Lexar marked its 30th anniversary by launching the Muse, an external SSD measuring just 3.8mm thick, which the company calls the world's thinnest portable drive. To achieve that slimness, it uses a proprietary magnetic SnapLink cable with pogo pins instead of a built-in port, plus an optional sleeve that lets the drive attach magnetically to a phone. The drive offers USB 10 Gbps speeds, with claimed reads up to 1,050 MB/s and writes up to 1,000 MB/s.
Tesla has started deploying its Cybercab, a robotaxi built without a steering wheel or pedals, on public roads in Austin. The rollout marks an early real-world test of the company's fully autonomous ride-hailing vehicle design.
Nvidia used IFA to confirm that PCs built around its RTX Spark Arm-based SoC will ship starting in October, with partners now including Lenovo and Acer alongside previously announced Microsoft, HP, Dell, Asus and MSI machines. The lineup includes a flagship 6,144-CUDA-core, 20-core Grace configuration with up to 128GB of unified memory, plus a lower-tier laptop-only chip with 5,120 CUDA cores and 18 CPU cores.
Once dismissed as inedible 'dog fruit' left for dogs to scavenge, avocados in India began gaining popularity after actress Shilpa Shetty publicised using them for skincare around 2011, sparking demand and rising prices. Plantations like Cottanad in Kerala's Wayanad region, which initially grew avocado trees only for shade, have since expanded cultivation to 40 acres, with output expected to grow fourfold within a few years.
RugOne unveiled the Xsnap 7 Pro, a rugged smartphone with IP68/IP69K ratings whose rear camera module detaches to work as a standalone action cam shooting 2.7K video at 30fps. The device launches on Kickstarter September 7 for €799 in limited quantities before a global release in October priced at $999.
Aqara used IFA to introduce a broad range of new smart lighting products, including the 4.6-foot Floor Lamp T1 with RGBIC lighting and 18 addressable zones, outdoor permanent lights, RGBIC string lights, an upgraded LED light strip, and second-generation downlights. All the new devices support Matter through Thread, letting them work with platforms like Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings, Home Assistant, and Homey. Aqara has not yet announced pricing or release dates for any of these products.
Physicians at Houston's Ben Taub Hospital have documented a cluster of previously undiagnosed kidney failure cases among young, otherwise healthy immigrant laborers from Mexico and Central America. Internist Ricardo Nuila suspects these cases resemble chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDu), a condition long seen among sugarcane workers in El Salvador and other Central American countries but never before confirmed in the United States. The patients, many employed in physically demanding outdoor jobs like roofing, painting, and road paving, now require dialysis several times a week to survive.
A newly launched interactive project lets users navigate biodiversity data by browsing taxonomic classifications from kingdom down to species level. The tool incorporates accepted species names as well as synonyms across all known forms of life, drawing on biodiversity observation records.
Two NIH employees say the agency has signed an agreement with the Department of Defense to transfer research projects, currently valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, from its infectious-diseases institute to military biodefence programs. The NIH is reportedly still selecting which projects to hand over and hopes to finalize the deal before the fiscal year ends in September, when certain funds would otherwise expire. NIH officials describe the move as separating civilian public-health work from defense-related priorities, while a former top HHS lawyer questions whether simply redirecting funds between agencies in this way is legally permissible.
Scientists linked ultra-precise optical atomic clocks located in four different nations and successfully compared their timekeeping with extremely high accuracy. The experiment demonstrated that these clocks, which are far more precise than the cesium clocks defining current international time standards, can be reliably synced across long distances.
Scientists used a citizen-science method of burying cotton underwear in soil for several months as a low-cost way to assess microbial activity, since healthier soil decomposes cotton fabric faster. Volunteers around the world dug up roughly 1,000 pairs and reported how much material had degraded, generating a broad dataset on soil condition.
An Entrepreneur opinion piece argues that traditional real estate marketing tactics — billboards, bus benches, follower counts and heavy social posting — are losing effectiveness as buyers and sellers increasingly research agents through AI-driven search rather than ads. The author contends that once a prospect finds an agent's name, they immediately check what others say about that person, making third-party validation more powerful than self-promotion. The piece urges agents to seek media mentions and press features rather than relying solely on their own channels.
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