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One the largest pieces of NASA’s fallen space shuttle Challenger has been discovered on the ocean floor by a TV documentary team searching for a downed World War II aircraft. The artifact, which today remains where it was found by the crew filming The History Channel’s new series “The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters,” was positively identified by NASA based upon the item’s modern construction and presence of 8-inch (20 centimeters) square thermal protection (heat shield) tiles....

The rich play with fire and the poor get burned. That sums up a report issued March 31 by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the worsening risks of climate change. Yet even rich nations will face serious challenges. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by climate change,” said IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri at a press conference releasing the report in Yokohama, Japan. According to Pachauri and the hundreds of scientists who prepared the report, climate change is no longer something that will happen in the future....

Key concepts Math Biology Food Nutrition Macronutrients Introduction Food advertisements and labels bombard us with enticing slogans and attractive images, luring us into consuming a certain food. But have you ever wondered how nutritious an advertised food is? Have you ever examined a nutrition facts label and wondered what the columns of words and numbers really meant? This activity will shed some light on the label. You will explore serving sizes and nutrients—and might find a discrepancy....

Dear EarthTalk: I read a heart-wrenching story of a polar bear that swam 400 miles with its cub on its back in search of an ice floe to rest on. It survived but its cub did not. What can be done to save these magnificent creatures? Is it too late?—Jerry Bresnehan, Des Moines, Iowa It’s sad but true that life is getting harder for polar bears due to global warming. Polar bears live within the Arctic Circle and feed primarily on ringed seals....

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s universal health plan that aims to offer guaranteed benefits to a sixth of the world’s population will cost an estimated 1.6 trillion rupees ($26 billion) over the next four years, a senior health ministry official said. Under the National Health Assurance Mission, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government would provide all citizens with free drugs and diagnostic treatment, as well as insurance cover to treat serious ailments....

Solar energy is touted by some as the solution to the world’s energy woes. But the process of making the various components requires fossil fuels, both for power and for the components themselves, some of which are based on petroleum. A new company, BioSolar, aims to kick petroleum to the curb, at least in the realm of building solar photovoltaics, cells of crystalline silicon that turn sunlight into electricity. Such photovoltaic cells rely on conventional plastic polymers to provide a protective backing, also known as backsheets....

Here are some possible sources of polarizing film: Polarization.com has a special offer for Scientific American readers: An 8.5 x 6 inch piece of polarizing film for $7, US shipping included. Offer good until 31 July 2007. Polarization.com sells larger quantities in its main store. ScienceKit.com ScientificsOnline.com Or you can search Scientifics Online and Science Kit for “polarizer” for more options. Note: You want a “linear polarizer” (a square or round shape is fine) but not “circular polarizer....

Emissions from air travel are the most difficult to reduce in professional sports. It’s not like they can do what everyone else does, and videoconference. But reducing emissions is possible. I examined some of the changes that could be made for a research article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. In 2020, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and the National Football League adjusted their schedules to reduce the chance of players and staff catching COVID....

Florida once came very close to losing its state animal. By the 1980s decades of hunting and rapid development had pushed the Florida panther—the only subspecies of the North American cougar found east of the Mississippi River—perilously close to extinction. With a genial wit, journalist Pittman chronicles the extended saga of a few of the dedicated scientists who fought to bring these elusive and majestic animals back from the brink. The story is replete with interpersonal drama, lucky breaks, frustrating setbacks and bureaucratic decisions based on spurious science....

Amid many promises about futuristic automobiles, an unlikely one seems to be coming true: hydrogen fuel-cell cars. No, you can’t buy a hydrogen car from a local dealer. But General Motors (GM) and American Honda Motor are putting close to 300 street-legal, full-featured, hydrogen fuel-cell machines into the hands of individual American drivers for use in real-world conditions. Long-term, a fleet could help reduce dependence on oil and lessen greenhouse gas emissions because the cells produce no pollution, just water....

As you may have noticed, mosquitoes don’t attack everyone equally. Scientists have known that the pests are drawn to people at varying rates, but they have struggled to explain what makes certain people “mosquito magnets” while others get off bite-free. In a new paper published on October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that certain body odors are the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile made up of different chemical compounds, and the researchers found that mosquitoes were most drawn to people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids....

Words like “um” and “er” tend to have a bad reputation, but a new study suggests that they might actually do listeners a favor. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling in the U.K. measured brain activity to assess listeners’ understanding. Immediately after a person hears words, brain activity spikes downward. In the study, the larger the spike, the more difficult it was for the listener to put the words into context....

Rich Schuler, an adjunct instructor and outreach coordinator in the physics and astronomy department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, explains. Image:NASAA STAR MAP shows the relative position of Polaris in Ursa Minor. The North Star, or Polaris, is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, the little bear (also known as the Little Dipper). As viewed by observers in the Northern Hemisphere, Polaris occupies a special place. The point in the night sky where the projection of the earth’s axis lies is known as the North Celestial Pole (NCP)....

Scientific American presents The Dog Trainer by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. If you’re like most people, you’re pretty sure you know aggression when you see it. So here’s a pop quiz: Is it “aggression” when your 8-week-old puppy nips you? How about your adult dog chasing a rabbit he spots on an off-leash hike – is he being “aggressive”? Or what if Dogalini has a bone, Zippy approaches, and Dogalini curls her lip at him....

Aaron Wheeler is the director of an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Toronto in Canada. The group develop lab-on-a-chip techniques for applications in biology, chemistry and medicine. You recently reported an exciting technique that can screen algae grown under different wavelengths with the aim of generating more efficient biofuels. Can you tell me more about this work? Sure, this was the first time we have developed a method for the area of renewable energy....

Human memory can be maddeningly elusive. We stumble upon its limitations every day, when we forget a friend’s telephone number, the name of a business contact or the title of a favorite book. People have developed a variety of strategies for combating forgetfulness–messages scribbled on Post-it notes, for example, or electronic address books carried in handheld devices–but important information continues to slip through the cracks. Recently, however, our team at Microsoft Research has begun a quest to digitally chronicle every aspect of a person’s life, starting with one of our own lives (Bell’s)....

By Jeff Tollefson of Nature magazineStaff have been cut, contractors laid off, offices closed and even furniture disposed of. But despite all its efforts to back away from plans to store spent nuclear fuel deep under Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the administration of US President Barack Obama just can’t seem to bury the idea.An expert commission appointed by the administration is looking for an alternative solution. On 13 May, at a public meeting in Washington DC, commissioners discussed some preliminary recommendations: create one or more centralized facilities at which waste would be temporarily stored in dry casks, while engaging with the public in a new process to identify a permanent repository for the piles of spent nuclear fuel accumulating at US reactors....

To date, roughly 103 people have been infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus–or bird flu. Yet few, if any, of them have spread the disease to other humans. A virus’s ability to spread is the key to its ability to create a pandemic. New research shows that this bird flu currently lacks the protein key to unlock certain cells in the human upper respiratory tract, preventing it from spreading via a sneeze or a cough....

My sister, who travels a great deal for work and is fond of airplane fiction of the Dan Brown and Robin Cook schools, adopted a first-generation model early. Borrowing hers, I was thus able to experiment when I had some travel of my own. I usually take a bunch of books on the road. So I weighed the Kindle against the books—seriously, I put them on a scale—and promptly decided to get one of them there newfangled, thin, low-mass reading machines of my own....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The North American Great Lakes contain about one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water. In May, new high water level records were set on Lakes Erie and Superior, and there has been widespread flooding across Lake Ontario for the second time in three years. These events coincide with persistent precipitation and severe flooding across much of central North America....