A quick heads up, folks, that we’ve updated our listing of the best Android phone you can possibly buy right this very second with a couple new additions. (That’d be the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9, if you couldn’t guess.)
If you’re looking for a quick glance at the best that’s available in the Android world, this is where you’ll want to start.
Many Clouds wins the 2015 Grand National to give Leighton Aspell his second consecutive victory, as AP McCoy finishes fifth. - Source
When heated to just above room temperature, the electrical conductivity of vanadium dioxide abruptly increases by a factor of 10,000. Unusually large lattice vibrations, which are the oscillations of atoms about their equilibrium positions, stabilize this highly conductive metallic phase. - Source
Refrigeration and air conditioning may become more efficient and environmentally friendly thanks to the patent-pending work of physicists. The team has discovered a breakthrough magnetocaloric material that may change the energy industry, including air conditioning and food refrigeration. - Source
Scientists have encoded quantum information in silicon using simple electrical pulses for the first time, bringing the construction of affordable large-scale quantum computers one step closer to reality. - Source
Sad news came for music fans who fondly remember the heyday of hair metal: Twisted Sister has decided to call it quits after more than forty years together (on and off). - Source
My Little Epiphanies is about an 18-year-old’s hard look at her own feelings, and what it was that gave her a sense of hope and control. The author, Aisha Chaudhary, was born with SCI… - Source
The FDA has done a good job getting weight loss and erectile dysfunction products of the market that are adulterated with real drugs. So it’s puzzling why it hasn’t acted on thermogenic fat-burners and mind-sharpening supplements that contain the amphetamine relative, BMPEA. - Source
With Ambedkar Day just two days away, Dalit writer Sheoraj Singh talks about his displaced childhood and the milestones he has crossed. - Source
There’s much stock market excitement about the various Chinese internet companies, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, and their move into what is essentially online banking. Will they be able to capute significant percentages of the market, just how dang big is that market anyway and which of them is going to do best? We, here at this particular part of Forbes, don’t do technology nor stock markets, but macroeconomics. And truth of the matter here is that all of those things are going to depend upon the Chinese Goivernment’s macroeconomic policy making. Specifically, how much are they going to relax the country’s current financial repression and how much are they going to allow these companies to arbitrage around it? Absolutely nothing else is going to have an effect as large as that one single decision. - Source
If you had to pick your own list of the top 13 best science books by scientists for the general reader… what would they be? - Source
It’s an odd thing to be discussing a 72.2% Friday-to-Friday drop as “good,” but such is the case with Furious 7. The smash sequel earned $18.8 million on its second Friday, down 71% from its whopping $67.4m Friday debut, which included $15.8m in Thursday previews. The film’s Friday-to-Friday drop was slightly higher than the 69% second Friday drop for Fast Five but slightly ahead of the 72.3% Friday drop for Fast & Furious 6 back in 2013. Random chance and all aside, the film’s second Friday was nearly double the $10m second Fridays of the last two installments, and the film soared over the $200m domestic mark on its eighth day, becoming on of fifteen films to do so in that many days or less. Its eight-day $210.7m cume puts it at number nine on said list. Its $18.8m Friday is the 14th biggest “second Friday” (day eight or day ten of wide release) in history, with almost all of the other higher figures coming from prime summer months or holiday-inflated late November/December slots. - Source
