News and Updates from WonderHowTo: Page 12

Japan is in the process of curbing its aging population and mature workforce. According to The Diplomat, the country's population has been declining at a steady rate. To meet future productivity demands in commercial and industrial sectors, local officials are turning to self-driving technology, including truck platooning, where three or five vehicles travel autonomously in a string formation. This practice, according to a study by MIT, can reduce fuel consumption by up to 20% (more about this...

General Motors acquired Cruise Automation in March 2016 for a reported $1 billion (well, at least $581 million). GM President Dan Ammann made a point of being in the press release photograph with Cruise founders Kyle Vogt and Daniel Kan (see photo below). On January 19, 2017, Vogt posted on Twitter: "Took GM Pres. Dan Ammann for a ride in a Cruise AV."

At a global security conference in Munich, philanthropist and businessman Bill Gates spoke about the next pandemic and a dire lack of global readiness. Here's how his statement could come true—and how to be ready when it does.

Before you bite into that beautiful tomato in your garden, the tomato fruitworm, or the Colorado potato beetle, might have beat you to it.

I don't know about you, but I was obsessed with handheld gaming devices when I was younger. Between my Game Boy and multiple Tamagotchis, I was guaranteed hours of entertainment that could fit comfortably in the palm of my hand.

Six people have died from fungal infections in Pittsburgh hospitals since 2014—that fact is indisputable. The rest of the situation is much vaguer. A lawsuit has been filed against the hospitals on behalf of some of the deceased patients, alleging that moldy hospital linens are to blame. While the lawyers argue over who's at fault, let's look at how this could have happened.

A new study just out reveals that HIV takes hold in the human body with the help of cells that usually work to heal, not kill.

Jostled in the airport, someone is coughing in line. The air looks empty but it is loaded with microbes that make their way into your body. You get sick. You give it to your family, and that's pretty much it. But what if you were so contagious that you spread it to your entire community and beyond?

If you want to appreciate the value of microbes, look no further than a chunk of cheese. Because cheese roughly traces back to the Neolithic Era, we might say the earliest cheesemakers were the first humans to manipulate microbes—without even knowing it. Now, thanks to microbiologists and the long tradition of cheesemaking, we know a lot more about the microbes that make our favorite types of cheese possible.

Prion diseases are a group of infectious brain diseases that causes extensive tissue damage, resulting in sponge-like spaces in brain tissue. Prions include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (often called mad cow disease), and chronic wasting disease in hoofed ruminant mammals.

We've seen many things get gummy-ized over the years—worms, insects, Coke bottles, glass cleaner, Legos, brains, Nutella, and even tiny LEDs—but nothing compares to YouTuber and WonderHowTo favorite Grant Thompson, aka The King of Random, who made one helluva creepy gummy chicken that's just as big as the real deal.

Avian flu is making the news again with new human cases in China reported in January. What does "avian flu" mean to you—and how dangerous is it?

Exposed to hormones, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals, the beautiful wild fish in Canada's Grand River have taken on some pretty odd characteristics—they're turning into females. A long-term study suggests using bacteria to manage polluted water could turn the tide for feminized fish.

Transmitted by a sandfly one-third the size of a mosquito, parasitic Leishmania protozoa are responsible for a flesh-destroying disease that kills an estimated 20,000 people per year. Two new studies offer understanding of how the parasite provides immunity through persistence and why some people suffer more virulent forms of the disease.

Scientists are constantly on the search for new organisms, species, and other types of life. A special group of these researchers, calling themselves "bioprospectors," dive deep into mines to find unique lifeforms with special properties not found anywhere else.

Some bacteria can already do it—generate electric current, that is—and those microbes are called "electrogenic." Now, thanks to the work of a research group from the University of California, Santa Barbara, we know how to easily turn non-electrogenic bacteria into electricity producers.

A couple weeks ago, GM's Cruise Automation released a remarkable self-driving video from the streets of San Fransisco that Driverless analyzed in detail. And now they've just released a new one giving more insight into their growing mastery of the complex roads in San Francisco, specifically, the Potrero Hill and Mission Dolores neighborhoods.

The pathogen referred to as a "nightmare bacteria" is quietly adapting and spreading faster than anticipated.

Where in the world did it come from? All of a sudden, one day, someone had an infection with flesh-eating bacteria. It captured headlines and worldwide attention because it was such a severe, strange, uncontrollable, and really disgusting condition.

Sleep lets our body processes rest and restores us for the next day, so a bad night's sleep can ruin the following twenty-four hours and even make us feel sick. Now, new research published in the journal Sleep cements the idea that loss of sleep actually leaves us vulnerable to sickness.

In the summer of 1976, 4,000 American Legionnaires descended upon the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for a four-day convention. Several days later, many of the attendees experienced symptoms of severe pneumonia. By the beginning of August, 22 people had died. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that about 180 people were sickened and 29 people died before this mysterious outbreak burnt out.

It feels like someone reached into your chest and squeezed. Your head throbs in unison with your heartbeat. Clammy dread coats your body in sweat. Whether you call 911 or someone does it for you, the ER is your next stop.

Although their effectiveness is waning, antibiotics remain a front-line defense against many infections. However, new science reveals using the wrong antibiotic for an infection could makes things much worse.

As fun as it is to see Fido's face light up when you feed him table scraps, American dogs are getting fat. The good news is that research is homing in on nutritional strategies to boost canine capabilities to maintain a healthy weight.

What's in a sneeze? Quite a lot—dirt, mucus, and infectious germs—it seems. And sneezing the right way can reduce the germs you share with neighbors.

If we learned anything from Mulan, it's that "the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of them all." Well, these have been a trying couple of weeks in the US, hence the need for a blooming marshmallow flower.

Super Mario Bros. is one of the most renowned games in history. It helped resurrect a dying video game industry in the mid-'80s and still remains one of the best-selling video games of all time—one reason why the new NES Classic Edition is so popular and impossible to get these days. Its simple story of a plumber trying to rescue a princess resulted in a video game empire for Nintendo.

You know the signs—sneezing, fever, nagging cough, no energy, no appetite. It's the flu, but this time, it's your dog who's down and out. Yes, dogs get the flu, too. However, a team from the University of Rochester Medical Center and their collaborators have developed a new vaccine that may make the doggy flu a thing of the past.

Disengagement report numbers for self-driving car testing in 2016 on public roads in California were just released, and the biggest point we can make about them is that Waymo is very far ahead of their competitors in almost every metric.

Today, at Abundance 360, an exclusive event for tech entrepreneurs in Beverly Hills, California, Boston Dynamics unveiled a video of "Handle," a humanoid-like robot with wheels instead of feet.

As Alfred monologued in The Dark Knight, "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Using extreme time-lapse microscopy, scientists watched a virus take over a bacteria to create a cell that looked and functioned more like a plant or animal cell. True story.

There are all kinds of theories—many supported by science—about what causes Alzheimer's disease. Tangles of protein called ß-amyloid (pronounced beta amyloid) plaques are prominently on the list of possible causes or, at least, contributors. An emerging theory of the disease suggests that those plaques aren't the problem, but are actually our brains' defenders. They show up to help fight an infection, and decades later, they become the problem.

Humanity is standing on an infection precipice. As antibacterial resistant grows, we're running out of options, and a recent scary case of total antibiotic resistance is a frighting view of our potential future. In the end, it was septic shock that took the life of a 70-year old woman with an incurable infection. One of few such cases in the US, her death could nonetheless be the shape of things to come.

Ask anyone that works on the development of driverless vehicle technology and there is a very good chance that AutonomouStuff will have supplied something to their project.

Over 1.2 million people in the US are infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—and one out of eight of them don't know it. Even after decades of intense research into the virus, there's still no cure for it. One of the big problems is that the virus hides out in certain cells of the body, resisting treatments that kill it.

A recent pathogen outbreak in Illinois is just one of many outbreaks of an underappreciated, but serious, viral infection passed from rodents to humans. These hantaviruses have been cropping up more frequently in the last decade or so, giving us more reason to clean out our dusty attics, basements, and garages.

To shine light on the future of the relationship between humans and viruses, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford looked into the dim and distant past.

In December of last year, Australian Feliks Zemdegs broke the human world record for solving a Rubik's Cube with a time of 4.737 seconds. Well, this robot did it way, way faster by solving one in under 1 second. Don't tell me a robot takeover isn't real possibility.

Immigration and immigration policy are some of the biggest discussions happening in international and domestic politics right now. From building walls to opening borders, a definitive plan has not been made about how to deal with the large number of people who are fleeing their home countries in hopes of a different life.