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The colors of some liquids apparently depend on how much of them you’re seeing. According to a recent study in the online edition of Die Naturwissenschaften (The Natural Sciences), the colors of these liquids are also affected by how our eyes perceive color. The research, performed at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, sought to answer the long-standing question of why pumpkin seed oil, traditionally used in eastern Europe as a salad dressing, looks red in a bottle but green on a plate....

Extinction by Disease Theories for what killed off the woolly mammoth and other North American megafauna some 11,000 years ago have long focused on climate change and human hunting pressure. But in 1997 another possible culprit was proposed: hyperlethal disease introduced to the immunologically naive behemoths by dogs or vermin that accompanied humans when they arrived in the New World [see “Mammoth Kill”; SciAm, February 2001]. Now Alex D. Greenwood of Old Dominion University and his colleagues have produced the first evidence of disease-induced extinction among mammals....

Millions of Americans will fire up video game consoles this Christmas, but they may not know that some systems use way more energy than others. When playing the same video game, Nintendo’s Wii system uses a sixth of the power of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, according to research from the Electric Power Research Institute. That doesn’t tell the whole story, because the latter two systems have more sophisticated graphics and computing power....

It may seem that getting instant results would enhance learning, but various studies indicate a benefit to feedback that is delayed. Test takers are more likely to retain the correct answer if they receive it several seconds after providing their answers rather than immediately. To understand why delayed answers improve learning, researchers at Iowa State University asked college students to give their best guess to trivia questions such as “Who coined the word ‘nerd’?...

According to the Institute of Medicine, a whopping 100 million Americans—that’s one in three—suffer from some sort of chronic pain. And if you’re one of them, chances are at least one doctor has told you, “It’s all in your head.” The trick is that chronic pain wears many disguises. Sometimes chronic pain is psychosomatic, which does not mean it’s all in your head or that you’re faking (that’s another term: malingering), but does mean that your very real pain is caused by psychological factors, like stress or depression....

December 1960 Evolution and Behavior “Gulls live in flocks. They forage together the year around and nest together in the breeding season. No external force or agency compels them to this behavior; they assemble and stay together in flocks because they respond to one another. Their gregarious and often co-operative behavior is effected through communication. Each individual exhibits a considerable repertory of distinct calls, postures, movements and displays of color that elicit appropriate responses from other members of its species....

Kelly Clarkson reminds us that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Elton John is still standing, and of course, Gloria Gaynor will survive. What’s the common thread? A little thing glinting in the eye of the tiger called resilience. Resilience: it’s adapting and responding positively to stress and adversity. The adversity you face may be long-term, like having an alcoholic parent or growing up in poverty. Or it may be a single lightning strike of tragedy—a car accident that claims a limb, an assault that claims your dignity....

Traffic jams and collisions aren’t only frustrating for drivers, but they multiply emissions and are potentially life-threatening and damaging to the economy. But these problems could dissipate as more vehicles take to the roads equipped to communicate with each other and drive themselves. Speaking at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, Va., yesterday, President Obama touted the benefits of technologies that make driving “smarter.” “I just got a tour of a lab where automakers and government researchers team up to create new technologies that help cars communicate with the world around them and with each other,” he said....

The goal is to fly around the world using no fuel other than sunlight. But first a prototype of the solar plane to circumnavigate the globe will fly across the U.S.—taking off on May 3 and potentially proving that airplanes can fly long distances on nothing more than sunshine. “I come from a family of explorers,” explains Bertrand Piccard, the first man to fly a balloon around the world and chairman of this Swiss effort, dubbed Solar Impulse....

HAVE YOU EVER had a friend who makes plans to hang out but cancels when a better offer comes along? Or a buddy who helped you through a bad breakup, then flirted with your ex? To scientists, these problematic pals are known as ambivalent friends. To a more slang-savvy crowd, they are called “frenemies.” Either term has come to describe a range of complicated relationships—those that boost you up and bring you down, for any of a variety of reasons....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Two babies have received the first-ever gene therapy for Tay-Sachs disease after over 14 years of development. Tay-Sachs is a severe neurological disease caused by a deficiency in an enzyme called HexA. This enzyme breaks down a fatlike substance that normally exists in very small, harmless amounts in the brain. Without HexA, however, this fatlike substance can accumulate to toxic levels that damage and kill neurons....

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 owners can download a near-final build of the company’s Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) distribution. The folks over at Samsung-tracking site Sammobile on Sunday released an Android 4.3 build that’s designed to run on the Galaxy S4. The near-final build can be downloaded from the Sammobile site. However, it’s not clear whether (a) it’s a safe download and (b) if it will cause any trouble for those who download it....

Marshaling a decade’s worth of data from telescopes around the world, scientists have captured new details of a gargantuan black hole feasting on a hapless star, watching as the black hole consumed its prey and burped out a jet of material moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. The results were published in the June 14 edition of Science, and could help researchers better understand how black holes grow and influence their galactic surroundings....

Climate warming over the last quarter century is writ large in tiny fruit flies, according to a genetic analysis. In a species of fruit fly, the frequencies of so-called inversions, in which a piece of chromosome is flipped around, were observed decades ago to correspond to the latitude at which the flies were found. In nearly all the sites where the flies have recently been sampled–a span of three continents–the frequency of specific inversions has increased hand in hand with climbing temperatures....

Editor’s Note (4/6/20): This article was updated after publication with the information that the FDA has granted an emergency use authorization to a 15-minute coronavirus test created by Abbott Laboratories. As the new coronavirus explodes in cities across the U.S., public health agencies and hospitals are making testing—which was initially plagued by significant shortages—increasingly available. And biotech companies are ramping up production of test kits—but states are still struggling to meet demand....

You probably know the GIF as the perfect vehicle for sharing memes and reactions. We believe the format can go further, that it has real power to capture science and explain research in short, digestible loops. So each Friday, we’ll round up the week’s most GIF-able science. Enjoy and loop on. A VIEW OF AN INTENSIFYING HURRICANE DORIAN Credit: NASA On Thursday, the National Weather Service posted an alert: “DORIAN FORECAST TO INTENSIFY DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS....

Astronauts never travel to space alone. Each person voyaging off-world is accompanied by up to 100 trillion bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms, any number of which could jeopardize human health. Yet we are still mostly in the dark about how these communities of microscopic hitchhikers react to microgravity. We do not even know the full spectrum of spacefaring species living onboard the International Space Station (ISS). New studies, however, are designed to change that....

OCTOBER 1955 NUCLEAR CONFERENCE–“The International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, in Geneva, was not only the largest meeting to date on nuclear energy but probably the most exciting international gathering of scientists ever held. One of the major surprises of the Conference was provided by President Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, Indian Cabinet member, in his opening address. Dr. Bhabha predicted that within 20 years it will be possible to derive energy from the controlled fusion of heavy hydrogen nuclei....

On any given day at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, specially selected individual patients from ages one to 18 make their way to a quiet second-floor wing to spend time with their precious companions, their own pets. At the Purina Family Pet Center—one of just four facilities in the world to permit in-hospital own pet visits—patients sit on chairs or floor mats with their four-legged guests. For patients in a wheelchair or a bed, pets climb up ramps to sit or lie perched atop adjustable and non-slip tables so that they can get as close as possible to their recumbent owners....

GILLETTE, Wyo. – The broad high prairie of eastern Wyoming and southern Montana was once the bottom of a shallow sea, a rich subtropical swampland for millions of years. Layers of plants began forming peat beds 60 million years ago, later to be buried and compressed into bituminous coal strata. The Missouri River became the dominant stream as the Northern Rockies formed, with tributaries like the Yellowstone, Powder and Cheyenne rivers running north and east to meet it....