TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS Analysis of anole lizards collected before and after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, and 18 months later, revealed that the surviving lizards and their descendants had larger and therefore “grippier” toe pads. The team examined lizard photographs from natural history collections and 70 years of hurricane data to confirm the trend. ITALY Sediment samples drawn from the Tyrrhenian Sea off Italy revealed hotspots with up to 1....
Ever wanted to feel like a superhero—able to read people’s emotions, see through objects and predict the future? Well, you’re in luck. According to Mark Changizi in The Vision Revolution, you can already perform all these feats—thanks to the exceptional power of your two eyes. Changizi, a cognitive scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, approaches the field of vision from a different perspective than most scientists do: he is interested not in how our eyes work but in why they work the way they do....
The first mission to orbit Mercury is nearing its end. Since arriving at the innermost planet in March 2011, the Messenger spacecraft has “rewritten the entire textbook on Mercury and the implications for the formation and evolution of the inner solar system,” says its principal investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University. The probe was due to run out of fuel at the end of March, which would have initiated its gradual fall to the planet’s surface....
Editor’s Note (9/22/2016): This article has been updated from the original to include the location of the hearing and a response from physicians involved in a stem cell treatment study. Earlier this month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened its doors to public commentary on its newest guidelines on the use of therapies derived from human tissues, including stem cells. The new guidelines, drafted last October, clarify existing regulations by outlining what uses of human tissue can be offered to patients without FDA approval....
When the clock strikes noon Friday, presidential inauguration day, there will be another transition of power some 600 miles southwest of the White House. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will hand over his Atlanta-based agency to an acting director, a career civil servant named Anne Schuchat who has been serving as Frieden’s principal deputy director. Succession for this temporary role is spelled out by a federal law that applies to top government vacancies....
Sometime in the early 2030s, NASA hopes to attempt a landing on Jupiter’s moon Europa. A four-legged spacecraft would descend towards the icy surface, ready to hunt for signs of alien life in a buried ocean. But Europa could be a treacherous place to land. Its surface may be unexpectedly hard — or so porous that the probe might sink into it. And giant crevasses threaten to swallow any visitor. With an extremely thin atmosphere, low gravity, and bone-chilling temperatures of just 100 kelvin (–176 °C), Europa poses formidable challenges to spacecraft engineers....
Arpad Vass, a forensic anthropologist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, takes a stab at this morbid mystery. As best as anyone can gauge, cell metabolism likely continues for roughly four to 10 minutes after death, depending on the ambient temperature around the body. During this time period, oxygenated blood, which normally exchanges carbon dioxide with oxygen, is not circulating. Thus, cell respiration—which uses oxygen to make cellular energy while creating carbon dioxide as a by-product—creates carbon dioxide that is not transported out of the cell....
The testing began shortly after Bobby’s first birthday. By the time he was 19 he had been anesthetized more than 250 times and undergone innumerable biopsies in the name of science. Much of the time he lived alone in a cramped, barren cage. Bobby grew depressed and emaciated and began biting his own arm, leaving permanent scars. Bobby is a chimpanzee. Born in captivity to parents who were also lab chimps, he grew up at the Coulston Foundation, a biomedical research facility in Alamogordo, N....
Evolutionary biologists have battled for years over which animal lineage came first — sponges or comb jellies. The answer could transform how scientists understand the evolution of the human nervous system, digestive system and other complex traits. A study published on March 16 in Current Biology, sides with the sponges, using an unprecedented array of genetic data to deduce that they were the first to branch off from the animal tree of life1....
What’s the difference between noticing the rapid beat of a popular song on the radio and noticing the rapid rate of your heart when you see your crush? Between noticing the smell of fresh baked bread and noticing that you’re out of breath? Both require attention. However, the direction of that attention differs: it is either turned outward, as in the case of noticing a stop sign or a tap on your shoulder, or turned inward, as in the case of feeling full or feeling love....
In 2003 a committee assembled by the American Film Institute (AFI) compiled a new list for movie fans to digest and argue about. The institute had previously released lists of the 100 best movies, 100 funniest comedies, 100 most exciting thrillers, 100 most passionate love stories and 50 greatest movie stars (who were announced by 50 other movie stars, which let the AFI put “100 Stars” in the title because that was the formula, dammit)....
Rahul Aggarwal was in medical school when he got the surprising news that his mother—a fit woman in her 40s—had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. “I always thought of diabetes as a disease of people at higher weights and with certain lifestyle practices,” he recalls, “but my mom was an Indian American woman with a healthy weight and good diet and exercise practices.” Aggarwal, now a clinical fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, began thinking about how diabetes seems to disproportionately affect certain ethnic and racial groups....
Do animals really know who they are? Experts have been puzzling over this intriguing question for decades, and the responses vary depending on whom you ask and how he or she defines self-awareness. For years the litmus test was the so-called red spot test, developed by psychologist Gordon Gallup. A researcher applies an odorless red spot to a sedated animal’s forehead and then watches what happens when, fully awake, the animal confronts its image in a mirror....
Oysters once abounded in the estuaries along the eastern coast of the U.S. But overharvesting, pollution and disease have taken a devastating toll on a keystone species. Of the live eastern oyster reefs that existed in Georgia in 1889, for example, only 8 percent remain. Now archaeologists have found that the ancient harvesting practices of Native Americans likely promoted the health of oyster reefs for thousands of years before Europeans arrived....
Two teams of scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that intestinal bacteria play a role in multiple sclerosis, an incurable disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the myelin coating on neurons, causing tremors, fatigue, cognitive problems, and more. Gut germs that were unusually abundant in people with MS changed white blood cells in a way that made them more likely to attack the body’s own cells, including neurons, one study reported on Monday; the other experiment found that gut germs from people with MS made mice more likely to develop the disease than did gut germs from their identical but healthy twins....
By Kate Kelland LONDON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - People who live near roads laden with heavy traffic face a higher risk of developing dementia than those living further away, possibly because pollutants get into their brains via the blood stream, according to researchers in Canada. A study in The Lancet medical journal found that people who lived within 50 metres (55 yards) of high-traffic roads had a 7.0 percent higher chance of developing dementia compared to those who lived more than 300 metres away from busy roadways....
Our political opinions and attitudes are an important part of who we are and how we construct our identities. Hence, if I ask your opinion on health care, you will not only share it with me, but you will likely resist any of my attempts to persuade you of another point of view. Likewise, it would be odd for me to ask if you are sure that what you said actually was your opinion....
By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - A Mediterranean diet with extra nuts and olive oil might help improve memory in older adults, a Spanish study suggests, though the results aren’t definitive and more research is needed. “This small study found that a Mediterranean diet, which is low in animal foods like meat and butter, and high in vegetables, legumes and whole grains, when supplemented with olive oil or nuts is associated with improved cognitive function,” Samantha Heller, a nutritionist at New York University’s Center for Musculoskeletal Care and Sports Performance who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email....
Last week’s deadly collapse of a 12-story oceanfront condominium in a small town on the same barrier island as Miami Beach, Fla., is raising concerns among structural engineers and designers about how to prevent future building failures. Such unplanned collapses are rare in the modern history of structural design, experts say. But engineers and planners are keen to learn what caused the June 24 failure of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla....
The governors of five Western prairie states have not agreed to participate in a new farm bill program intended to protect virgin prairie—enabling landowners in their states to continue collecting some federal subsidies after plowing up prairie lands. The voluntary “sodsaver” program—included in the 2008 farm bill—would block federal crop insurance or disaster payments for farmers who plow under native prairie. The restrictions would apply only to designated priority areas in the prairie pothole region of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa—and only if the governors in those states opted to participate....
