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Woodpeckers operate at an extreme level, boring through solid wood with forces more than 30 times their own weight and drilling up to 13 times a second. How do they never miss a beat while head banging so hard?

It turns out that the birds tense up their entire body to smash through wood, letting out short, explosive grunts with each strike, report Brown University biologist Nicholas Antonson and his colleagues in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “Woodpeckers really are nature’s hammer in a sense,” Antonson says.

To study how the birds tap, the researchers first humanely captured eight wild Downy Woodpeckers and carefully inserted electrodes into their muscles in the laboratory. The electrodes fed into a tiny, fitted backpack that recorded electrical signals from contracting muscles as the birds pecked. They also checked whether the woodpeckers held their breath during exertion (like weight lifters tend to do) or exhaled (like tennis players) while striking the wood by examining airflow through the birds’ air sacs—small, balloonlike structures that help them breathe in and out. By matching these measurements with high-speed videos, the scientists tracked the woodpeckers’ taps down to every four milliseconds.

Instead of using a single muscle to control the action, woodpeckers activated “every muscle from the head to the tail,” Antonson says. The birds used their powerful hip flexors to push forward, clenched their tail and abs to prepare for the strike, and stiffened the back of their head and neck on contact—similar to the way you might stiffen the back of your wrist when you hammer a nail. They then engaged a different set of hip and neck muscles to draw back.

The birds also perfectly paired their pecks with sharp exhalations “as another means of stabilizing their core muscles and powering through those strikes,” Antonson explains. “To be able to breathe out 13 times per second and inhale on the order of 40 milliseconds is really impressive.” Songbirds, which aren’t closely related to woodpeckers, are the only other birds known to so precisely time their breaths, which they do as they sing.

“Pecking is a full-body exercise,” says University of Alabama biologist Nicole Ackermans, who studies brain damage in woodpeckers and head-butting sheep. Coordinating “micro breaths” with muscle clenching and creating “this hammerlike structure in their whole body is such a unique approach,” she adds.

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Please note: While Dry January can help you temporarily reduce your alcohol intake and improve your health, if you need help cutting back on drinking or think you might have an alcohol dependency, visit the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for additional resources.

Benefits of Dry January

It’s absolutely no secret that alcohol can take a toll on your body. Alcohol can affect virtually all of your organs, from your brain to your heart to, of course, your liver. Alcohol consumption is linked to certain cancers, suppressed immunity, digestive problems, and more. 

Reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption can improve your health in many ways — but it might sound silly to give up alcohol for a month, because what can 31 days do? However, research suggests that taking short breaks from alcohol can do wonders for your health. 

If your New Year’s resolution is to cut back on or quit alcohol, Dry January is a great place to start, especially since you won’t be alone in giving up alcohol for the month. However, you may be wondering: Are there any health benefits that come with swapping alcoholic drinks for nonalcoholic beverages for only one month? We have good news: The answer is yes, and these are the following advantages you may experience from a wellbeing standpoint.

Please note: While Dry January can help you temporarily reduce your alcohol intake and improve your health, if you need help cutting back on drinking or think you might have an alcohol dependency, visit the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for additional resources.

Benefits of Dry January

It’s absolutely no secret that alcohol can take a toll on your body. Alcohol can affect virtually all of your organs, from your brain to your heart to, of course, your liver. Alcohol consumption is linked to certain cancers, suppressed immunity, digestive problems, and more. 

This story is part of 12 Days of Tips, helping you make the most of your tech, home, and health during the holiday season.

Reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption can improve your health in many ways — but it might sound silly to give up alcohol for a month, because what can 31 days do? However, research suggests that taking short breaks from alcohol can do wonders for your health. 

If you try Dry January, you might experience: 

• Improved sleep
• More alertness and reduced daytime fatigue
• Fewer headaches 
• Better focus and productivity 
• Improved exercise performance 
• More good moods and fewer mood swings
• Weight loss
• Stronger immune system
• Increased hydration

Why do people do Dry January? 

People choose to do Dry January for a variety of reasons. You might consider trying Dry January if: 

• You’re trying to reach a health-related goal. For instance, avoiding alcohol may help you lose weight and improve physical fitness performance. 
• You want to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol. 
• You’ve been drinking more than usual lately and want to reset. 
• You’re supporting a friend or family member who wants to quit drinking alcohol.
• You just want to see how it feels to be sober for a month.

How to do Dry January

In theory, Dry January sounds simple: Just stop drinking alcohol, right? However, even people who reserve booze for special occasions might struggle to make it a full month with no alcohol.

Try these tips to make Dry January go smoothly: 

• Commit to the month with a friend (or a few). You can all help hold each other accountable. 

• Inform your friends and family that you’re participating in Dry January ahead of time, and keep reinforcing it so they know not to offer you drinks — because sometimes, saying “no” is the hardest part. 

• Stock up on non-alcoholic beverages (listed below) to enjoy in place of your favorite alcoholic beverages. 

• Choose different activities to fill the time you’d normally spend drinking. For example, instead of watching TV and drinking wine, try playing a board game, reading a book, completing a puzzle, calling a loved one, or drawing a picture. Learning a new skill can help you stay occupied. 

• Invite your friends to non-alcoholic outings, such as hikes, craft sessions, movies, or dinner dates.

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Even a month of giving up alcoholic drinks can give your health a boost. Getty Images

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When people find that they are having a hard time making new friends, they often blame their own awkwardness — some failure on their part. As a sociologist who studies how people connect, I’ve interviewed more than 150 people about friendship. One woman told me a typical story: She had moved to a new town after college and said that the conversations she struck up at coffee shops, work, and yoga didn’t seem to go anywhere. Forging new relationships felt hopeless. “I’m not good at it,” she said.

Yet she, like most of us, could pinpoint times in her life when making friends seemed easier. Across two decades of studying friendship, I’ve found that people’s ability to make new friends doesn’t come and go at random. Instead, it reflects, in large part, the strength of what I call the “friendship market” they are in.

In a thriving friendship market, a majority of people in a particular setting are interested in “buying” or “selling” friendship. For example, middle schoolers merging into a new high school, or first-year students arriving at college. New connections abound.

But we spend much of our lives in weaker friendship markets, where people are open to conversation, but not connection. A parent shows up at a P.T.A. meeting, and even if others are friendly, they keep their distance. Or people moves to a new city for work, and acquaintances don’t turn toward their bids for connection. Even intentionally putting yourself out there doesn’t inspire reciprocation if a friendship market has closed: Others already have fully formed friend groups.

In adulthood, open friendship markets become harder to find. But there’s a key to finding new ones: a shifting sense of self. We define ourselves through our relationships with friends. These connections help us to construct our desired selves, who we are, and who we are becoming.

The key, then, is not just to start an activity or join a club so you can meet new people. It’s to join one related to a new sense of self or an identity you’re looking to deepen. Pregnant women, for example, will look for friendships in prenatal classes — not only to find people who understand their experience but also to reaffirm their emerging identity as a mom.

Milestones make friendship markets easier to find, but markets exist for all sorts of identities, big and small. One woman I spoke to heard about a coffee club as she was starting to consider herself a coffee aficionado. Another found friendship in a pride club; although she had come out as gay years before, she felt that her queer identity was becoming a more important part of who she was. Friends connected to emerging identities bring out new sides of us. One interviewee told me that she was not religious growing up. As she started to explore Christianity, she joined a Bible study group and said she was her most “upbeat” and “cheery” self with the friends she made there.

We’ve all seen how much closer you can feel to someone when your identities change together. I worked in an office for five years with someone whom I did not know well until we were both pregnant together, both first-time moms with the same due date. We ended up taking walks, having lunches, and getting to know each other as we talked through our excitement and worries about the ways our lives would change. As our identities shifted, our friendships did as well.

Even embracing less favorable identities opens up new markets. Several people I interviewed told me about a group for single parents. Remembering the challenging period after their breakups, club members went out of their way to welcome new entrants. One member noted how her new friends offered her support as she raised a child on her own. Eventually, she got married, which booted her from the club, but two people she met there remained among her closest friends years later.

To be clear, being aware of “friendship markets” does not mean that those friendships are transactional. Friendships are not commodities or disposable. But they are also not always readily available. Everyone needs to make sure to seek them out, optimizing the possibility of connection in our busy, sometimes isolated-feeling lives.

I recommend a New Year’s resolution: Do the work to find new friendship markets in 2026, rather than waiting passively for new connections to find you. Even those with active social lives and healthy friendships benefit from new relationships that reaffirm who they are. These connections have been proven to bring us joy, fulfill our basic need to connect, and help us to live healthier, longer lives.

So the next time making new friends feels challenging, remember the structural role of friendship markets rather than blaming yourself. If you take a class not just to learn a new skill but also to deepen a part of yourself, you may find your people.

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Aude Bertrand

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Space Forge is on a mission to manufacture semiconductors in space—no humans required. And on Wednesday, the U.K.-based aerospace startup announced that it had taken a major step toward that goal by creating plasma, or superheated gas, aboard a commercial satellite for the first time.

Semiconductors require extremely precise conditions to make, and both NASA and industry groups have argued that the microgravity environment of space is better for their manufacturing than that of Earth. The reasons why are varied, but part of it has to do with how silicon behaves in such an environment—it’s just easier to get the material to adhere to the structure needed to make a semiconductor.

Indeed, Space Forge’s feat builds off previous work done on the International Space Station, says Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

“The key difference here is that this was done uncrewed, without any people, on an entirely commercial spacecraft,” he says. “This demonstration shows that semiconductor crystal manufacturing can happen in space just using machines.”

“Keeping people alive in space is expensive,” Swope adds. “If machines can do that work instead, it brings down the cost of doing manufacturing in space.”

Space Forge CEO Joshua Western said in a press release that the company’s work proves that the right environment for semiconductor manufacturing “can be achieved on a dedicated, commercial satellite—opening the door to a completely new manufacturing frontier.” Space Forge launched its satellite, ForgeStar-1, in June. Its microwave-sized factory includes a furnace that the company showed reached temperatures of around 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius).

Other companies and research teams are getting in on the budding space manufacturing industry. In 2024 another startup, Varda Space Industries, demonstrated that it was possible to grow crystals of ritonavir, an antiviral drug, on an uncrewed commercial spacecraft and return them to Earth. And researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich recently 3D-printed human tissues in microgravity.

In-space manufacturing is in its “early days,” Libby Jackson, head of space at the Science Museum in England, told the BBC. But testing and proving technology like Space Forge’s “really opens the door for an economically viable product, where things can be made in space and return to Earth and have use and benefit to everybody on Earth.”

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Narumon Bowonkitwanchai via Getty Images

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A home safe lets you keep your important information and small valuables in one convenient, private, burglar-proof location. Spend more for a fire- and water-resistant safe, and you can keep these items secure in most catastrophic events.

A break-in, flood, or house fire can cause you to lose things that can’t be easily replaced: Private and personal data, documents, electronics, heirlooms, and keepsakes. Especially if you are in a place prone to natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, you should consider moving these nine things into a home safe and out of your safety deposit box, wallet, and drawers.

Why a home safe and not a safe deposit box at a bank?

There are many reasons why a fireproof safe at home is preferable to a bank box. It’s not a good idea to store original copies of documents you may require immediate access to, such as passports, in a safe deposit box.

Bank safe deposit boxes are only accessible during branch operating hours and are typically sealed when the bank receives a death notice. To open a sealed safe deposit box, estate representatives must provide court papers to the bank.

FDIC insurance does not cover cash in a safe deposit box. The FDIC only insures the deposits in bank accounts, but not the contents of their safe deposit boxes.

Tip: Items in your home are typically covered by your renter or homeowners insurance policy, and the contents of a bank safe deposit box are rarely covered.

What should you store in a fireproof safe?

This is just a selection of the precious objects and important documents that many people have lying around the house or otherwise stored inappropriately that could cost a lot of time and money to replace. Installing a fireproof, waterproof safe now might prove more cost-effective than replacing all these items (and dealing with the hassle of insurance companies).

1. Safety deposit box keys

While we’re suggesting moving some items into a home safe, you may still keep other items at the bank. So, if you do store valuables in a bank safe deposit box, you’ll want to make sure you keep the keys to it in a secure place.

Tip: Keep copies of car and house keys. They aren’t expensive to replace (unless you lose your last copy, of course), but in the wrong hands, they provide easy access to your home, car, garage, and shed.

2. Cash and credit cards

The most obvious item to keep in a safe, after safe deposit box keys, is cash. Even if you only keep small amounts around the house for emergencies, it’s better off somewhere protected instead of in a sock drawer.

Infrequently used debit cards, credit cards, and key cards — these little bits of plastic easily melt and get lost without notice. Carry only the cards you use; you can’t lose what you don’t have in your purse or wallet.

3. Social Security cards, passports, and original birth certificates

COVID-19 shutdowns keep many people from accessing important identifying documents, such as passports and birth certificates, that were stored in banks. While these documents certainly need to be secured, they shouldn’t be anywhere you can’t access them readily. After all, these documents can be a hassle and time-consuming to replace.

Passports and original birth certificates are essential to proving your identity, birth date, and citizenship, and can also stand in for all ID purposes if your wallet or purse is stolen or lost. Your Social Security card is vital to establish eligibility for benefits.

Tip: When traveling abroad, experts advise carrying a photocopy of your passport and leaving the original in a hotel safe.

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

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In August, a clandestine team of C.I.A. officers slipped into Venezuela with a plan to collect information on Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, whom the Trump administration had labeled a narco-terrorist.

The C.I.A. team moved about Caracas, remaining undetected for months while it was in the country. The intelligence gathered about the Venezuelan leader’s daily movements — combined with a human source close to Mr. Maduro and a fleet of stealth drones flying secretly above — enabled the agency to map out minute details about his routines.

It was a highly dangerous mission. With the U.S. embassy closed, the C.I.A. officers could not operate under the cloak of diplomatic cover. But it was highly successful. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that because of the intelligence gathered by the team, the United States knew where Mr. Maduro moved, what he ate, and even what pets he kept.

That information was critical to the ensuing military operation, a pre-dawn raid Saturday by elite Army Delta Force commandos, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.

The result was a tactically precise and swiftly executed operation that extracted Mr. Maduro from his country with no loss of American life, a result heralded by President Trump amid larger questions about the legality and rationale for the U.S. actions in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump has justified what was named Operation Absolute Resolve as a strike against drug trafficking. But Venezuela is hardly as big a player in the international drug trade as other countries. Officials had previously told congressional leaders that their objective in Venezuela was not regime change. And Mr. Trump has long said he opposes U.S. foreign occupations.

Yet on Saturday, the president proclaimed that American officials were in charge of Venezuela, and that the United States would rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure.

In contrast to messy U.S. interventions of the past — by the military in Panama or the C.I.A. in Cuba — the operation to grab Mr. Maduro was virtually flawless, according to multiple officials familiar with the details, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the plans.

In the run-up, Delta Force commandos rehearsed the extraction inside a full-scale model of Mr. Maduro’s compound that the Joint Special Operations Command had built in Kentucky. They practiced blowing through steel doors at ever-faster paces.

The military had been readying for days to execute the mission, waiting for good weather conditions and a time when the risk of civilian casualties would be minimized.

Amid the heightened tensions, Mr. Maduro had been rotating between six and eight locations, and the United States did not always learn where he intended to stay until late in the evenings. To execute the operation, the U.S. military needed confirmation that Mr. Maduro was at the compound they had trained to attack.

In the days leading up to the raid, the United States deployed increasing numbers of Special Operations aircraft, specialized electronic warfare planes, armed Reaper drones, search-and-rescue helicopters, and fighter jets to the region — last-minute reinforcements that analysts said indicated the only question was when military action would happen, not if.

The United States had made other moves intended to ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Maduro and prepare for the raid to capture him. A week earlier, the C.I.A. had carried out a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela. And for months, the U.S. military has conducted a legally disputed campaign that has destroyed dozens of boats and killed at least 115 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

In recent days, Mr. Maduro tried to head off an American raid, offering the United States access to Venezuelan oil, Mr. Trump said Saturday. A U.S. official said the deal, offered on Dec. 23, would have had Mr. Maduro leave the country for Turkey. But Mr. Maduro angrily rejected that plan, the official said. It was clear, the official added, that Mr. Maduro was not serious.

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