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Lifelong physical activity can help our span of good health run almost the length of a lifetime. In this way, remaining active later in life promotes humans’ wherewithal to support the survival of their grandchildren—and their genetic lineage into future generations—say the authors of an essay published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. The piece builds on anthropology’s “grandmother hypothesis,” which posits that people typically live for several decades because young humans require significantly more care than the immature offspring of many other species....

HORNSDALE, Australia, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc switched on the world’s biggest lithium ion battery on Friday in time to feed Australia’s shaky power grid for the first day of summer, meeting a promise by Elon Musk to build it in 100 days or give it free. “South Australia is now leading the world in dispatchable renewable energy,” state Premier Jay Weatherill said at the official launch at the Hornsdale wind farm, owned by private French firm Neoen....

Ah, but here’s the thing: History shows us that convenience is a key driver in consumer acceptance of new technology. No matter how trivial the gift to our laziness, a product that saves us effort is likely to be a winner. That, for example, was supposed to be the appeal of the Internet of Things. That awkward term refers to everyday objects that have been blessed with wireless networking. Usually it means that you can use phone apps to control them: lights, thermostats, refrigerators, baby monitors, coffeemakers, security cameras, lawn sprinklers, doorbell cams, robo vacuums, and so on....

Being open-minded enough to make great discoveries, however, can often lead scientists to make great blunders. Wallace, for example, was also a firm believer in phrenology, spiritualism and psychic phenomena, evidence for which he collected at séances over the objections of his more skeptical colleagues. Among them was Thomas Henry Huxley, who growled, “Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ‘medium’ hired at a guinea a séance....

Astronomers seem to invoke collisions, however improbable, when they cannot explain odd features of the solar system. Triton circles Neptune in reverse of its sister moons, for example, and the prior best guess was that Triton flew in from afar and knocked another moon out, like a well-struck cue ball. But if a pair of objects orbiting each other waltzed past Neptune, the one moving slower relative to the planet could have been snared by its gravity and begun orbiting the planet, and the other would have continued on its way, argue researchers in the May 11 Nature....

Many things stimulate our brains’ reward centers, among them, coordinated movements. Consider the thrill some get from watching choreographed fight or car chase scenes in action movies. What about the enjoyment spectators get when watching sports or actually riding on a roller coaster or in a fast car? Scientists aren’t sure why we like movement so much, but there’s certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest we get a pretty big kick out of it....

Editor’s Note (01/28/20): This story was originally published on January 28, 2016. We are re-publishing it on the 34th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Thirty years ago today, NASA suffered a spaceflight tragedy that stunned the world and changed the agency forever. On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after blasting off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven astronauts on board—including New Hampshire educator Christa McAuliffe, a civilian who had been selected to fly via NASA’s “Teacher in Space” program....

By Eric M. Johnson SEATTLE (Reuters) - Construction workers digging in a Seattle neighborhood have found the curved tusk of a mammoth, an ancient elephant relative that inhabited North America at least 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age. Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture said its paleontologists were confident that the fossil, uncovered on Tuesday, came from an Ice Age mammoth. “The discovery of a mammoth tusk in South Lake Union is a rare opportunity to directly study Seattle’s ancient natural history,” said curator Dr Christian Sidor....

Key concepts Forensic science Chemistry Biology Introduction Do you know that you leave fingerprints on everything you touch? If your hands are very dirty, this is obvious because you can actually see them. But even if your hands seem clean, your fingerprints will stay behind on the surfaces you touch—they are just invisible! Do you want proof? Then make them visible in this activity and collect your own fingerprints! Background Detecting invisible fingerprints is an important task in forensic science, a branch of science that helps criminal investigations by collecting and analyzing evidence from crime scenes....

When Hurricane Sandy battered the Eastern seaboard in 2012, it took down up to half of all cellular towers in the hardest-hit areas. The storm highlighted a flaw in our reliance on wireless phones as a primary means of communication. Qualcomm and other wireless companies have been working on a new cellular standard—a set of technical procedures that ensures devices can “talk” to one another—that will keep the lines open if the network fails....

Inhabitants of Boise, Idaho, watched with trepidation earlier this year as the city’s oldest, tallest resident moved two blocks. The 105-year-old sequoia tree serves as a local landmark, not only for its longevity but also because renowned naturalist and Sierra Club co-founder John Muir provided the original seedling. So, when Saint Luke’s Health System found that the 10-story-tall conifer stood in the way of its planned hospital expansion, officials called tree-moving firm Environmental Design....

Adapted from Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives, by John D. Mayer, by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2014 by John D. Mayer. All rights reserved. I once asked participants in a study which of several “big questions” about personality they found most interesting. The first-place winner was, “What is my future?” This question is a productive one: people who wonder about their future exhibit an especially healthy form of curiosity, one that augurs greater well-being over time....

Consider this scenario: You are making dinner. You reach into a crowded kitchen drawer to find a paring knife. As you peel potatoes, you glance over at the basketball game on television to check out your team’s performance. When your cell phone buzzes with a text message, you dry your hands and reply, picking out the letters one by one on the screen. These three actions—finding a knife, a moving basketball and letters of the alphabet—seem distinct, but all are examples of what is known in cognitive psychology as visual search—the ability to locate specific items in a crowded scene....

By Laura Zuckerman SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Hundreds of low-level and medium-sized earthquakes have struck central Idaho since last month, puzzling geologists who wonder whether the ruptures portend a much larger temblor to come or are merely the rumblings of a seismic fault previously thought to be dormant. The recent earthquake swarm, beginning on March 24 and climaxed by a 4.9 magnitude tremor on Saturday, has produced no reports of injuries or severe damage but has rattled nerves in a region where Idaho’s most powerful known quake, measured at 6....

On March 24, with only four hours’ notice and no consultation with India’s 29 states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a nationwide lockdown to halt the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Almost all transport and industry came to an abrupt halt, throwing hundreds of millions of workers in the informal sector, who live hand-to-mouth at the best of times—without a regular income, healthcare or other benefits—out of their jobs. Around 40 million were migrant workers, who had travelled from their home states to Delhi and other urban areas in search of employment....

Musicians who worry about the environment are beginning to demand that concert venues do their part to lessen live music’s ecological footprint. Soft rocker Jack Johnson, his wife, Kim Johnson, and Michael Martin, president of MusicMatters, a marketing company, have penned an EnviroRider, or “environmentally conscious production rider,” to be added to contracts made with tour venues. The rider, which musicians are free to adapt, spells out sustainability guidelines for the venues....

Scientists officially have a date where they’ll be taking to the streets. The March for Science has been scheduled for Saturday, April 22 in Washington, D.C. A growing constellation of marches are also scheduled for that day in cities across the U.S. What began as a Reddit conversation has grown into a movement of scientists and science lovers standing up for evidenced-based policy making and inclusivity in the science community. The date of the march isn’t just an average Saturday....

The computer industry survived for much longer than it should have on the assurance that faster processors every few years would cover a multitude of sins–the inefficiency and bloated size of application software being some of the worst transgressions. That luxury appears to be fading as power consumption has skyrocketed and the circuit boards on which the microprocessors sit threaten to transmute themselves into space heaters. Intel (where the hallowed Moore’s law has reigned) and other hardware makers have responded by designing computers to run multiple processors at slower speeds....

New York City’s sea level is likely to be most heavily influenced by ice melt in northeastern Greenland. Sydney may be strongly affected by shrinking glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula and around the Amundsen Sea. Ice loss from world’s melting glaciers presents a major concern in the form of global sea-level rise—it’s one of the most well-established facts about climate change. But where exactly those melting glaciers are located may make a big difference in what parts of the world they affect, and how....

The ability to regulate our impulses and desires is indispensable to success in living and working with others. People with good control over their thought processes, emotions and behaviors not only flourish in school and in their jobs but are also healthier, wealthier and more popular. And they have better intimate relationships (as their partners confirm) and are more trusted by others. What is more, they are less likely to go astray by getting arrested, becoming addicted to drugs or experiencing unplanned pregnancies....