw Chinese characters and a set of instructions about which characters to provide in response to those he receives under the door.

To a person outside, it might appear that Searle speaks perfect Chinese when in reality, he is simply following instructions—a program—that tells him which characters to draw and how to draw them. As Searle explains in his paper, “It seems to me quite obvious in the example that I do not understand a word of the Chinese stories. I have inputs and outputs that are indistinguishable from those of the native Chinese speaker, and I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing.”

This argument is an explicit rejection of the Turing Test’s premise. With it, Searle proposes a crucial distinction between understanding and appearing to understand, between thinking and appearing to think.

It also demonstrates another potential issue with the Turing Test: The Chinese Room is clearly designed with the express purpose of fooling the person on the other side of the door—or, to put it another way, it’s a program designed specifically to pass the Turing Test. With this in mind, it’s worth noting that in Jones’s experiment, the LLMs that passed the test required a degree of tweaking and tuning to be convincing. Jones says that his team tested a large number of prompts for the chatbot, and one of the key challenges was “getting [the model] to not do stuff that ChatGPT does.”

Some of the ways that Jones and team got ChatGPT to not sound like ChatGPT are certainly fascinating, and again they revolve around the nuances of language. “You want it to not always speak in complete sentences,” says Jones. “There’s a kind of casual way that people speak when they’re texting—it’s just like sentence fragments. You need to get that sort of thing in.” 

Additionally the team experimented with ChatGPT making spelling errors to sound more human. Typos are “actually quite hard to get right. If you just tell an LLM to try really hard to make spelling errors, they do it in every word, and the errors are really unconvincing. I don’t think they have a good model of what a keyboard substitution looks like, where you hit the wrong key in a word.”

LLMs are difficult subjects for research—by their very nature, their internal operations are fundamentally inscrutable. Even the aspects of their construction that can be studied are often hidden behind NDAs and layers of corporate secrecy. Nevertheless, Jones says, the experiment did reveal some things about what sort of LLM is best equipped to perform a credible imitation of a human: “ChatGPT 4.5 is rumored to be one of the biggest models, and I think that being a large model is really helpful.”

What does “big” mean in this sense? A large codebase? A large dataset? No, says Jones. He explains that a big model has a relatively large number of internal variables whose values can be tuned as the model hoovers up training data. “One of the things you see the smaller distilled models often can mimic good performance in math, and even in quite simple reasoning. But I think it’s the really big models that tend to have good social, interpersonal behavioral skills.”

So did Turing ever conceive of his test as something that would actually be carried out? Or was it more of a thought experiment? Jones says that the answer to that question continues to be the subject of debate amongst Turing scholars. For his part, Jones says that he is “just drawing on the paper itself. I think you can read the paper quite literally, as a suggestion that people could run this experiment at some point in the future.”

Having said that, Jones also points out, “I think it’s clear that Turing is not laying out a methodology. I mean, I think he doesn’t imagine this experiment would be worth running for decades. So he’s not telling you how long it should be or, you know, if there’s any rules and what they can talk about.”

If Turing did envisage the test might be passable, he certainly knew that it wouldn’t happen in the 1950s. Nevertheless, his paper makes it clear that he did at least imagine the possibility that one day we might build machines that would succeed: “We are not asking whether all digital computers would do well in the game nor whether the computers at present available would do well, but whether there are imaginable computers which would do well,” he writes.

Turing has often been described—rightly—as a visionary, but there’s one passage in the 1950 paper that’s genuinely startling in its prescience. “I believe that in about 50 years’ time it will be possible to programme computers…to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than [a] 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.”

It took 75 years, not 50, but here we are, confronted by a computer—or, at least, a computer-driven model—that does indeed fool people 70% of the time.

This all brings us back to the original question: what does it all mean? “That’s a question I’m still struggling with,” Jones laughs.

“One line of thinking that I think is useful is that the Turing Test is neither necessary nor sufficient evidence for intelligence—you can imagine something being intelligent that doesn’t pass, because it didn’t use the right kind of slang, and you can also imagine something that does pass that isn’t intelligent.”

Ultimately, he says, the key finding is exactly what it says on the tin: “It’s evidence that these models are becoming able to imitate human-like behavior well enough that people can’t tell the difference.” This, clearly, has all sorts of social implications, many of which appear to interest the public and the scientific community far more than they interest the companies making LLMs.

There are also other philosophical questions raised here. Turing addresses several of these in his paper, most notably what he calls the “Argument from Consciousness.” Even if a machine is intelligent, is it conscious? Turing uses the example of a hypothetical conversation between a person and a sonnet-writing machine—one that sounds strikingly like the sort of conversation one can have with ChatGPT today. The conversation provides an example of something that could be examined “to discover whether [its author] really understands [a subject] or has ‘learnt it parrot-like.’”

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Of course, there are many more philosophical questions at play here. Perhaps the most disquieting is this: if we reject the Turing Test as a reliable method of detecting genuine artificial intelligence, do we have an alternative? Or, in other words, do we have any reliable method of knowing when (or if) a machine could possess genuine intelligence?

“I think most people would say that our criteria for consciousness [should] go beyond behavior,” says Jones. “We can imagine something producing the same behavior as a conscious entity, but without having the conscious experience. And so maybe we want to have additional criteria.”

What those criteria should be—or even whether reliable criteria exist for a definitive “Is this entity intelligent or not?” test—remains to be determined. After all, it’s not even clear that we have such criteria for a similar test for animals. As humans, we possess an unshakeable certainty that we are somehow unique, but over the years, characteristic after characteristic that we once considered exclusively human have turned out to be no such thing. Examples include the use of tools, the construction of societies, and the experience of empathy.

And yet, it’s hard to give up the idea that we are different. It’s just surprisingly difficult to identify precisely how. Similarly, it proves extremely difficult to determine where this difference begins. Where do we stop being sacks of electrolytes and start being conscious beings? It turns out that this question is no easier to answer than that of where consciousness might arise from the bewildering mess of electrical signals in our computers’ CPUs.

Turing, being Turing, had an answer for this, too. “I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness. There is, for instance, something of a paradox connected with any attempt to localise it.” However, he argued that understanding the source of human consciousness wasn’t necessary to answer the question posed by the test.

In the narrowest sense, he was correct—in and of itself, the question of whether a machine can reliably imitate a human says nothing about consciousness. But the sheer amount of publicity around ChatGPT passing the Turing Test says a lot about the age we’re in: an age in which it may well be very important to know whether genuine artificial intelligence is possible.

To understand if a machine can be intelligent, perhaps we first need to understand how, and from where, intelligence emerges in living creatures. That may provide some insight into whether such emergence is possible in computers—or whether the best we can do is construct programs that do a very, very convincing job of parroting the internet, along with all its biases and prejudices, back at us.

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There is currently no way to completely reverse the damage and paralysis that results from a spinal cord injury. One of the biggest obstacles is that neurons die and can’t regrow across the damage. 

Now, researchers have developed a biomedical structure that has given impressive functional recovery to lab rats with severed spinal cords. The team detailed their success in a study published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

“Within the United States, SCI [spinal cord injury] has affected a significant number of individuals…with estimates ranging from 255,000 to 383,000 persons,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Unfortunately, there are no treatments currently available for SCI.” 

That could all change. The team created a scaffold with tiny channels, which they then populated with spinal neural progenitor cells (sNPCs)—simply put, cells that can multiply and turn into different types of cells. 

“We use the 3D-printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells, which ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way,” Guebum Han, first author of the paper and a mechanical engineer at Intel Corporation, said in a statement. “This method creates a relay system that when placed in the spinal cord, bypasses the damaged area.”

Han and his colleagues transplanted the scaffolds into rats with severed spinal cords. The sNPCs turned into neurons (also called nerve cells) and reached their fibers up and down the spinal cord to connect to the animals’ original neurons. With time, the researchers observed the new neurons completely merge with the rats’ spinal cord tissue.

“Regenerative medicine has brought about a new era in spinal cord injury research,” said Ann Parr, a co-author of the study and a neurosurgeon at the University of Minnesota. “Our laboratory is excited to explore the future potential of our ‘mini spinal cords’ for clinical translation.”

While the achievement is far from mending broken backs in humans, it’s a positive development toward finally healing spinal cord injuries.

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It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, it’s your hat, ripped off your head by a gust of wind, spiraling off into the unknown. It’s happened to the best of us. The only thing left to do is purchase another one before your face gets sunburnt. Soon, the destiny of your former hat, along with everyone else’s, is far from mind—except for one special team at Yellowstone National Park. 

So far this year, the National Park Service geologists at Yellowstone have recovered over 300 lost hats from hydrothermal areas. Altogether, they estimate the accessories to be worth as much as $6,000. This summer they also collected a pizza box with pizza slices still inside, a fake Louis Vuitton bucket hat, and a ball cap with “I PEE IN THE LAKE” on it.

“When recreating or working in Yellowstone National Park, it’s not uncommon to stumble across a team of National Park Service geologists in distinctive red safety vests. These folks are part of Yellowstone’s Geology Program: a specially trained team dedicated to protecting, remediating, and studying Yellowstone’s incredible geology and hydrothermal features,” Margery Price, a physical science technician at the Yellowstone National Park Geology Program, wrote in a weekly Yellowstone Caldera Chronicle story.

The hat collection is just one part of the team’s hydrothermal area cleanup responsibilities. According to Price, more than four million people visit Yellowstone every year. Luckily, the geologists think that most of the trash they gather (over 13,000 pieces just this year) is typically spread by mistake due to the region’s strong winds and the sheer number of tourists. 

[ Related: Don’t lick the toads and other things to avoid at national parks. ]

When the object is in a particularly tricky area—say, a pool of boiling water—the team has to get creative, as their variously-sized grabber poles (some are 30 feet long!) don’t always fit the bill. 

They also have to remove sticks and rocks that visitors sometimes toss into thermal springs. While those natural objects may seem innocuous, throwing them in can permanently alter a hot spring’s nature. It can lower the the temperature, change its color, and even alter its eruptive activity. 

However, the team is more than just a tourist clean-up squad. They also collect scientific data from the park’s natural formations and help install and maintain scientific instruments, among other tasks. So far this year, the team has walked across over 1,300 miles of trails and boardwalks and driven over 11,000 miles to get the work done. 

Moral of the story: If you visit Yellowstone, keep a hold of your off-brand hats and pizza boxes! 

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Seven $1 coins that once traveled to space sold today in an auction. The sale prices ranged from $120,000 up to $550,001. Officially designated as 2000-W Sacagawea dollars, the coins were struck in 22-karat gold in the late 1990s. In July 1999, they travelled in orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since then, they sat in storage at the Fort Knox Bullion Depository. This is the first time that the coins have become available for public ownership. 

“Lot 10006 and lot 10007 each sold for an astonishing $550,000 and set new records across several categories,” the auction house shared in a press release. “These are now tied as the most valuable U.S. gold dollars struck since the Civil War and the most valuable space flown federal coins sold at auction. They are also the most valuable Sacagawea dollars ever sold, even surpassing records for the rare Sacagawea quarter.”

According to the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS), the space-flown, 22-karat gold Sacagawea dollars are ranked #5 among the Top 100 Modern Coins. They were originally struck as part of an effort to celebrate the Golden Dollar coins that were issued from 2000 to 2008. They also celebrated the first space shuttle flight under the command of a woman (retired United States Air Force Colonel Eileen Collins).

The coins were part of an initial mintage of 39 pieces produced in 22-karat gold and struck with the pattern “engraved tailfeathers” reverse design. That special reverse design was only used on the first coins in the series and was modified to a less detailed design shortly after production began.   

According to Stack’s Bowers Galleries, only the 12 best strikes were selected for flight aboard Space Shuttle Columbia and seven were sold at auction today. The United States Mint confirmed that the remaining five coins will be archived and permanently out of reach for collectors. 

[ Related: Hikers discover nearly 600 gold coins dating back to 1808. ]

“We are extremely honored to once again present a historic selection of rarities on behalf of the United State Mint,” said Stack’s Bowers Galleries President Brian Kendrella. “These space-flown 22 Karat gold Sacagawea dollars transcend any single collectible category and stand as true American treasures.”

The Sacagawea dollar coins that were in wide circulation in the early 2000s feature a portrait of Sacagawea on the obverse or “heads” side. Sacagawea was a young Shoshone woman, who assisted the historic Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804-1806. Unlike other coins, her portrait is looking straight at the user. Artist Glenna Goodacre included the large, dark eyes attributed to Sacagawea in Shoshone legends. Goodacre used Shoshone woman Randy’L He-dow Teton as her model. She is also carrying her infant son, Jean Baptiste. Sacagawea was likely six months pregnant when she joined the Lewis and Clark expedition and gave birth early in the journey.

The reverse or “tails” side of the coin features a soaring eagle circled by 17 stars, representing each state in the Union at the time of the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition.

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