How the Luxury Fashion Industry Became All Business

"Fashion Week looks glamorous, but as it drew to a close in Paris last Wednesday — following shows in New York, London and Milan — it became clear that the runway has become a racetrack."

"The pace of the multibillion-dollar fashion industry has changed in recent years from luxurious to laborious. Even the seasons have accelerated."

"'In the past, there were two distinct seasons — there was a fall and a spring,' says Julie Gilhart, a consultant for luxury brands who was fashion director for Barneys New York for 18 years. 'Now you have pre-fall, fall, resort/holiday, pre-spring and spring.'"

Researchers Think There's A Warm Ocean On Enceladus

"Saturn's moon Enceladus is a mystery. From Earth it looks tiny and cold, and yet it's not a dead hunk of rock. Passing spacecraft see trenches and ridges, similar to Earth, and in 2005 NASA's Cassini mission spotted ice geysers streaming from its south pole."

"'The moon is actually alive in a sense,' says Sean Hsu with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder."

"Beneath the surface, most researchers believe it even has a liquid ocean. Now Hsu and his colleagues have found new evidence that it's a downright balmy ocean."

Climate Change May Be Destroying World's Oldest Mummies

"There's a problem with the mummies at the University of Tarapacá's archaeological museum in northern Chile."

"They're turning into a black oozy substance."

"Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences says scientists have found that Chile's famous 7,000-year-old Chinchorro mummies are being eaten by bacteria — and that climate change could be the culprit."

"Nearly 120 mummies housed at the university's museum near the city of Arica are affected. The Harvard researchers were called in to examine the rotting mummies and found that the region's increasing humidity is allowing microbes to flourish."

Explorers Discover Ancient Lost City in Honduran Jungle

"For almost a century, explorers have searched the jungles of Honduras for a legendary lost city known as the White City, or the City of the Monkey God."

"A team of explorers — including archaeologists and a documentary filmmaker — have just returned from an expedition in person, after using a new technology to search for evidence of ruins by plane."

"They believe they have discovered an important ancient city, though the archeologists, including Chris Fisher from Colorado State University, do not think it is the White City of legend (despite some news coverage suggesting otherwise)."

Meet Joseph Duveen the Savvy Art Dealer Who Sold European Masterpieces

"British art dealer Joseph Duveen once said, rather astutely: 'Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money.'"

"Starting in the late 1800s, in London first, later New York, the Duveen family sold precious European Old Master paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, to rich American collectors. For the first half of the 20th century, Duveen was arguably the world's greatest art dealer and some of the greatest works of art in America got here thanks to the Duveens."

"American mega-millionaire Norton Simon (whose businesses included Hunt-Wesson Foods, Canada Dry and Avis) started collecting art in 1954. In the 1960s, the business mogul bought up the House of Duveen lock, stock and barrel. In Southern California, an exhibition at Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum tracks the Duveen-Simon connection. It was an ambitious act of commerce — and, maybe, love."

Developers Continue Push To Make Virtual Reality Mainstream

I had a lot of experiences this past week: I shot birds out of the sky with my eyes, my fingers were on fire, I flew on top of a drone over the arctic and looked into the jaws of a dragon.

I did all this without leaving San Francisco, at the 2015 Game Developers Conference, where the people who make the video games we love to play come to the city by the thousands to check out the latest hardware and software for making games.

Many others were also trying the latest in virtual reality, a technology that's been talked about since the 1980s, but may finally be on its way to becoming a reality in the real world.

The Lusitania Mystery: Why British Codebreakers Didn't Try to Save It

"One hundred years ago, 128 Americans died among more than a thousand in the sinking of what was then the greatest ocean liner in the world. In response, the U.S. entered World War I."

"That's the story of the Lusitania, right? But Erik Larson, one of this country's most successful narrators of nonfiction, now retells the story a lot of people think they know. His new book, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, has an appreciation for the lives that were lost and the impact the ship had on history."

"Larson tells NPR's Scott Simon that before that day in 1915, the Lusitania was seen as invulnerable: 'At the time, it was the fastest and most glamorous ocean liner then in service. And, you know, given the hubris of the time, [it] was thought to be so fast and so large that no submarine A) could catch it, B) could sink it. In fact, [Winston] Churchill was very skeptical as to whether the Germans would ever use a submarine against civilian shipping. He didn't think it was possible: It was inhumane; it violated all the rules of naval warfare that existed, at least up until that point.'"

With Oil Prices So Low What's That Fuel Surcharge For Exactly

"When oil prices shot up a few years ago, many transportation and delivery businesses started adding fuel surcharges to their prices."

"Now, fuel prices are plunging, but lots of those surcharges still linger, and consumer advocates are crying foul."

"The drop in the cost of oil is a huge factor in the airline industry, where 30 percent of all expenses are for fuel. But airlines, along with other industries with large fuel expenses, have been slow to respond with lower prices."

The Icebergs Are Talking: We Just Have to Listen

"If a glacier cracks and nobody hears it, does it still make a sound?"

"'Oh, they moan and they groan,' says Grant Deane, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 'They crackle and rumble and fizz, and they have all kinds of amazing sounds that they make.'"

"Deane is one of the authors of a new study that interprets the acoustics of glacial melting."

"'Yes, it's like they're speaking to us, but it's a language that we don't yet understand well,' he says."

So Deane and his team set out to find what the glaciers are saying. They used underwater microphones to record the sound of massive sheets of ice breaking away from glaciers — a phenomenon called calving — and they used time-lapse photography to observe how the glaciers changed above water.

Diabetes Technology Inches Closer To An Artificial Pancreas

"Every person who uses insulin to manage diabetes wants what they don't have — a replacement for their malfunctioning pancreas. And though the technology isn't yet to the point of creating an artificial pancreas, it's getting a lot closer."

"Just last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a mobile app-based system that can monitor a person's sugar levels remotely. Parents can monitor a child's sugar while she or he is in school, for example, providing greater peace of mind."

"That technology is the latest step in an evolution aimed at letting people manage diabetes without the burden of calibrating insulin doses themselves. So far we have devices that deliver insulin and devices that continuously monitor blood sugar. Getting those two pieces of equipment to talk to each other would make the process safer and simpler. That's the technology that people really want. And that's starting to happen."

Balloonists Crossing Pacific Set Distance Record

"Two balloonists have unofficially left a distance record in their wake as they head east over the Pacific Ocean. They lifted off from Japan, and now they're getting ready for a landing on Saturday somewhere on Mexico's Baja peninsula."

"American Troy Bradley and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev, dubbed the "Two Eagles," surpassed a 5,209-mile distance record for gas balloons on Thursday. The previous record was set in 1981 by Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, Ron Clark and Rock Aoki aboard Double Eagle V, which also launched from Japan. (In 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones circumnavigated in a hybrid helium/hot-air balloon, the Breitling Orbiter 3.)"

Where Is All That Excess Oil Going?

"There's a term traders use when the price of a commodity like oil has fallen because of oversupply but seems guaranteed to rise again."

"It's a market that's "in contango," says Brenda Shaffer, an energy specialist at Georgetown University. "It almost sounds like a sort of great oil dance or something."

"And Shaffer says that some oil speculators see an oil market that is in contango in a major way."

"'Some people out there think that oil is going to get more expensive so it's worthwhile now to buy oil, lock it in, and have those supplies, have them stored and have them available to sell a few months down the line, if you actually believe it's going to go up,' she says."

Southern California's Water Supply Threatened By Next Major Quake

"Southern California gets the vast majority of its water from four aqueducts that flow from the north, but all of them cross the San Andreas Fault."

That means millions of people are just one major earthquake away from drying out for a year or more.

"'It's a really concerning issue for the city of Los Angeles,' says Craig Davis, an engineer with the LA Department of Water and Power, which oversees the LA aqueduct."

"Research shows that a magnitude 7.8 quake on the San Andreas Fault could sever all four aqueducts at once, cutting off more than 70 percent of the water sustaining Southern California."

How Do Some Highly Paid Athletes Go Bankrupt?

"Former All-Star point guard Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers, the story goes, hated luggage so much he used to buy new outfits every time his team went on a road trip. Needless to say, he's had some financial troubles."

"And he's not alone among pro athletes in financial profligacy. According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated story, as many as 60 percent of U.S. professional basketball players faced bankruptcy or serious financial hardships within just a few years of retiring."

"The leagues have stepped up financial literacy education and other programs aimed at stemming the embarrassing tide of financial ruin, but what if there were a way to figure out which pro athletes were most likely to go bankrupt, so you could try to prevent it from happening in the first place?"

Is There Something Uncanny About Machines That Can Think?

"Thinking machines are consistently in the news these days, and often a topic of discussion here at 13.7. Last week, Alva Noë came out as a singularity skeptic, and three of us contributed to Edge.org's annual question for 2015: What do you think about machines that think?"

"In response to the Edge.org question, I argued that we shouldn't be chauvinists when it comes to defining thinking — that is, we should resist the temptation to restrict what counts as thinking to "thinking like adult humans" or "thinking like contemporary computers." Marcelo Gleiser suggested that we're already living as transhumans, enhanced by our technogadgets and medical improvements. And Stuart Kauffman considered Turing machines, the quantum and human choice."

Virtual Games Try To Generate Real Empathy For Faraway Conflict

"Video games are great for passing time or battling monsters with friends online. But the medium is also being used to explore complex stories and themes. It's even being used as form of journalistic storytelling, immersing people in places and events that can be hard to imagine."

"In a moment, University of Southern California student Allison Begalman is transported to a sunny street corner in Aleppo, Syria."

"Wearing bulky virtual reality goggles and headphones, she can see a cart selling food, cars and trucks passing by, and a group of people circled around a singing little girl."

Will Environmentalists Fall For Faux Fish Made From Plants

"It's a dead ringer for Ahi tuna sashimi. It cuts into glistening slivers that are firm and juicy. And it's got a savory bite."

"But this flesh-like food is not fish. It's made of tomato, and it's what San Francisco chef James Corwell hopes could be one small step toward saving imperiled species of fish, like bluefin tuna."

"'What I want is to create a great sushi experience without the tuna,' Corwell tells The Salt."

"To make this Tomato Sushi, he skins and removes the seeds from fresh Roma tomatoes. Then he vacuum seals them in sturdy plastic bags and cooks them in hot water for about an hour — a technique called sous-vide."

The Doomsday Clock Moves 2 Minutes Closer To Midnight

"The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) has moved the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to disaster. It now stands at three minutes before midnight."

"The BAS was created in 1945 by the scientists who had participated in the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. They came up with the Doomsday Clock in 1947, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, to alert the public to the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Midnight represents a global catastrophe."

"Since the clock's creation, it's been adjusted 18 times — sometimes farther from midnight to reflect improvement."

X-Rays Open Secrets Of Ancient Scrolls

"Researchers in Europe have managed to read from an ancient scroll buried when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. The feat is all the more remarkable because the scroll was never opened."

"The Vesuvius eruption famously destroyed Pompeii. But it also devastated the nearby town of Herculaneum. A villa there contained a library stacked with papyrus scrolls, and the hot gas and ash preserved them."

"Sort of."

"'To be honest, being from Kentucky, they look like pieces of coal," says Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky who has held some of the scrolls. "You look at the end and you can see the circular markings of how it's been rolled, but it looks more like the growth marks of a tree.'"

He Invented Instand Replay, the TV Trick We Now Take For Granted

Decades before the DVR and years before the first Super Bowl, a young television director decided to try something that would either amaze or confuse TV watchers: the instant replay.

With that, Tony Verna revolutionized the way we watch televised sports. He died Sunday at 81.

Over the course of his career, Verna produced or directed broadcasts of five Super Bowls, the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 1985 benefit concert, Live Aid.

But Verna's most important achievement lasted just a few seconds. During the 1963 Army vs. Navy football game in Philadelphia, Verna, then 29, tried something that had never been done before in a live TV broadcast.