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In Iraq and elsewhere, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) pack a double-deadly whammy: They can kill when they explode, and then they turn surviving soldiers into sitting ducks when Humvee tires blow out. Conventional Humvee tires need a certain amount of air pressure, but also may include so-called “run-flat” inserts that wrap around the tire’s rim to keep it from going completely flat when the tire’s surface is ruptured. The U.S. Army, however, is looking for an alternative that can keep its vehicles running faster and farther than a run-flat donut after an attack....

Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, unveils the iPhone 5C.(Credit:Josh Lowensohn/CNET) Apple on Tuesday unveiled its new flagship iPhone 5S and a new budget smartphone, the iPhone 5C, as it seeks to attract more customers and revitalize interest in its devices.The iPhone 5S includes updated components, comes in three colors, and includes a fingerprint sensor to unlock the device and make purchases. It will retail for $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, or $399 for 64GB, all with a contract....

From the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers examining the question of why some people were better protected from the infection than others began to look at a possible role for vitamin D. The nutrient, which is obtained from food and exposure to sunlight, is known to contribute to a well-functioning immune system in a variety of ways, including defending the body from invading viruses and other pathogens. “Vitamin D is cheap, easily available and relatively safe,” says genetic epidemiologist Fotios Drenos of Brunel University London....

In the ground beneath the first Protestant church built in English America, in a settlement partly founded to secure the New World for a new religion in the early 1600s, archaeologists have unearthed a relic that seems to belong to the wrong house of worship. Jamestown, Virginia, begun in bitter rivalry with Catholicism, has yielded a body entombed with ritual symbols that, in the Old World at that time, were common to Catholic burials....

Would you cut off your own leg if it was the only way to save another person’s life? Would you torture someone if you thought it would result in information that would prevent a bomb from exploding and killing hundreds of people? Would you politically oppress a people for a limited time if it increased the overall well-being of the citizenry? If you answered in the affirmative to these questions, then you might be a utilitarian, the moral system founded by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and encapsulated in the principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number....

Around the world, from Alaska’s remote North Slope to the island nations in the South Pacific, coastal communities are watching their shorelines slip away into the rising seas. But in an unexpected discovery, scientists have found one place where the effects of climate change are having the opposite impact. It seems that river deltas on the coast of Greenland are actually growing bigger at a time when many deltas elsewhere around the world—and even elsewhere throughout the Arctic—are eroding away....

Scientific American presents The Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. A math puzzle a day keeps your brain saying “Yay!” I know that’s not the most memorable saying in the world, but it’s definitely true—puzzles are a fantastic workout for your brain. As such, you’d be wise to try your hand at tackling at least a few different kinds of puzzles every week....

Meet Grok. According to his online profile, he is a tall, lean, ripped and agile 30-year-old. By every measure, Grok is in superb health: low blood pressure; no inflammation; ideal levels of insulin, glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides. He and his family eat really healthy, too. They gather wild seeds, grasses, and nuts; seasonal vegetables; roots and berries. They hunt and fish their own meat. Between foraging, building sturdy shelters from natural materials, collecting firewood and fending off dangerous predators far larger than himself, Grok’s life is strenuous, perilous and physically demanding....

U.S. universities and institutions are taking steps to ensure that we protect the intellectual capital generated through taxpayer-supported federal research. My association represents America’s most distinguished large research universities, and our institutions take these issues seriously. That is why we, in conjunction with our colleagues at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, asked our members to collect their most effective practices to combat these risks. Here is what we found:...

Michael Regan on Saturday gave his first speech as the presumptive head of EPA, and his brief remarks were transformative—both for the 44-year-old Black man who grew up in the shadow of the 1950s-era H.F. Lee power plant in North Carolina, and for the battered federal agency he is poised to inherit. “Growing up as a child, hunting and fishing with my father and grandfather in eastern North Carolina, I developed a deep love and respect for the outdoors and our natural resources, but I also experienced respiratory issues that required me to use an inhaler on days when pollutants and allergens were especially bad,” said Regan during his introduction by President-elect Joe Biden in Wilmington, Del....

By Naomi Tajitsu TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese automakers are looking beyond the industry trend to develop self-driving cars and turning their attention to robots to help keep the country’s rapidly graying society on the move. Toyota Motor Corp said it saw the possibility of becoming a mass producer of robots to help the elderly in a country whose population is ageing faster than the rest of the world as the birthrate decreases....

A plume or not a plume? That was the question for scientists, oil company employees and government officials in the early days of the oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Macondo 252 well. “Most oil accumulates on the surface, historically,” noted marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at a press conference on May 12. After all, many of the hydrocarbons in oil are less dense than water and therefore should quickly rise to the surface....

For Teresa, the first plate of scrambled eggs was a transcendent experience. The 41-year-old Stanford University Medical Center nurse coordinator had completely lost her appetite in the days after her surgery. She ate, but only liquids and only at her surgeon’s request. Yet when her interest in eating returned, it was as though something about her relationship with food had fundamentally changed. The eggs, Teresa’s first solid meal in four weeks, were a revelation: simple, soft and buttery....

None of us can stand perfectly still. No matter how hard we try, our bodies constantly make small adjustments, causing us to sway slightly as we stand. A new study finds that people with bipolar disorder tend to sway more than those who are unaffected, which may lead to new ways to treat and diagnose the illness. When psychologists diagnose bipolar disorder, they typically look for mood swings between agitated mania and bleak depression....

Harvard University researchers announced yesterday that they are seeking to move their first stratospheric test of a balloon that could one day be used in experiments to shade the Earth from the heating effects of greenhouse gases to Sweden. Frank Keutsch, the principal investigator of the program, said the test is being moved out of the United States in part because of the coronavirus pandemic. An alternative facility in the United States couldn’t be found to host the balloon launch scheduled for early summer....

Justifiable Herbicide? In “No-Till: The Quiet Revolution,” David R. Huggins and John P. Reganold argue for no-till farming as a more sustainable alternative to plow-based agriculture and describe how herbicide use has enabled growers to effectively practice no-till on a commercial scale. I cannot believe that anyone other than the herbicide manufacturers is seriously proposing that flooding the earth with lethal chemicals is any solution to the problems of agriculture. Their effect on humans and other animals is known, and their effect on soil and groundwater is potentially disastrous (even if the Environmental Protection Agency gives out assurances about the latter)....

Several Russian news outlets are reporting that Russian scientists have successfully drilled to Antarctica’s Lake Vostok, a massive liquid lake cut off from daylight for 14 million years and buried beneath 2 miles (3.7 kilometers) of ice. The lake is the object of a years-long project to study its waters, which may house life forms new to science. The news appears to have originated from Ria Novosti, a state-run news agency, which ran the following quote from an unnamed source with no affiliation: “Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters [12,362 feet] and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake....

Despite frequent reports that regular exercise benefits the adult brain, when it comes to schoolchildren, the concept of the dumb jock persists. The star quarterback stands in stark contrast to the math-team champion. After all, the two types require seemingly disparate talents: physical prowess versus intellect. Letting kids run around or throw a ball seems, at best, tangential to the real work of learning and, at worst, a distraction from it....

A country’s energy consumption of gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels is often the attention-grabber in climate discussions. But the energy to make and deliver consumer goods is a more hidden carbon culprit, a recent study says. Steven Davis, a postdoctoral student in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, tracked the supply chain of greenhouse gases from goods traded internationally in 2004. By following carbon emissions in more than 100 countries and 57 industrial sectors – from the extraction of the fuels to the energy inputs in creating goods and services to delivery to the final consumer – he and his colleagues uncovered a more complete story of who emits the world’s greenhouse gases, and at which point in the supply chain....

On July 22, 2011, a 32-year-old Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik opened fire on participants in a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoya after exploding a bomb in Oslo, resulting in 77 dead, the worst tragedy in Norway since World War II. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously argued in his 1651 book, Leviathan, that such acts of violence would be commonplace without a strong state to enforce the rule of law....