I was not sure what to expect from Diadem’s new BluCore paddle, which is among a handful of new paddles that have replaced the standard honeycomb polymer core with closed-cell foam—they sent me a sample of the stuff, and it looks like you could make a gas station cooler out of it. That foam is…
Diamond says the problem involves two parts of a person’s working memory: prospective and semantic. Prospective memory helps us remember to do something in the future, while semantic memory allows drivers to make the trip from work to home on autopilot, where they arrive without remembering clear details of how they got there. Prospective and…
A foundation created by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, will fund a project to send drone boats out into the rough ocean around Antarctica to collect data that could help solve a crucial climate puzzle. The project is part of a suite of funding announced today from Schmidt Sciences, which Schmidt and his…
During this year’s World Cup, one scene repeats itself game after game: Several players take the field with holes in the calves of their socks. Social media is rife with theories about the supposed competitive advantage this might give them. But the practice isn’t new. It has been seen at the European Championships, the Olympic…
Juggling schedules for my family of five is a constant source of stress. Every day I deal with calendars for three kids in three different schools, plus their extra-curricular activities and the constantly evolving work schedules of me and my husband. All the meal planning, grocery shopping, and general house upkeep seem never ending. For…
I will say that I think this product could be neat in a few scenarios. If you like to dye your own extensions, or you continually change the color of a streak and don’t need to buy oodles of full-size dye containers, or you’re a parent with kids that are always dip-dying their bleached ends,…
Main theme: Whether you’ve been saving up all year or plan to “buy now, pay later,” Consumer Reports’ “Talking Carts” is here with smart tips and practical tricks to help you save money and shop with confidence. In this podcast episode, Talking Carts hosts senior home and appliances writer Tanya Christian and marketplace equity reporter…
In our lab, CR’s engineers put vacuum cleaners through a set of tough tests to evaluate how well a model picks up dirt, how much debris it retains, how easy it is to maneuver, and how noisy it is. We embed sand and pet hair into carpets to see how effective the appliance is at…
“If you live in an apartment with all hard-surface flooring, you could get one of the stick vacuums that are very compact,” says Frank Spinelli, who oversees CR’s vacuum testing. “If you have a lot of carpeting, then you’re going to need a vacuum that can deep-clean, but you could get by with a bagless…
When a new batch of refrigerators comes into our labs, we start by setting the ambient temperature in our climate-controlled chambers to 70° F to simulate conditions in a typical home kitchen. Then we determine which thermostat setting on each refrigerator will get the internal temperature in the center of the unit to between 36°…