“Hello, what brings you here today?” a doctor asks a patient. “I’m here for my checkup,” the patient responds. “Great, let’s start with some routine screening questions to see whether you have any risk factors we need to talk about,” the doctor says. “Do you exercise regularly? Do you smoke? Do you consume drugs or alcohol? Do you eat a healthy diet? Do you have access to a firearm inside or outside of your household?...
Russia’s moon cooperation plans are yet another space causality of the country’s ongoing attack against Ukraine. In an April 13 statement, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced it was severing cooperative activities with Russia on the upcoming Luna-25, 26 and 27 missions. The agency wrote that “the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions put in place represent a fundamental change of circumstances and make it impossible for ESA to implement the planned lunar cooperation....
Nearly two-thirds of Americans, mostly in Western states and on the Eastern seaboard, have endured more days of extreme summer heat over the past 10 years than in previous decades, a leading environmental group said in a study unveiled on Tuesday. The analysis compared daily summertime high temperatures recorded at thousands of U.S. government weather stations across the country from 2007 through 2016 with the same data in the years 1961 to 1990, and showed a pattern of more frequent extreme heat nationally....
A federal energy panel issued a blunt warning to shale gas drillers and their regulators today, saying they need to step up efforts to protect public health and the environment or risk a backlash that stifles further development. 201CConcerted and sustained action is needed to avoid excessive environmental impacts of shale gas production and the consequent risk of public opposition to its continuation and expansion,201D said members of the Energy Department2019s Shale Gas Subcommittee in a draft report released today....
During the Cold War the U.S. and Soviet Union had a gentlemen’s agreement to avoid targeting one another’s geostationary satellites, which are crucial for weather forecasts, satellite TV, global communications and, of course, military intelligence and surveillance. Decades later mistrust over military intentions in space has cast fresh uncertainty over the security of the numerous geostationary satellites orbiting more than 22,000 miles above Earth’s equator. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit stays “fixed” above the same region of Earth by traveling at the same speed as the planet’s rotation....
Building a body is not simple. Fish, frogs and people all start from a single cell that becomes, seemingly against many odds, a highly organized, very complicated creature. Fertilized eggs split into two cells that become four, then eight, 16 and—within a matter of weeks—tens of thousands of cells. By this point the original spherical ball has rearranged itself into an elongated shape, bulging rounder and thicker at one end, with a shallow furrow running along its length....
To blunt your next cold, try meditating or exercising now. A new study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that adults who practiced mindful meditation or moderately intense exercise for eight weeks suffered less from seasonal ailments during the following winter than those who did not exercise or meditate. The study appeared in the July issue of Annals of Family Medicine. Researchers recruited about 150 participants, 80 percent of them women and all older than 50, and randomly assigned them to three groups....
Extreme weather and climate-linked disasters have killed 410,000 people since 2010, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The group’s “World Disasters Report 2020” released yesterday says more frequent and severe catastrophes threaten to exacerbate humanitarian crises and lead to economic hardship even as global death counts drop because of steps to improve resilience. The relief organization warns that major disasters are increasingly happening in succession, such as the half-dozen typhoons and tropical storms that have hit Southeast Asia since early October....
A small, faint galaxy residing some 65 million light-years away has been threatening to upend scientists’ entire paradigm of dark matter—the supposedly ubiquitous particles thought to pervade the universe like a hidden cosmic skeleton. All galaxies should be surrounded by a more massive cloud of dark matter, the thinking goes, but a team of astronomers thought they had discovered a unicorn—a galaxy where the stars and gas are the only matter there....
As we age, it becomes harder and harder to recall names, dates—even where we put down our keys. Although we may fear the onset of Alzheimer’s, chances are, our recollective powers have dulled simply because we’re getting older—and our brains, like our bodies, are no longer in tip-top shape. But what is it that actually causes memory and other cognitive abilities to go soft with senescence? Previous research has shown that bundles of axons (tubular projections sent out by neurons to signal other nerve cells) wither over time....
Before the advent of electricity, the first computers were mechanical, with the Difference Engine invented by Charles Babbage tackling logarithms and trigonometry 150 years ago. Now advanced quantum computers might go back to mechanical roots, using rows of nanometer-scale bars as moving parts. The bizarre laws of quantum physics suggest that items the size of molecules and smaller can exist in two or more places or states at the same time....
Several scientists are poring over data recorded by a robotic submarine that set a distance record for autonomous vehicles when it crossed the Pacific Ocean late last year. The surfboard-size, wave-powered Papa Mau traveled 16,668 kilometers from San Francisco to Australia’s Hervey Bay, tracking information about ocean currents, wind speed and organisms critical to ocean life. The submersible had been at sea for more than a year, one of a fleet of four robotic vehicles called Wave Gliders launched by Sunnyvale, Calif....
Based on bone and tooth records, the Yukon’s last mammoths were thought to have gone extinct about 12,000 years ago. But a new genetic sampling technique suggests the great beasts may have stuck around a lot longer, plodding through the Arctic tundra with bison and elk for thousands of years more. The story is in the soil. Bones are rich sources of prehistoric genetic information, but not the only ones; items ranging from shed Ice Age skin cells to pine needles can contribute to the genetic record stored in dirt....
An atom, molecule or speck of dust placed at the focus of the world’s most powerful x-ray laser doesn’t stand a chance. The illuminated matter reaches a temperature in excess of one million kelvins, as hot as the solar corona, in less than a trillionth of a second. Atoms of, for example, neon subjected to such extreme radiation rapidly lose all 10 of their electrons, and once they have lost their protective cloak of electrons, they explode away from neighboring atoms....
ONE OF MY GUILTY PLEASURES is the long-running TV show NCIS, a drama focused on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The hero is a former marine, now Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, a disciplined detective with an uncanny ability to observe and question criminal suspects. Gibbs doesn’t say much or display a lot of emotion in the interrogation room—indeed, his cool demeanor is his trademark—yet he is a keen lie spotter....
The trillion-ton iceberg that broke off Antarctica last week will not go quietly into the night. New satellite imagery reveals that the iceberg, dubbed A68, is already shifting shape along with the remaining Larsen C ice shelf itself. The iceberg has traveled about 1.5 miles from the ice shelf it was formerly attached to. A piece of ice the size of Delaware moving across the choppy waters of the Weddell Sea was bound to experience an almost unbearable amount of stress....
President Donald Trump directed officials Monday (June 18) to establish a military Space Force before signing a new U.S. policy for space traffic control. The measure, he said, is another step forward in U.S. leadership in space. Trump spoke at the third public meeting of the newly-reinstated National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and hosted at the White House, and officially signed the council’s third space policy directive....
Top United Nations leaders put the threat of growing antibiotic resistance in stark terms Wednesday at a daylong meeting devoted to the issue. At the gathering in New York City they successfully urged governments to sign onto a political declaration to combat antibiotic resistance in their own nations and around the world. “We are losing our ability to protect both people and animals from life-threatening infections,” warned U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon....
Tech giants and carmakers have poured massive amounts of money and effort into developing cars that can drive themselves. But before Google, Tesla, Uber and others can persuade humans to share their streets with bots, they have to prove this technology—although definitely still learning and maturing—doesn’t amount to flooding the nation’s roadways with dangerously adolescent robot drivers. “Sometimes I hear [the] industry talk about autonomous vehicles as though they’re about to put the safest driver on the road,” says Nidhi Kalra, senior information scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corp....
For the more than 500,000 residents of the exclusion zone around the Philippines’ Taal volcano, which began erupting on Sunday, the coming days will be a tense wait to see if the eruption will intensify—threatening lives and property—or sputter out. If activity ramps up, Taal is capable of producing all three of the deadliest volcanic hazards: tsunamis, mudflows, and superheated flows of gas and debris. Volcanoes are notoriously unpredictable, but there are seismic signs and others that geologists will be watching for indications of what this one will do....
