Posts

When the parents of Hannah Poling, a nine-year-old, Athens, Ga., girl who was diagnosed with autism just after the age of two, announced that a federal vaccine injury court had awarded them a settlement, the case reignited a decade-old debate about whether vaccines could potentially trigger the disorder. But what was somewhat lost in much of the coverage of the case was a little-known condition that the court said was aggravated by the vaccine, and which gave Hannah the features of autism....

Our planet’s natural ecosystems are in trouble. Recent advances in “big data” and improved remote sensing tools show us that collective human impacts are leaving fewer places untouched, with only 15% of the Earth’s land mass formally protected and global biodiversity declining at an unprecedented rate. Global assessments led by scientists, such as the 5th Global Biodiversity Outlook published this week, and others endorsed by governments through bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), make it clear that governments are failing to meet existing global targets for biodiversity, and that critical ecosystems like coral reefs will be altered to the point that the biodiversity they hold, and the services they provide, will be damaged beyond repair....

A workday filled with a string of mentally demanding tasks can leave you feeling drained. After long hours of mentally tracking one thought to the next, you’re probably more likely to choose a relaxing evening of streaming TV shows than to tackle a tough task on your to-do list or to make time on a creative pursuit. A new study provides a biological explanation for this familiar phenomenon: thinking hard leads to a buildup of chemicals that may disrupt the functioning of the brain....

Editor’s Note (9/4/20): The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just alerted states to prepare for a novel coronavirus vaccine as early as November. In this story, Scientific American describes how the fast-track vaccine trials work and how they measure effectiveness and safety. In late July, volunteers began receiving doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in the latest stage of a clinical trial at NYU Langone Health in New York City....

On the afternoon of August 14, 2003, electricity failed to arrive in New York City, plunging the eight million inhabitants of the Big Apple–along with 40 million other people throughout the northeastern U.S. and Ontario–into a tense night of darkness. After one power plant in Ohio had shut down, elevated power loads overheated high-voltage lines, which sagged into trees and short-circuited. Like toppling dominoes, the failures cascaded through the electrical grid, knocking 265 power plants offline and darkening 24,000 square kilometers....

Antibiotics researchers are set to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from a new funding stream—but not everyone thinks the cash is being directed to the right place. The money is to come from CARB-X, a public–private partnership announced on July 28. It is backed mainly by the US government, the London-based biomedical charity the Wellcome Trust and the UK R&D Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR Centre)s in Alderley Park, a consortium that includes public universities and private firms....

Who pushes elevator buttons with a naked finger anymore or opens an Uber car door with a bare palm? Who doesn’t hold their breath when passing too close to someone on a crowded sidewalk? These are among the unspoken rules governing daily life in America’s large cities as the COVID-19 virus spreads through dense urban areas, threatening to infect tens of millions of Americans. City dwellers just want to get away from each other....

Most celebrities hit the Las Vegas circuit a few years past their prime. For “Samson,” the journey took a bit longer. The remains of the 66- million-year-old female Tyrannosaurus rex, along with 50 other lots of fossils and dinosaur parts, are being auctioned off on October 3 by Bonhams & Butterfields New York at The Venetian resort in Las Vegas. Comprising 170 bones, more than half of the total bone count of an entire T....

To break free from an atom, the negatively charged electron typically has to absorb a high-energy photon, such as that from the ultraviolet (UV) or x-ray spectrum. The electron then gets excited enough to overcome the electrostatic attraction holding it to the positively charged nucleus and escapes, a process called ionization. A German-Dutch team has for the first time provided direct proof of an alternative mechanism. Powerful electric fields from a laser pulse can momentarily weaken the electrostatic bonds and enable the electron to quantum-mechanically tunnel away from the atom....

Around the world, breathing a variety of air pollutants – in some cases for a single day – increases the chance that people will suffer heart attacks, according to a new analysis published Tuesday. For the first time, scientists analyzed previous studies from five continents to verify and quantify the links between air pollution and heart health. They found that short-term exposure – less than seven days – to all major air pollutants except ozone was associated with an increase in heart attacks....

In Tyler Hamilton’s 2012 book The Secret Race (written with Daniel Coyle), the cyclist exposes the most sophisticated doping program in the history of sports, orchestrated by Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner now stripped of his titles after a thorough investigation by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Hamilton shows how such an elaborate system was maintained through the “omertà rule”—the code of silence that leads one to believe everyone else believes doping is the norm—and reinforced by the threat of punishment for speaking out or not complying....

Scientists are about to get their best look ever at the ocean that sloshes beneath the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. On Wednesday (Oct. 28), NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will zoom just 30 miles (50 kilometers) above Enceladus, flying through and sampling the plume of material that erupts from the satellite’s south polar region. This plume is thought to originate from Enceladus’ underground liquid-water ocean, so Cassini’s onboard sample analysis should shed light on the moon’s potential to host life, mission team members said....

With the click of a mouse, archaeologist Vince Gaffney proudly summons up a vision of an ancient landscape. Amid the clutter of his office at the University of Birmingham in England, the 52-year-old professor of landscape archaeology is displaying early results of a virtual excavation at Britain’s best-known prehistoric monument. On the screen: a giant ring of wood posts that may have stood roughly 1,000 yards northwest of Stonehenge, a timber twin of its grander neighbor....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. A century ago Virginia’s coastal lagoons were a natural paradise. Fishing boats bobbed on the waves as geese flocked overhead. Beneath the surface, miles of seagrass gently swayed in the surf, making the seabed look like a vast underwater prairie. More than 70 species of seagrasses grow in shallow waters around the world, on every continent except Antarctica....

Russia will opt out of the International Space Station (ISS) program after 2024, the new chief of Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos said Tuesday (July 26). Roscosmos leadership has been threatening to pull out of the International Space Station for months, stating that Western sanctions will “destroy” Russian cooperation aboard the orbital lab. While those threats have been numerous and inflammatory, they have yet to sound as definitive as the latest proclamation made by the new Roscosmos chief....

Immunization has been called one of the most successful public health interventions in medical history. Yet controlling the coronavirus pandemic depends not only on access to the shots but also on individuals’ willingness to be vaccinated. A Pew Research Center poll found that in September 2020 just 51 percent of Americans said they would get the vaccine. That figure rose to 60 percent in November 2020 and then 69 percent in February....

Key concepts Microwave Radiation Heat Chemical Polarity Dipole Rotation Introduction Ever wonder how a microwave oven cooks your food? A microwave uses—you guessed it!—microwaves, a form of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. Think radio waves, just with a much shorter wavelength. Here’s the cool thing about microwaves: They’re absorbed by certain kinds of matter, whereas other kinds are left alone. In this activity, we’ll try cooking up some foamy soap in order to illustrate how microwave radiation influences different types of matter....

The squeak of a mouse tells most people to buy a mousetrap, but it tells some researchers a lot more. According to an April 1 study in PLoS ONE, mouse noises indicate certain states of mind, and monitoring their sounds can help scientists learn more about emotion, reward seeking and communication. In addition to audible squeaks, mice produce ultrasonic noises—squeaks so high that humans cannot hear them. Males sing a complex song during sex and squeak when they are tickled, females chirp when around other females, and mouse pups squeak when their mothers abandon them....

Created, written & designed by John Pavlus / Screencasts produced by Smashcut Media / Music by Jeff Alvarez Check out previous episodes of The Monitor. Subscribe to this video podcast via iTunes or RSS Background on this week’s stories: 1. Animated CO2 map of U.S. The original video of U.S. CO2 emissions that sparked our interest was posted to Youtube by the researchers themselves, who are members of the Vulcan project....

Brain scientists will tell you that the greatest problem facing human biology, and perhaps all of science, is cracking the code of consciousness. It means solving the long-intractable brain-mind conundrum: How does our material brain–the most complex physical system known–produce our immaterial but vital sense of awareness? Neuroscientists and philosophers argue fiercely about how to solve the riddle and whether it is even solvable. Some say consciousness is illusory. (Try to counter that one–a real headache....