Alina Bradford

If you've been holding off on adding smart home features to your dwelling, now is the best time to start.
Smart devices are smarter and simpler to use than ever before, making them easier to integrate into your everyday life. Here are my top four smart home devices you can install without much effort and still reap a lot of benefits.

Google Home Hub ($129 at Walmart) doesn't come with much instruction on how to use it. The Google Home ($99 at Walmart) app isn't all that much help either, since it isn't exactly easy to navigate, and many settings are hidden deep in menus. Here are some features you should be using.

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Many different sensory devices are used to determine the position and orientation of an object. The most common of these sensors are the gyroscope and the accelerometer. Though similar in purpose, they measure different things. When combined into a single device, they can create a very powerful array of information.
What is a gyroscope?
A gyroscope is a device that uses Earth's gravity to help determine orientation. Its design consists of a freely-rotating disk called a rotor, mounted on...

Whether it's to clear all of your old saved bookmarks and settings in one clean sweep, or to stop a glitching Firefox Sync from restoring deleted bookmarks, you can quickly delete your Firefox account in just a few minutes.

Rainforests are found all over the world — in West and Central Africa, South and Central America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia and Australia — on every continent except Antarctica. They are vitally important, producing most of the oxygen we breathe and providing habitat for half of the planet's flora and fauna.
Types of rainforests
The term "rainforest" has a wide classification. Typically, rainforests are lush, humid, hot stretches of land covered in tall, broadleaf evergreen trees, usuall...

Acid rain, or acid deposition, is a broad term that includes any form of precipitation that contains acidic components, such as sulfuric acid or nitric acid, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The precipitation is not necessarily wet or liquid; the definition includes dust, gasses, rain, snow, fog and hail. The type of acid rain that contains water is called wet deposition. Acid rain formed with dust or gasses is called dry deposition.
Causes
The term acid rain was c...

You already know that the Instant Pot can be used to make a wide range of dishes, but there's more than just stew, chili and soup. You can make hard-"boiled" eggs, bread, cake and "rotisserie" chicken in the wonder cooker, too.
Read more on Chowhound: How to use the Instant Pot to make your life easier
Pressure cooked hard-boiled eggs
In a pressure cooker you can't technically boil eggs, but you can steam them. This comes with a distinct advantage: The shells slide right off when you peel the...

The Instant Pot is a pressure cooker that also also sautés, slow cooks, makes poultry tender and juicy and can even be used for canning. While all the buttons, valves settings and accessories may seem daunting, we've rounded up some of our best tips to make you a skilled Instapot user.
The basics
But first, an explainer
Whether you're eyeing an Instant Pot or are a longtime owner, start with this explainer about the Instant Pot. It covers how it works, what you can cook in it and basic tips, ...

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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic lung disease that makes breathing progressively more difficult. The disease affects about 11 million people in the United States, and it is the third leading cause of death in the country, according to the American Lung Association.
COPD is considered the intersection of three related conditions: chronic bronchitis, chronic asthma and emphysema, Dr. Neal Chaisson, who practices pulmonary medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, told Live...

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Blood sugar, or glucose, is the main sugar found in blood. The body gets glucose from the food we eat. This sugar is an important source of energy and provides nutrients to the body's organs, muscles and nervous system. The absorption, storage and production of glucose is regulated constantly by complex processes involving the small intestine, liver and pancreas.
Glucose enters the bloodstream after a person has eaten carbohydrates. The endocrine system helps keep the bloodstream's gluco...

Though there isn't a baking mode on the Instant Pot, you can still use it to make soft, warm bread that beats a bakery every time. It can steam cook quick breads by pressure cooking them and help yeast breads rise at a record pace. The results? Mmm.
Read more: The complete guide to using your Instant Pot and What all the buttons on your Instant Pot do
Cooking fast bread
Fast bread typically calls for bread recipes that have leavening options other than yeast to make them fluffy. These types o...

Paul McCartney revealed in a 1986 interview in Musician magazine that John Lennon once asked him and his wife, Linda, "You fancy getting the trepanning done?" He was referring to trepanation surgeries that put holes in the skull using hand drills, cutting or scraping techniques. "Trepan" comes from the Greek word trypanon, which, fittingly, means "a borer."
Trepanation is really an old term, also known as trephination, according to Dr. Raphael Davis, a neurosurgeon and co-director of the Neur...

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Though the thymus is a little-known organ in the body, it does some very important things. It is part of the lymphatic system, along with the tonsils, adenoids and spleen, and it's also part of the endocrine system.
Function
The thymus produces progenitor cells, which mature into T-cells (thymus-derived cells). The body uses T-cells help destroy infected or cancerous cells. T-cells created by the thymus also help other organs in the immune system grow properly.
These cells are so vital, ...

If you want to save all of your Instagram data so you can move to another platform -- or just keep a copy of everything -- now you can. This comes as part of the company's compliance to Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy rules, which are designed to give users more control over their data.
Right now, the data download feature is mostly available on the web version, but it is rolling out to iOS and Android soon. Here's how to download your data through the web tool....

Alexa now has the capability to learn and recall for you. She can remember birthdays, anniversaries, clothing sizes, names and more.
Get Alexa to remember special days
Never forget a birthday, anniversary or special day again when Alexa has your back. For birthdays, simply say, for example, "Alexa, remember Jonathan's birthday is May 17." Then, when you need her help, say, "Alexa, when is Jonathan's birthday?" She'll reply, "You asked me to remember. Jonathan's birthday is May 17."
For annive...