La nuova R40 di Stonex è una stazione totale meccanica progettata per rispondere alle esigenze di precisione e

As Alameda, California celebrates a milestone for its water shuttle service and contemplates expanding the service, Roger Rudick points to an underground tunnel in Lyon, France that offers a different solution for shuttling people across water or difficult terrain — without cars.

In Lyon, two sides of the city are connected by two tunnels: one for vehicles built in the 1950s, and another for transit, bikes, and pedestrians built in 2013. The bike/ped side of the tunnel is “a well-lit, art-adorned passageway” that lets people cross safely. Comparing it to the Bay Area, Rudick notes that California transportation engineers have insisted on dedicating both tunnels connecting Oakland and Alameda, the Posey Tube and the Webster Tube, to cars.

For a tiny fraction of what the taxpayer will foot for widening and re-arranging the ramps into the tunnels, they could adapt Lyon's solution and return the Posey Tube to two-way car traffic, as it was originally designed. Then the Webster tube could be repurposed for bikes and buses (or the other way around). That would move far more people for far less money.

Rudick calls on U.S. policymakers to stop saying “we aren’t Europe” and start seeing the potential of projects like Lyon’s Croix Rousse tunnel — even giving people the opportunity to imagine what it could be like. “Let's start with an open-streets event one weekend in one of the tubes to see what people think.”

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This story by Clara Bates was originally published in Missouri Independent.

Local laws prohibiting landlords from discriminating against tenants who receive public assistance are unenforceable under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Mike Kehoe. 

The legislation takes aim at ordinances passed in several Missouri cities to protect tenants from discrimination based on the source of their income — especially tenants who use federal housing choice vouchers, known as Section 8 vouchers, to pay rent.

The bill was co-sponsored by state Reps. Chris Brown, a Republican from Kansas City, and Ben Keathley, a Republican from Chesterfield. In the Senate, it was carried by state Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance. 

Kansas City passed a source of income discrimination ban last year, though it was in large part paused by the courts in February.

Columbia, St. Louis, Webster Groves and Clayton have similar protections on the books. The laws make it illegal for landlords to discriminate based solely on the fact of renters’ lawful sources of income, including Section 8, veterans’ benefits and Social Security.

The legislation had the support of landlords groups, apartment associations, the realtors’ association and the conservative think tank Show Me Institute. Proponents characterized localities’ source-of-income protections as an overreach into property owners’ rights.

Opponents said the bill infringed on local control and would hurt affordable housing availability, exacerbating homelessness. The city of Kansas City has been opposed along with the anti-poverty nonprofit Empower Missouri and an association of public housing authorities in Missouri.

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Subway commuters in Shenzhen, China, may soon need to make room for a fleet of chunky, snack-carrying delivery robots.

Earlier this week, more than three dozen autonomous, four-wheeled delivery robots boarded and exited active subway trains, and eventually delivered packages to several 7-Eleven convenience stores. Although this demonstration was only a preliminary test and took place during off-peak hours, the company behind the subway-riding robots believes they could soon help stock shelves at around 100 7-Eleven locations. The initiative is part of a broader effort in China and other countries to normalize the presence of delivery robots operating in public spaces.

The test run, first reported by the South China Morning Post, featured 41 robots developed by a subsidiary of Vanke, a large Chinese firm partly owned by the Shenzhen Metro. A video demonstration shared by the company shows the roughly three-foot-tall, stocky bots lining up at a subway stop. They wait for human passengers to exit the subway car before rolling onboard. Once they reach their stop, the robots exit the car and drive themselves to an elevator, which is remotely activated. 

After exiting, each robot rolls up to a storefront, where a human worker unlocks its boxy body and retrieves the goods stored inside. In this case, the video shows a worker unloading what appears to be a carton of tea. Each robot also features an LED screen “face” that lights up with cartoonish eyes and smiles.

Vanke claims its robots do all this by using a combination of robotics and AI planning. The machines are equipped with panoramic lidar—similar to the technology used in driverless cars—to “see” the world around them. A specially designed chassis system, which Vanke likens to a “skeleton and motor nerves,” enables the robots to make minor autonomous adjustments when boarding subway cars or elevators. The entire delivery process is managed by an AI-based dispatching system that handles scheduling and determines optimal delivery routes. This planning system accounts for multiple variables like delivery requirements, cargo type, and subway capacity to develop the most efficient routes.

All of this, Vanke claims, is in service of simplifying and speeding up logistics for shops in metro systems, which ordinarily rely on human drivers above ground that can face delays due to limited parking and congestion. Shenzhen’s subway system is massive. It has more than 300 stations spread out across the megacity, many featuring their own shops and convenience stores. 

“In the past, store goods could only be delivered to subway stations via ground transportation,” a convenience store manager participating in the trial reportedly said in a translated statement. “Not only was it difficult to park on the ground, but the process of transporting goods from the ground to the store often encountered the subway’s morning rush hour, resulting in high delivery time and labor costs.

7-Eleven did not immediately respond to Popular Science’s request for comment. 

The subway-riding robots are part of a citywide initiative in Shenzhen called the Embodied Intelligent Robot Action Plan, which aims to accelerate the adoption of robotics across multiple industries by 2027. More broadly, the Chinese government has been pushing in recent years to normalize the presence of robots in public spaces. In April, about 20 bipedal robots raced alongside humans in what was dubbed the world’s first “humanoid robot half marathon.” (Only four of the machines completed the race—most tripped, veered off course, or broke down in clouds of smoke.) More recently, Chinese robotics company Unitree livestreamed what it claimed was the world’s first boxing match between humanoid robots.

Similar efforts to introduce robots into public areas in the US have often been met with less-than-stellar reception. Last year, the New York Police Department officially retired a roaming egg-shaped security bot that patrolled subway stations following backlash from commuters and privacy advocates. Smaller-sized food delivery robots from companies like Starship are already bringing take-out to hungry students at around 39 universities, though their rollout has been marred by some robots getting lost, falling in ditches, and struggling to cross streets. Amazon is even reportedly developing AI-trained robots to one day jump out of vans and deliver packages.

But if the untimely demise of hitchBOT—a hitchhiking robot that was beheaded by vandals in Philadelphia—is any indication, people may still need a bit more time to learn how to coexist with humanoid machines in public spaces. 

The post Robots in China are riding the subway to make 7-Eleven deliveries appeared first on Popular Science.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced a new road safety program — but no associated funding or other details, reports Graham Kilmer in Urban Milwaukee.

The program, “Safe Arterials for Everyone through Reliable Operations and Distraction-Reducing Strategies or SAFE ROADS,” asks state and local agencies to identify dangerous roads, “eliminate distractions,” and  “make the entire roadway right‑of‑way easier to interpret and navigate for all users, including pedestrians, vehicle operators, and automated vehicles alike.”

Secretary Duffy’s letter does not specify what constitutes “distractions,” which the letter mentions three times. “Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy said, signaling that the administration plans to continue targeting roadway interventions such as ‘rainbow crosswalks’ and Black Lives Matter murals. The agency says it will provide technical expertise for assessments and studies. “The resources to effectuate any road safety projects, however, would need to come from the state or local level. The SAFE Roads program isn’t providing additional funding.”

City officials in Milwaukee say that city has been working through the steps of the Safe Streets and Roads for All program to develop traffic safety projects and awaits a decision on their application for $25 million in federal funding for implementation.

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The “Largest Piece of Mars on Earth” just sold at auction for about $5.3 million— $5,296,000, to be exact. Popular Science has reached out to Sotheby’s for confirmation of the sale price.

The 54-pound rock measures roughly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches. It was part of a Sotheby’s natural history auction that also included a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton and a lunar meteorite. 

The meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by an asteroid. The chunk of the Red Planet then travelled 140 million miles to Earth, crashing in the Sahara desert. It was discovered by a meteorite hunter in Niger in November 2023. However, it is not completely clear when the meteorite hit Earth. Testing shows that the strike probably happened in recent years, according to Sotheby’s. It previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the space rock’s previous owner.

The red, brown and gray rock is roughly 70 percent larger than the next biggest piece of Mars ever found here on Earth. It also makes up nearly 7 percent of all the Martian material currently on our planet, according to Sotheby’s.

“There’s a big, orbital donut full of battered bits of Mars,  launched by cratering events,  and the Earth clearly intercepts that stream all the time,” Ralph Harvey, a geochemist who studies plenary materials at Case Western University, tells Popular Science. “There’s really no substitute for “ground truth,” and the Martian meteorites represent the only known samples from that planet.”

Cassandra Hatton, the vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, told the Associated Press that this Martian meteorite was confirmed to be from the Red Planet in a specialized lab. The sample’s chemical make up was compared with Martian meteorites that were discovered in 1967, when the Viking space probe landed on Mars. 

The official examination found that the now sold rock is an olivine-microgabbroic shergottite. This type of Martian rock was formed by the slow cooling of magma on Mars. Sotheby’s says that it has a course-grained texture and the minerals pyroxene and olivine. The auction house estimates that there are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites that have been discovered on Earth.

According to Harvey, recovering samples from any planetary body beyond Earth is challenging enough due to technology, science, and funding. It has only been done about a dozen times, making this material quite precious. Grabbing what we can when it falls is our best bet. 

“There are a lot more rocks falling to Earth from space than most people realize;  the total mass of meteoritic material is a few tens of thousands of tons per year,” says Harvey. “From that, maybe 10-20,000 bits will actually be rocks that hit the Earth’s surface. It’s the equivalent of a softball-sized rock each million square kilometers, and distributed very randomly.”

The post Largest chunk of Mars on Earth sells for $5.3 million appeared first on Popular Science.

Scholars and students have spent nearly a decade documenting and digitizing a vast, first-of-its-kind repository for hundreds of medieval Japanese poems. But the compendium doesn’t draw from an array of authors. Instead, a single woman penned all the 11th century poems as part of a larger book, widely believed to be the world’s first novel.

The Tale of Genji is a significant piece of classic Japanese literature, and not just because of its age. At over 500,000 words, it’s also one of history’s longest novels. Written by Murasaki Shikibu, a court assistant or “lady-in-waiting” during the Heian period, Genji is a tale of love, adventure, and intrigue that spans the title prince’s life. But the novel also interweaves a repository of 795 poems throughout its roughly 1,300 pages—each written from the one of 118 separate characters’ perspectives, including mothers, servants, emperors, lovers, and Genji himself.

These sections weren’t just rhetorical flourishes from Murasaki. Poetry was a popular form of communication in both written and spoken form during the Heian period. In this sense, Murasaki was simply reflecting the era in which she lived. But to do so at such a scale required a remarkable level of talent. 

“It’s a really extraordinary feat to be able to ventriloquize all of these highly distinct characters and come up with the kind of poems that they would write,” J. Keith Vincent, a Boston University College of Arts and Sciences associate professor of Japanese and comparative literature, explained in the project’s accompanying announcement. “Within 200 years of finishing her book, the greatest poets in Japan were saying, ‘It’s basically impossible to become a poet without having memorized The Tale of Genji.’”

While Genji’s earliest readers preferred to focus on the novel’s poetics, modern audiences are more often drawn to the plot and character dynamics. Vincent saw this firsthand whenever he assigned Genji to his own students. According to him, glossing over these integral passages was a disservice to both readers and the novel itself. But about a decade ago, Vincent realized a way to help students appreciate the work as a whole: a Genji poetry database.

“I thought of the project as a way to get students to slow down and pay more attention to the poems,” he said.

Starting in fall 2016, Vincent offered his Japanese literature students extra credit for locating and entering various translations of Genji’s poems into a single (very large) spreadsheet. Today, there are four main English translations of the entire novel, as well as another translation work focused on only the poems. Combine those with the original Japanese, and that adds up to nearly 4,000 entries.

“It’s extraordinary how different the versions can be, how different the [translators’] styles are,” he said. “… The idea is that you get a sense of the choices one has to make as a translator, and can gradually arrive at the nexus of the original [meaning] through these five different versions.”

In total, Vincent estimated the database took around 150 students “hundreds and hundreds of hours” over about six years. Further collaborations—including one with the design firm run by Vincent’s partner—over another couple years resulted in a dynamic, detailed website dedicated to Genji’s poems. Additional information on Genjipoems.org includes details like an entry’s chapter and order; author and audience; the form in which it is told (written, spoken, in response, or group composition); literary techniques, and allusions. There’s even information like the season in which a poem was delivered, and how old Genji himself was at the time of its creation.

Now, anyone can take a moment to appreciate some of the epic’s most frequently overlooked portions. Vincent said that like his students completing their original extra credit assignments, site visitors can “pay very close attention to the words and notice things about them.”

“By the time you get to the ‘write a commentary’ part [of the website], you have all the building blocks you need to write a sophisticated close read,” he continued.

The post College students digitized 795 poems from the world’s oldest novel appeared first on Popular Science.

An international team of researchers have discovered the moment when planets began to form around a central star. Purdue University astronomer Merel van ‘t Hoff says it’s like finding, “a picture of the baby Solar System.” 

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, the team observed hot minerals just beginning to solidify. These sizzling minerals are the very first specks of planet-forming materials. The findings are detailed in a study published July 16 in the journal Nature and opens up a portal to our own solar system’s storied past. 

“For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our Sun,” Melissa McClure, a study co-author and astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands said in a statement.

“We’re seeing a system that looks like what our Solar System looked like when it was just beginning to form,” van ‘t Hoff added.

The newborn planetary system described in the study is emerging around HOPS-315. HOPS-315 is a proto or baby star roughly 1,300 light-years away from Earth. Astronomers often see discs of gas and dust around these proto stars. These protoplanetary discs are the birthplaces of new planets. Previously, scientists have observed young discs that contain newborn, giant, Jupiter-like planets. 

“We’ve always known that the first solid parts of planets, or ‘planetesimals,’ must form further back in time, at earlier stages,” says McClure. 

In our own solar system, the very first solid material to condense near Earth’s present location can be found locked within ancient meteorites. Using these primordial rocks, astronomers can estimate their age and determine when our own solar system started to form. These old meteorites are full of crystalline minerals that contain silicon monoxide. They can also condense at the extremely high temperatures present in young planetary discs. As time progresses, these newly condensed solids bind together, and become the very seeds of planet formation as they grow. For example, the first mile-sized planetesimals in our solar system–which grew to become celestial bodies like Earth or Jupiter’s core–formed right after the condensation of these same crystalline minerals.

With this new finding, astronomers have found evidence that these hot minerals are beginning to condense in the disc around HOPS-315. Silicon monoxide is present around the baby star in its gaseous state and within these crystalline minerals. This suggests that it is only just beginning to solidify. 

“This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc — or anywhere outside our Solar System,” added study co-author and University of Michigan astronomer Edwin Bergin.

Astronomers first identified these minerals using the now-three-year-old James Webb Space Telescope. To see where exactly the signals were coming from, they studied the system with the ALAMA telescope, which is operated by the European Space Agency with international partners in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

With these observations together, the team determined that the chemical signals were coming from a small region of the disc, surrounding the star equivalent to the orbit of the asteroid belt around our sun.

“We’re really seeing these minerals at the same location in this extrasolar system as where we see them in asteroids in the Solar System,“ said study co-author and Leiden University astrophysicist Logan Francis.

[ Related: Newborn stars surround a planet-forming disk 450 million light years away. ]

With these similarities, the disc around HOPS-315 gives astronomers a good proxy for studying our solar system’s own cosmic history. 

“This system is one of the best that we know to actually probe some of the processes that happened in our Solar System,” said van ‘t Hoff.

HOPS-315 is also giving astronomers a new opportunity to study early planet formation, serving as a stand-in for newborn solar systems across the galaxy.

“I was really impressed by this study, which reveals a very early stage of planet formation,” added ESO astronomer and European ALMA Programme Manager Elizabeth Humphreys, who was not part of the study. “It suggests that HOPS-315 can be used to understand how our own Solar System formed. This result highlights the combined strength of JWST and ALMA for exploring protoplanetary discs.”

The post For the first time, astronomers spot the beginning of a solar system appeared first on Popular Science.

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Chewing gum, sucking a mint, making a few exaggerated yawns—when a plane takes off or touches down, travelers often will try these strategies to ward off that weird ear pop that happens as we change altitude. The good news is that the uncomfortable sensation is simply a normal, protective bodily function.

“It’s absolutely a natural way that your body is supposed to equalize that pressure,” says Patricia Gaffney, an audiologist and president of the American Academy of Audiology. And in most cases, the process resolves quickly and without complications.

But what exactly makes that popping sound, and why? Gaffney shared the details about what’s going on in our ears during flight.

Our ears are made up of three parts: the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The outer ear includes the visible earlobe and ear canal. The eardrum separates the outer ear from the air-filled middle ear, which includes three tiny bones and the Eustachian tube, a narrow passageway that connects the middle ear to the upper throat, or nasopharynx. The inner ear is home to the cochlea, our hearing organ, and the vestibular system, which controls balance.

When our ears pop, the sensation comes from the Eustachian tube.

“[The Eustachian tube]’s whole job is to help keep the pressure equalized from the outer portion of the ear to the middle portion of the ear,” says Gaffney, who is also a professor of audiology at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. 

The air pressure balance between the middle ear and outside environment is critical for our ears to properly function. When the pressure in the middle ear is lower than the outside air pressure, that can create negative pressure. That negative pressure can draw the eardrum inward, reducing its ability to vibrate and make our hearing seem muffled until the pressure equalizes 

During our normal activities, the Eustachian tube opens briefly when we swallow, yawn, or talk, helping to balance these small changes in air pressure. But a rapid altitude change on a flight—or while we scuba dive or climb up a mountain—presents a different scenario. Those changes can create significant differences as the external air pressure changes more quickly than the pressure inside the middle ear, Gaffney says. The Eustachian tube responds by forcibly opening to equalize these pressures, creating that familiar “popping” sound.

Travelers can use several tried-and-true strategies to manage ear pressure and get their Eustachian tube to open on its own. For babies and young children, sucking on a pacifier or feeding during takeoff and landing can help relieve pressure in their tiny ears and make them more comfortable. For older kids and adults, chewing gum, sucking on a candy, and yawning deliberately can help, Gaffney says. 

Travelers also can attempt to force open their own Eustachian tube using the so-called Valsalva maneuver, Gaffney says. To do it, take a breath, close your mouth, pinch your nose, and gently blow out your nose. “Sometimes, if [the Eustachian tube is] really tight, you’ll even hear a little squeak as a little bit of air rushes in,” Gaffney says. 

An over-the-counter product called EarPlanes also could help, she says. The specialized earplugs help to equalize pressure. “Some people have really good success with it,” she says, though others “don’t find it helps very much.”

Certain conditions can make it harder for your Eustachian tube to stabilize a pressure imbalance. The bottom of the tube—where it normally closes—can become irritated or inflamed, especially when we have a cold or upper respiratory infection. That inflammation makes it harder for the tube to open and close, which is why people often say their ears feel blocked or won’t pop when they’re sick, Gaffney says. 

If someone with a cold or allergy symptoms flies, the pressure changes during takeoff and landing can make equalizing ear pressure more difficult. In severe cases, when the pressure difference becomes too great and the tube can’t open properly, it may even lead to a ruptured eardrum, Gaffney says.

But she emphasizes, “that’s on the rare side, and it’s usually associated with somebody who already has a cold or some sort of upper respiratory infection.” 

When she flew recently with the sniffles, Gaffney fell back on the Valsalva maneuver to try and get some relief. “I was on the verge of being sick, and my ears were hurting,” Gaffney says. “The whole flight, I’m just trying to Valsalva” to balance the pressure in my ears.

For those experiencing persistent ear pressure issues, an ear, nose, and throat doctor can evaluate them for Eustachian tube dysfunction. Patients with chronic problems might receive treatments like nasal sprays to reduce inflammation, she says. 

But, bottom line, while ear popping might feel a little odd, it’s usually just a brief side effect of flying. So grab some gum, practice your yawns and let your Eustachian tubes do the job they were designed for.  

This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Why do our ears pop on a plane? An audiologist explains. appeared first on Popular Science.

If I had a dollar for every time I tried to build core strength and ended up scrolling TikTok on the yoga mat instead, I could’ve bought this: the GoBalance Sport Balance Board and Yoga Roller Bundle—on sale now for $115.99 with code GOSPORT (down from $159.95). That’s 27 percent off the price of me pretending to plank while lying absolutely still.

But here’s the thing—this isn’t your average fitness gear. It’s app-enabled. It games your workout. It makes balancing feel less like gym class punishment and more like a low-stakes arcade challenge.

The bundle includes two main characters:

1. The GoBalance Sport Balance Board: a sleek wooden board you place on an air-filled stability cushion (think inflatable core chaos), and
2. The GoBalance Yoga Roller: a half-round foam roller that helps with planks, stretching, and core strengthening, also known as “the gentle tormenter.”

But the real magic happens when you sync the board with the GoBalance app via Bluetooth. Suddenly, you’re not just exercising—you’re controlling a spaceship with your feet. You’re racing cars. You’re making figure-8s or snowboarding without ever leaving your living room rug.

The app comes with a dozen free games and modes, from beginner to expert, and even tracks your performance (if you dare to look). You can cast it to your TV for a big-screen experience—which makes your body-flailing feel that much more cinematic.

The cushion’s inflation levels affect difficulty (less air = easier, more air = chaos). And while you might look slightly ridiculous wobbling in front of your TV, your core will be screaming “thank you” by day three.

This bundle is certainly cheaper than a couple of personal training sessions and, honestly, way more fun. Whether you’re looking to trick your body into liking exercise or you just want a new way to compete with your family without yelling over Monopoly, this wobbly setup might be the weirdly effective fitness fix you didn’t know you needed.

Get the GoBalance Sport App-Enabled Balance Board and Yoga Roller bundle for $115.99 (reg. $159.95) with code GOSPORT.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

The post My abs are mad, but this $115 board was worth it appeared first on Popular Science.