Scientists think that they have the answer to why the skin on human fingers and toes shrivels up like an old prune when we soak in the bath. Laboratory tests confirmed a theory that wrinkly fingers improve our grip on wet or submerged objects, working to channel away the water like the rain treads in car tires. People often assume that wrinkling is the result of water passing into the outer layer of the skin and making it swell up....
On a dead still November morning in the Sierra Nevada, two researchers walk through a graveyard of giants. Below their feet: a layer of ash and coal. Above their heads: a charnel house of endangered trees. This is Alder Creek Grove, a once idyllic environment for a majestic and massive specimen: the giant sequoia. It is now a blackened monument to a massive wildfire—and humankind’s far-reaching impact on the environment. But these two researchers have come to do more than pay their respects....
From the very earliest times in recorded human history, new technologies have been used for both positive and negative reasons. Scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer, whose work ultimately led to the development of nuclear weapons, have been only too aware of how technology can be harnessed by society in ways that raise ethical challenges. Our experience with computers is no different. New technologies have made life easier in many ways, yet we can see that when controls are lacking it can lead to unforeseen societal outcomes....
CLIMATEWIRE | Record-breaking temperatures and vicious wildfires swept through Western Europe and the United Kingdom this weekend, in what may be one of the region’s most extreme heat waves on record. Hundreds of people have already died, and the heat is expected to linger this week in some areas. For the first time ever, the U.K.’s Meteorological Office issued a “red” heat warning — its highest heat alert level, indicating a national emergency — for London, Manchester and other U....
Most lasers rely on continuous waves of energy to generate heat that allows doctors to make cuts during surgery, computers to burn information onto CDs and DVDs, and scanners to read bar codes. But a newer type of laser promises to do all of these things more efficiently using quick, short blasts of energy. This pulsed-laser technology has been around since the 1980s but high cost has kept it from becoming widely used....
Reports of an exomoon’s death may have been greatly exaggerated. In late April, a trio of astronomers suggested that the best-yet candidate for an exomoon—a moon orbiting a world in another planetary system—does not actually exist, being instead a statistical mirage. The candidate’s original discoverers disagree, saying the case is anything but closed. For now, alas, the debate is at an impasse: One way or the other, definitive proof for or against this exomoon may be years away....
An exquisitely preserved dinosaur nesting site discovered in the Gobi Desert shows that some of these prehistoric animals nested in groups and, like birds, protected their eggs. “Dinosaurs are often portrayed as solitary creatures that nested on their own, buried their eggs and then just went away,” says François Therrien, a palaeontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology near Calgary, Canada. He co-authored a study published this month in Geology describing the find....
For the first time, astronomers have caught a glimpse of the water snow line around a star—the point in the young star’s orbiting disk of debris where snow and ice first appear. Normally, that boundary huddles too close to the star for astronomers to see it, but this particular star had a sudden burst of brightness that superheated its disk, obliterating ice further out than usual. Researchers are excited to spot their first stellar snow line because of the vital part it plays in the formation of planets around young stars: The rocky section forms planets like Earth and Mars, while the snowy outskirts sprout gaseous worlds like Jupiter and Saturn....
You run to your connecting flight, flash your ticket just in time and scramble into your seat. The plane pushes away from the gate, and the engines power up. As you breathe a sigh of relief, you peer out the window and wonder: Just what will be propelling me into the troposphere? For virtually all commercial airliners today, the answer is “turbofan engines,” the latest in a decades-long evolution. First came the turbojet, now obsolete, then the turboprop, which is still found onboard small planes....
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has for the first time acknowledged the risks of uncontrolled biofuels development, a skepticism that has slowly emerged into the mainstream scientific community, say academics. IPCC’s Working Group II report, released this morning in Yokohama, Japan, indicates that the U.N. scientific body on climate change has loosened its 2007 position that defines biofuels as a mitigation strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The report affirms that the science that has raised questions around the sustainability of biofuels in the last six years, said Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Vehicles program....
In the 19th-century U.S., finding a mother of young children who worked was rare. The big exception was black mothers, many of whom were employed as domestics. That situation has changed, most likely because the economy since the early 20th century began creating an increasing number of white-collar jobs that could help support a more affluent way of life. The movement of mothers out of the home and into offices and shops happened all over the Western world, with some countries such as Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands substantially exceeding the U....
Story originally published on Txchnologist Trees don’t make work easy for the scientists who want to study them and the landscapes they create, since the leaves, fruits and flowers of a forest’s canopy generally stretch far above human reach. So, a team of researchers is turning to drones, programming these pilot-less flying machines to buzz over forests while snapping pictures. “I flip the switch on the controller and away it goes on its own,” says Jonathan Dandois, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as he launched a drone over a patch of forest on campus on an overcast October day....
It all began with a cough. Four years ago Tracey McNiven, a Scottish woman in her mid-30s, caught a bad chest infection that left her with a persistent cough that refused to subside, even after medication. A few months later strange symptoms started to appear. McNiven noticed numbness spreading through her legs and began to feel that their movement was out of her control. When she walked, she felt like a marionette, with someone else pulling the strings....
The feisty warning signs of an oncoming yeast infection can strike at any time: irritation, burning, discharge. This excessive buildup of microscopic fungi can flourish in any moist region—anuses, throats, genitals of both sexes—but most commonly takes root in a woman’s nether regions. Yeast can grow out of check when a person is stressed, has recently used antibiotics or has a weakened immune system. Persistent infections, however, know no health, race or age boundaries....
The diagnosis of physician Craig Spencer with Ebola in New York City on Thursday reinforced the fact that Ebola could arrive at any hospital at any time. Are facilities and health care workers ready to properly care for an infected patient—while also staying safe and preventing further spread of the disease? The answer to that question would appear to be no, given the case of Thomas Duncan, the Liberian patient who died from Ebola earlier this month in a Dallas hospital and infected two nurses....
By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazineAfter the first full-scale tsunami-warning exercise in the region, Indian Ocean nations say that they are finally ready to take control of a system set up in 2005.On 12 October, 23 nations around the Indian Ocean were involved in a test of how well they would respond to a tsunami. At 8.05 a.m. local time, the Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics in Jakarta issued a bulletin about a hypothetical tsunami – modelled on the one that hit Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004 and claimed more than 200,000 lives – to national focal points around the Indian Ocean....
A multibillion-dollar military installation in the Pacific that has provided key testing for the U.S. defense against a possible North Korean nuclear strike could become uninhabitable in less than two decades due to climate change. The site, which is threatened by rising sea levels, is also used to track space junk that can cripple spacecraft. The Army’s Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on the low-lying Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands is expected to be submerged by seawater at least once a year, according to a new study ordered by the Department of Defense....
Atmosphere of Uncertainty? To support the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that current warming is anthropogenic, William Collins, Robert Colman, James Haywood, Martin R. Manning and Philip Mote assert in “The Physical Science behind Climate Change” that the mismatch between surface and tropospheric warming rates has now been resolved. This claim is not supported by actual observations. According to the April 2006 Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report, considerable disparity exists between the observed warming-rate patterns and those calculated by greenhouse models....
The supercluster of galaxies that includes the Milky Way is 100 times bigger in volume and mass than previously thought, a team of astronomers says. They have mapped the enormous region and given it the name Laniakea — Hawaiian for ‘immeasurable heaven’. Galaxies tend to huddle in groups called clusters; regions where these clusters are densely packed are known as superclusters. But the definition of these massive cosmic structures is vague....
From atop California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, it is a downhill trek into Nevada. But back in the Oligocene, you would have had a climb ahead of you. During that epoch and the latter part of the Eocene before it, the West Coast was host to a broad band of mountains resembling the modern South American Andes. Over time, the earth’s crust in this region, known as the Basin and Range Province, stretched until it cracked into blocks, tilting like thick volumes between sliding bookends....
