Posts

White House officials confirmed yesterday that existing power plants will have to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions under a plan being announced by President Obama this afternoon in what amounts to the largest, most comprehensive attempt by the U.S. to deal with the cause and the effects of climate change. Obama will sign a presidential memorandum requiring U.S. EPA to propose rules by next June limiting the release of greenhouse gases at hundreds of coal-fired plants, senior administration officials told reporters on a conference call yesterday....

After decades in the political wilderness, “Medicare-for-all” and single-payer health care are suddenly popular. The words appear in political advertisements and are cheered at campaign rallies—even in deep-red states. They are promoted by a growing number of high-profile Democratic candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Rep. Beto O’Rourke in Texas. Republicans are concerned enough that this month President Donald Trump wrote a scathing op-ed essay that portrayed Medicare for all as a threat to older people and to American freedom....

Here we go again. A Danish art conservator claims that the controversial Vinland Map of America, published prior to Christopher Columbus’s landfall, may not be a forgery after all. “We have so far found no reason to believe that the Vinland Map is the result of a modern forgery,” says René Larsen of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Reuters first publicized his results last week but provided none of the skepticism being voiced by veterans in the field....

From icy volcanoes on Neptune to Eiffel Tower–size lightning bolts on Saturn, the wildest sights in our corner of the universe. EXCERPT Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Seife. Viking, 2010 Math can be dangerous in the wrong hands, argues journalist Charles Seife. The art of using bad math to prove bogus arguments is what he terms “proofiness,” and it is a common tactic of politicians, lawyers, advertisers and scientists....

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin announced on August 11 that the country’s health regulator had become the world’s first to approve a coronavirus vaccine for widespread use — but scientists worldwide have condemned the decision as dangerously rushed. Russia hasn’t completed large trials to test its safety and efficacy, and rolling out an inadequately vetted vaccine could put at risk people who receive it, researchers say. It could also impede global efforts to develop quality COVID-19 immunizations, they suggest....

Exceprt: DARWIN’S SACRED CAUSE: HOW A HATRED OF SLAVERY SHAPED DARWIN’S VIEWS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009 In this controversial reinterpretation of Charles Darwin’s life and work, the authors of a highly regarded 1991 biography argue that the driving force behind Darwin’s theory of evolution was his fierce abolitionism, which had deep family roots and was reinforced by his voyage on the Beagle and by events in America:...

A quick sniff of a nasal spray sends microscopic metal particles into the brain, where they target and destroy the damaging proteins of Alzheimer’s disease. No Alzheimer’s? No problem—the metal particles pass out of the body safely. Such is the promise of technology being developed by neuroscientist William Klein and nanotechnologist Vinayak Dravid of Northwestern University. The pair has invented a nanotech-based early-detection system that might one day deliver targeted treatments....

Editor’s note: The original online version of this story was posted on September 23, 2009. The scale of humanity’s impact on the globe is becoming ever more apparent: we have wiped out species at a rate to rival great extinction events of all geologic time as well as contributing to a rapidly acidifying ocean, dwindling ice caps and even sinking river deltas. Now an international group of 29 scientists has taken a preliminary stab at setting some concrete environmental thresholds for the planet....

Asubstance, like a person, may have distinct and even contradictory aspects to its personality. Today ethyl alcohol, the drinkable species of alcohol, is a multifaceted entity; it may be social lubricant, sophisticated dining companion, cardiovascular health benefactor or agent of destruction. Throughout most of Western civilization’s history, however, alcohol had a far different role. For most of the past 10 millennia, alcoholic beverages may have been the most popular and common daily drinks, indispensable sources of fluids and calories....

Paracelsus, the German-Swiss physician and alchemist, asserted in the sixteenth century that he knew how to create a “little man”—or homunculus—by placing human semen in a sealed vessel packed with horse manure that was then nurtured with blood to gestate. The recipe was no more useful than the ones for turning base metals into gold, but the term has survived through the centuries, making its way into literature (Faust), television (Doctor Who) and even video games (Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow)....

The discovery of the ‘Yamanaka factors’—four transcription factors (Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4), ), proteins that can reprogram a fully mature cell into an embryonic-like state—earned Kyoto University researcher Shinya Yamanaka a share of the Nobel prize in 2012. The finding, described in 2006, transformed stem cell research by providing a new source of cells that resemble embryonic stem cells, which are able to give rise to any type of specialized cell in the body except sex cells....

Ashley grimaces. She really wants to spit out the vegetables she has just put in her mouth–they are horribly bitter. But politeness forbids. After all, the man from Cameroon and his wife have invited her to their home for dinner. And strangely, her hosts seem to be savoring the spinachlike ndole, a favorite from their homeland, which can be found in some specialty stores under the name bitterleaf. Thats certainly the right name, Ashley has just discovered....

Cockroaches, infamous for their tenacity, are often cited as the most likely survivors of a nuclear war. Some pundits even claim the critters can live without their heads. It turns out that this assertion is fact: at times headless roaches can live for weeks. To understand why cockroaches—and many other insects—can survive decapitation, it helps to understand why humans cannot, says physiologist and biochemist Joseph G. Kunkel of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who studies cockroach development....

A new DNA-based recorder allows bioengineers to create cell cultures that detect information in their environment and store it for later use. Such ‘designer’ cells might in the future be used to monitor water quality in a village, or measure the amount of sugar a person eats. The technique is described this week in Science. In synthetic biology, genes are engineered to regulate each other’s expression in such a way that they can perform logic operations similar to those in computer circuits....

An asteroid circling the sun between Mars and Jupiter harbors water ice and organic compounds on its surface—the first time such components have been discovered on asteroids. Those traits had been associated with comets, which spring from colder, more distant reservoirs in the solar system. The finding supports the notion that asteroids could have provided early Earth with water for its oceans as well as some of the prebiotic compounds that allowed life to develop....

What do you think about when your mind wanders? Chances are, you reflect back on past situations, think about plans for the future or plumb your inner psyche to take stock of your thoughts and feelings. And many of these ruminations likely involve other people. When our brains are not otherwise occupied, a network of neural regions called the default mode network automatically comes online. It enables us to turn our attention inward and daydream, but it also helps us to project out and put ourselves in other people’s shoes....

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University figured out how to reprogram fibroblast cells taken from connective tissue in mice into something that looked a lot more like an embryonic stem cell. These so-called induced pluripotent stem cells(iPS cells) have the capacity—with a lot of biochemical coaxing from scientists—to develop into other tissues, such as nerve or muscle cells. Researchers derived the first iPSCs from humans in 2007. Since then, investigators have attempted to use iPS cells in a variety of ways....

Dear EarthTalk: What specific issues and protections are covered by the Food Safety Modernization Act recently signed into law?—P. Palmerino, New York City Existing laws and oversight from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have done a decent job of keeping the vast majority of Americans safe from food borne illnesses, but several recent cases of contamination have put the spotlight on what more we can do to protect ourselves from unwittingly consuming harmful bacteria, parasites, viruses and toxins that could be lurking on our dinner plates....

When he started researching a troublesome childhood infection nearly four decades ago, virologist Dr. Barney Graham, then at Vanderbilt University, had no inkling his federally funded work might be key to deliverance from a global pandemic. Yet nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial....

From The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood and Your Long-Term Health, by Justin Sonnenburg and Erica Sonnenburg, PhDs. Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), LLC, a Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © Justin Sonnenburg and Erica Sonnenburg, 2015. A primal connection exists between our brain and our gut. We often talk about a “gut feeling” when we meet someone for the first time....