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The wreck of the steam-yacht Endurance, which famously sank in 1915 during an Antarctic expedition by the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, has been rediscovered by searchers using autonomous underwater vehicles. The shipwreck was found at a depth of 9,869 feet (3,008 meters) beneath West Antarctica‘s Weddell Sea, according to the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), which sponsored the search. That‘s only about 4 nautical miles (7 km) south of the location fixed by the ship‘s captain, Frank Worsley, who used a sextant to record the position of its sinking after several months of the ship being surrounded and eventually crushed by ice....

A new type of molecular wire – formed from repeat units of silicon and oxygen – has been found to demonstrate the greatest resistance ever recorded, making them ideal insulators for molecular circuits. In order for nanoscale electronics to progress, it requires both conductors and insulators. Traditionally, most research has focused on the development of increasingly efficient conductors. However, researchers from Denmark and the US have managed to develop the most insulating nanoscale material to date – siloxane wires....

High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know about Drugs and Society Carl Hart Harper, 2013 ($26.99) Hart, an associate professor at Columbia University, uses a mix of personal narrative and scientific research to argue for the decriminalization of drugs. When crack cocaine spread through his predominantly poor, black Miami neighborhood in the 1980s, Hart blamed the drug for increases in crime and gun violence. But later research by Hart and others showed that crack was not particularly addictive, nor did it make users more impulsive or violent, leading him to a revelation: although drugs can exacerbate social problems, they are rarely the cause....

How does your brain manage to see both the trees and the forest? A new study suggests that getting the big picture requires some downtime and, for an extra boost, a night of sleep. The ability to recognize hidden relations among our memories, a characteristically human feature, is vital for solving problems in creative ways. To understand how this “relational memory” develops, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School and McGill University presented students with pairs of abstract images in which one image was considered “greater” (graphic above), then asked them to guess the hierarchy of the images in new combinations....

China is undeniably one of the world’s top players in space these days, with successful missions to the moon and Mars and a solar probe due to be launched soon. Its rise has spurred competition with the U.S.; “Watch the Chinese,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently warned. Given the strategic value the two nations have placed on their space programs, and the political tension that already exists between the countries, the contest over achievements in space is likely to intensify....

Deep inside the sun pairs of protons fuse to form heavier atoms, releasing mysterious particles called neutrinos in the process. These reactions are thought to be the first step in the chain responsible for 99 percent of the energy the sun radiates, but scientists have never found proof until now. For the first time, physicists have captured the elusive neutrinos produced by the sun’s basic proton fusion reactions. Earth should be teeming with such neutrinos—calculations suggest about 420 billion of them stream from the sun onto every square inch of our planet’s surface each second—yet they are incredibly hard to find....

Halfway into a recent performance at New York City’s Bohemian National Hall violinist Mari Kimura had already performed “Preludio” from Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major followed by several pieces in which she deftly demonstrated her innovative “subharmonics” techniques for extending the octave range of her instrument. Then things got really interesting. Kimura donned a white fingerless glove laden with wireless sensors, plugged her “augmented” violin into her laptop onstage, and proceeded to demonstrate how she is redefining the relationship musicians have with both their instruments and their music....

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Small volcanic eruptions help explain a hiatus in global warming this century by dimming sunlight and offsetting a rise in emissions of heat-trapping gases to record highs, a study showed on Sunday. Eruptions of at least 17 volcanoes since 2000, including Nabro in Eritrea, Kasatochi in Alaska and Merapi in Indonesia, ejected sulfur whose sun-blocking effect had been largely ignored until now by climate scientists, it said....

Most of us are aware that our cars, our coal- or gas-generated electric power and even our cement factories adversely affect the environment. Until recently, however, the foods we eat had gotten a pass in the discussion. Yet according to a 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the livestock supply chain that produces meat and milk for our diets causes more greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide and the like—to spew into the atmosphere than does either transportation or industry....

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is typically described by the problems it presents. It is known as a neurological disorder, marked by distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity, which begins in childhood and persists in adults. And, indeed, ADHD may have negative consequences for academic achievement, employment performance and social relationships. But ADHD may also bring with it an advantage: the ability to think more creatively. Three aspects of creative cognition are divergent thinking, conceptual expansion and overcoming knowledge constraints....

Neurons have always been the stars of brain research, but scientists are now realizing that nonneuronal cells known as glia—which make up around 90 percent of cells in the brain—are not the mild-mannered understudies they appeared to be. Some glia may even fire electrical signals, a finding that overturns a central dogma of neuroscience that holds that neurons are the only cells in the brain with such signaling ability. Last winter, when neuroscientists at University College London examined glia known as oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), they were astounded to find that, just like neurons, one subtype fired electrical signals in response to electrical stimulation....

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,/old time is still a-flying.” So wrote 17th-century English poet Robert Herrick, capturing the universal cliché that time flies. And who could doubt that it does? The passage of time is probably the most basic facet of human perception, for we feel time slipping by in our innermost selves in a manner that is altogether more intimate than our experience of, say, space or mass. The passage of time has been compared to the flight of an arrow and to an ever rolling stream, bearing us inexorably from past to future....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly everyone has experienced the panic and uncertainty that come with having mild COVID-like symptoms—such as a cough and sore throat—only to test negative day after day. With cold and flu season just around the corner, that state of frustrating uncertainty is likely to strike most of us again....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Many of the Northeast’s heaviest snowfalls in over a century of reliable record keeping have occurred since 1990. How can the spate of big snowstorms be reconciled with our warming climate? I’m an atmospheric scientist. Let’s look at an important law of physics and some theories that can help explain the changes. Credit: The Conversation US (CC-BY-ND); Source: NOOAA/NCEI...

The textbook account of where planetary systems come from–namely, disks of dust and gas that encircle stars–may require an addendum. Researchers have found that comparable disks girdle distant exoplanets far less massive than our sun. The discovery raises the possibility that these planetary mass objects, or planemos, are orbited by other planets and moons–like our own solar system, but smaller. Astronomer Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto and his international team of colleagues surveyed in two studies the optical spectra of seven exoplanets: One study focused on six planemos that float freely through space without a specific relationship to a star....

In a now infamous event captured on video, on May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer outside of a corner store. Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds while two other officers helped to hold him down and a third stood guard nearby. Nearly a year later, in April 2021, a jury convicted Chauvin of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter....

It turns out it’s tricky to troubleshoot a 1980s computer that’s dashing around Earth hundreds of miles over our heads. NASA has spent more than a week evaluating a computer issue that put the venerable Hubble Space Telescope out of commission on June 13 and that may force the spacecraft to turn to its backup computer. Now, ongoing tests suggest that the issue the team has identified so far may not be at the root of the computer’s problems, according to an update from the agency....

All adults in the U.S., including pregnant and postpartum women, should be screened for depression when they visit the doctor, according to new recommendations released by a government-appointed panel. This recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is largely consistent with the group’s previous recommendation, which was issued in 2009, said Karina Davidson, a member of the task force and a professor at Columbia University Medical Center. However, at the time the previous recommendation was made, there was not enough evidence for the group to either recommend or discourage depression screening for pregnant and postpartum women, she said....

Harvard University psychologist Elizabeth Spelke takes these questions to the people who may be best able to answer them: babies. Spelke, whose sprawling laboratory in William James Hall teems with infants and researchers who are interested in them, has addressed some of the most intractable mysteries of human knowledge by interrogating little people who cannot yet talk, walk or even crawl. She has what she calls an insatiable appetite for assessing these young beings....

When a long-planned 2017 climate change summit, slated to be held at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was abruptly canceled without explanation about a week before Pres. Donald Trump’s inauguration, it was not because of a specific directive from his administration. But individuals involved with the conference say political worries influenced the decision. The CDC had not responded to an e-mailed request for comment by the time of publication on Friday, and it was impossible to confirm any official reason for the altered plans....