TechnologyNoble

A baby panda was born last week at the National Zoo. The National Zoo, and many people not associated with the Zoo, celebrated, because the panda is a very endangered animal and has become an emblem of the conservation movement, and it is very difficult to get pandas to produce surviving offspring in captivity. But because it is 2013, and because it is easier and garners more pageviews to be boldly wrong than boringly right, many internet publications and people who like to argue began a well-trodden argument: the panda deserves to die. Breeding pandas is "prolonging the existence of a hopeless and wasteful species the world should've given up on long ago," writes Timothy Lavin in Bloomberg. After the death of a panda named Hsing-Hsing, in 2009, David Plotz of Slate wrote: "Pandas are not ill-natured. They are worse: They are no-natured. Drearier animals you cannot imagine. They are highly anti-social, detesting interaction with other pandas and people....

The intoxicating effects of alcohol and of marijuana have been widely studied, but their combined effect—getting "cross-faded"—is woefully underexplored scientific territory. Here's a look at what we know about how pot and booze together affect the brain. First, the basics: Marijuana contains THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which acts on the brain's cannabinoid receptors. Alcohol depresses the central nervous system. Trying to compare the two isn't even like comparing apples and oranges, says Gary Wenk, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State University. "It's apples and vegetables. They're very different drugs." An extremely simplified explanation would be to say that THC largely has cognitive effects, like paranoia and a distorted sense of time, while alcohol mainly affects motor skills, making it hard to walk in a straight line and causing slurred speech. READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/article/science/what-hap...

With support for most smart home platforms and the ability to control up to 15 devices, the Harmony Elite gives you dominion over both your home entertainment system and your smart home gadgets. Testing Setting up a Logitech Harmony remote previously required plugging it into your computer, running the company's MyHarmony desktop app, manually adding the individual devices you wanted to control within the app, and then syncing those devices back to the remote. Frankly, it was a pain. Even making a small change to the controls could be time-consuming. While you can still opt for this setup method with the Elite (it has a micro-USB port like previous Harmony remotes), Logitech has significantly streamlined the process by letting you do everything on your phone. READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/logitech-harmony-elite-review-one-remote-to-rule-your-devices

Newsflash: You probably have herpes. This is actually okay. According to the World Health Organization, over two thirds of the global population have HSV-1 (commonly known as oral herpes or cold sores) and more than 10 percent have HSV-2, or genital herpes. Given that HSV-2 rates are much higher among women, urbanites, and minority groups than in the general population (and given that HSV-1 increasingly shows up as a genital infection instead of an oral one), herpes is easily the most common sexually transmitted infection. How did over 4 billion folks end up with one of the two strains of herpes simplex, and what can we do about it? It all comes down to the virus's ingenious method of infection—it's designed to evade your immune system so well that it can stay in your body for an entire lifetime. But scientists now believe they can stop herpes from using its slickest skills. In a study published Thursday in PLOS Pathogens, researchers describe a new vaccine designed to hit...