Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

XKCD author Randall Munroe is no stranger to answering strange science questions, but his latest book, How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, might be his most practical science guide yet.

How To, which hits stores today, is a quasi-sequel to Munroe’s book What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which was based on a series of blog posts Munroe wrote as a spinoff of his webcomic.

How To aims to be a more practical guide by using math and science — taken to the absolute extreme, in Munroe’s typical style — to answer basic questions about life, like how to charge a cellphone, how to take a selfie, or how to mail a package. While you might not be building a machine gun-powered…

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Increased p53, the well-known tumor-suppressor protein, can predict whether malaria-infected children will develop fever or other symptoms, suggests a new study. The authors say the findings could lead to new strategies for dampening the harmful inflammatory responses associated with some infections and identifying individuals who might be at risk for such responses.

Researchers uncover why some organisms can eat anything — ‘generalists — and others have strict diets — ‘specialists’. Using different Drosophila species the team found that diversity in diet stems from the flexible response to carbohydrates regulated by the TGF-?/Activin signaling pathway. Specialists accumulated metabolites under high carbohydrate conditions, culminating in reduced adaptation, while generalists do not.

Prospective digital data storage devices rely on novel fundamental magnetic phenomena. The better we understand these phenomena, the better the memory chips and hard drives we can build. Physicists have now completed the essential fundamental work for future storage devices: Using a creative approach of shaping magnetic thin films in curved architectures, they validated the presence of chiral responses in a commonly used magnetic material.

A new beaked whale species Berardius minimus, which has been long postulated by local whalers in Hokkaido, Japan, has been confirmed.

The biggest game at E3 this year was a remake of an old one. The much-anticipated, long-in-development remake of Final Fantasy VII seemed like it was everywhere. Fans were able to play it for the first time, Square Enix finally unveiled the release date, and it even turned its show floor booth into a life-sized re-creation of the gritty cyberpunk metropolis Midgar. Fittingly, the massive presence of FFVII Remake largely overshadowed another major announcement: the original game’s successor, Final Fantasy VIII, was being remastered for modern consoles.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Ever since its debut on the original PlayStation in 1999, FFVIII has always felt like the black sheep of the franchise. Today, it’s getting something of a…

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A previously unknown type of light wave has been discovered by researchers, based on the pioneering work of a 19th century scientist.

And it’s the Nike Plus version, too.