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MARK HORN/GETTY IMAGES STARTING NEXT YEAR,  New Yorkers could join Silicon Valley workers and residents of cities like Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and Boston as players in a grand, growing,  autonomous car experiment. General Motors, through its  self-driving startup Cruise Automation , plans to put a fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolts onto the streets of lower Manhattan in early 2018. The company is already testing in San Francisco, and once it finalizes its application to run in New York (the governor loves the idea), expects to learn valuable lessons from the city's colorful chaos. Those will be important lessons, to be sure. But the move across the country raises a novel question. What happens when New York's famously aggressive drivers and pedestrians start treating the robocars like so many clueless tourists, rubes to be pushed around and taken advantage of. It's just a matter of time before Manhattan pavement pounders learn Cruise's self-driving cars h...

RESEARCHERS HAVE CAUGHT  their best glimpse yet into the origins of photosynthesis, one of nature’s most momentous innovations. By taking near-atomic, high-resolution X-ray images of proteins from primitive bacteria, investigators at Arizona State University and Pennsylvania State University have extrapolated what the earliest version of photosynthesis might have looked like nearly 3.5 billion years ago. If they are right, their findings could rewrite the evolutionary history of the process that life uses to convert sunlight into chemical energy. QUANTA MAGAZINE ABOUT Original story  reprinted with permission from  Quanta Magazine , an editorially independent publication of the  Simons Foundation  whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences. Photosynthesis directly or indirectly powers and sustains almost every organism on Earth. It...

The Nintendo Switch is great for a lot of things, but when it comes to playing retro games, you’re better off looking at something like the SNES Classic than Nintendo’s current-generation console. Or, if you’re like  Tim Lindquist , a hardware modder / electrical engineering student at Iowa State University, you build your own Switch-esque console, which through the power of open-source emulation software, can not only play retro Nintendo games, but basically any retro title you can imagine, via   Hackaday . Image:  Tim Lindquist (YouTube) Lindquist’s device — cleverly called the “Nintimdo RP” — goes beyond being a simple Raspberry Pi emulator, though. Rather, like the actual Switch itself, its a full-fledged portable console. Lindquist’s build is a custom 3D-printed case, built around the ever-popular Raspberry Pi with an additional micro-controller for connecting the physical button inputs to the main processor. And the whole thing runs off a 10,000mAh battery, ...

Retail is evolving before our eyes, and all you have to do is take notice. Take LG SIGNATURE’s recent partnership with Bloomingdale’s. The Korean electronics brand is  showcasing its smart-home appliances  at Bloomingdale’s 59th Street in New York. Why the fuss? Because Bloomingdale’s iconic window displays are traditionally recognized for clothing and fashion-forward trends. When you visit the 59th Street location, you can see  LG SIGNATURE’S  products in person unlike the  virtual experience that you get on Amazon , and other online retailers. The industry needs to find solutions in changing times. Retail traffic is down across America, forcing shops to become smarter about user engagement, conversion rate and visit duration — key metrics that online merchants have long used to their advantage to the detriment of brick-and-mortar stores. In May last year,  retail traffic was down 9.9 percent , according to RetailNext. Clearly, on-site traffic i...