Author name: KMFranck

Ahead of an August 12 deadline for a US-China trade deal, Donald Trump’s tactics continue to confuse those trying to assess the country’s national security priorities regarding its biggest geopolitical rival. For months, Trump has kicked the can down the road regarding a TikTok ban, allowing the app to continue operating despite supposedly urgent national security […]

It’s easier than ever to manipulate video footage to deceive the viewer and increasingly difficult for fact checkers to detect such manipulations. Cornell University scientists developed a new weapon in this ongoing arms race: software that codes a “watermark” into light fluctuations, which in turn can reveal when the footage has been tampered with. The

Water is the most fundamental need for all life on Earth. Not every organism needs oxygen, and many make their own food. But for all creatures, from deep-sea microbes and slime molds to trees and humans, water is nonnegotiable. “The first act of life was the capture of water within a cell membrane,” a pair

Ford will debut a new midsize pickup truck in 2027 with a targeted price of $30,000, the automaker announced today. The as-yet unnamed pickup will be the first of a series of more affordable EVs from Ford, built using a newly designed flexible vehicle platform and US-made prismatic lithium iron phosphate batteries. For the past

Later this summer, a fluorescent reddish-pink spiral will bloom across the Wilkinson Basin in the Gulf of Maine, about 40 miles northeast of Cape Cod. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will release the nontoxic water tracer dye behind their research vessel, where it will unfurl into a half-mile wide temporary plume, bright enough

The first space race was about flags and footprints. Now, decades later, landing on the Moon is old news. The new race is to build there, and doing so hinges on power. In April 2025, China reportedly unveiled plans to build a nuclear power plant on the Moon by 2035. This plant would support its

Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure–as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces around the world–that made any communication secured with the algorithm vulnerable to eavesdropping. When the researchers publicly disclosed the issue in 2023, the European Telecommunications

Most adhesives can’t stick to wet surfaces because water and other fluids disrupt the adhesive’s bonding mechanisms. This problem, though, has been beautifully solved by evolution in remora suckerfish, which use an adhesive disk on top of their heads to attach to animals like dolphins, sharks, and even manta rays. A team of MIT scientists

James Lovell, a member of humanity’s first trip to the moon and commander of NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, has died at the age of 97. Lovell’s death on Thursday was announced by the space agency. “NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across

A list of various related news items and clips from this, and recent, weeks: Apple Newsroom, on Wednesday — “Apple Increases U.S. Commitment To $600 Billion, Announces American Manufacturing Program”: Apple today announced a new $100 billion commitment to America, a significant acceleration of its U.S. investment that now totals $600 billion over the next four years.