Posts

Full-scale quantum computers, with all the number crunching, code cracking and jaw-dropping processing power researchers expect them to deliver, remain a mere twinkle in the eye of physicists and computer scientists. It is a twinkle supported by promising experimental and theoretical work, but a twinkle nonetheless—to date only rudimentary quantum processors have been built. Such computers would harness the physical properties of quantum bits, or qubits, to expand the reach of computation....

In the Before Times, science and health journalists would talk about how much we appreciated our readers but just wished that more people took an interest. In the Pandemic Times, we have to add: but not like this! It’s been a scary and exhausting year but also the most educational time in living memory. Hundreds of millions of people now understand concepts such as epidemiological modeling, asymptomatic transmission, herd immunity, phase 3 vaccine trials, and more....

Our ocean holds the key to some of our world’s greatest challenges, such as combating climate change and ensuring affordable and clean energy for all. One of those challenges will be to satisfy the increasing global demand for critical minerals to support a future society based on renewable energy and technology. As the world’s population continues to grow, from 7.8 billion today to 9.6 billion in 2050, it will be critical to find new sources of reliable and ethically sourced minerals....

RISING SEAS BE DAMMED Melting ice caps have released far more water than previously thought. The missing water’s hiding place? Artificial reservoirs. Scientists at the National Central University in Chung-Li, Taiwan, estimate that nearly 29,500 reservoirs around the globe now hold about 10,800 cubic kilometers of water, or roughly twice the volume of Lake Michigan. Although global sea level has climbed steadily during the past 80 years, reservoir construction has artificially kept sea levels from rising another 30 millimeters in the past 50 years, the researchers estimate in findings published online March 13 in Science....

In her first major economic address, Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday outlined what the White House billed as a “vision of the future.” Conspicuously absent: talk of climate change, which scientists and economists say will define the 21st century. Harris’ speech fits a pattern of the Biden administration keeping climate in the background of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan, even as the White House touts its clean energy promises to an international audience....

Parents considering whether to enroll a sick son or daughter in a clinical trial often face a barrage of conflicting emotions. On one hand, they hope that the experiment will lead to a breakthrough in treatment. On the other, they must deal with the uncertainty and fear that come from willingly exposing their child to an unproven therapy that could turn out to be ineffective or even more harmful than standard treatment....

NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity has done it again, soaring successfully on its 22nd Red Planet flight. The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity stayed aloft for 101.4 seconds and reached a maximum altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) during the sortie, which took place on Sunday (March 20), according to a Monday (March 21) tweet by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity’s mission. Ingenuity and NASA’s Perseverance rover landed together inside Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021....

Minnesota is on its way to hitting its renewable energy goals—and it won’t cost taxpayers any extra. A study released Thursday by MN Solar Pathways found that solar could make up 10 percent of the state’s electricity by 2025. In addition, the report predicts that as renewable energy costs decrease, Minnesota will be able to produce 70 percent of its power from solar and wind by 2050 at costs comparable to natural gas generation....

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazineA team of physicists is claiming to have coaxed sparks from the vacuum of empty space. If verified, the finding would be one of the most unusual experimental proofs of quantum mechanics in recent years and “a significant milestone”, says John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study. The researchers, based at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, will present their findings early next week at a workshop in Padua, Italy....

In 1994, seafood may have peaked. According to an analysis of 64 large marine ecosystems, which provide 83 percent of the world’s seafood catch, global fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons since that year. And if that trend is not reversed, total collapse of all world fisheries should hit around 2048. “Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood,” notes marine biologist Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University....

An upbeat attitude can do more than put a spring in your step; it can also improve medical outcomes. Although the power of positive thinking is clear, little is known about how negative mind-sets affect the success of therapies. Now cognitive neuroscientist Irene Tracey of the Uni­versity of Oxford and her collaborators have found that both sunny and cynical beliefs determine how well drugs work. The team published its findings February 16 in Science Translational Medicine....

Key Concepts Biology Senses Perception Touch Introduction Have you ever been in an elevator and wondered what the many little dots on the buttons are for? You can also find these dots in public buildings on room number signs or on ATMs (cash machines). These arrangements of dots are a special writing system for the visually impaired called braille. By feeling the dots with their fingers, people can read what is written on a sign or elevator button....

Aerospace and aircraft companies as well as the military have been challenged to find ways of effectively shielding sensitive electronic equipment such as radar and radios from electromagnetic interference (EMI) without adding a lot of weight to aircraft and satellites (the more massive they are, the more fuel they need to stay in the air or achieve orbit, respectively). Whereas EMI can lead to headaches like erased data and loss of connectivity for casual computer and cell phone users, the problem is far more serious in aircraft, where interference can jam cockpit radio and radar signals, preventing pilots from sending and receiving crucial information....

In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, three longtime friends—author David Blankenhorn, family therapist Bill Doherty and family research scholar David Lapp—were bothered by the animosity that seemed to have grown exponentially between Democrats and Republicans. The divide went beyond differing opinions on candidates and policies, they believed. Rather liberals and conservatives increasingly seemed to view each other as inherently immoral, unintelligent and malicious. Fewer and fewer Americans seemed interested in constructively engaging with the other side....

Dear EarthTalk: How is the fur industry doing these days? Has it been impacted by activism from PETA and similar groups? – Clara Andrews, Edmonds, WA An accurate source of up-to-date numbers is hard to come by, but it’s safe to say that the fur industry has been hurt by the ongoing and very visible anti-fur campaign—sometimes featuring top supermodels—by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other animal rights groups....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Around the globe, about 815 million people – 11 percent of the world’s population – went hungry in 2016, according to the latest data from the United Nations. This was the first increase in more than 15 years. Between 1990 and 2015, due largely to a set of sweeping initiatives by the global community, the proportion of undernourished people in the world was cut in half....

The world is waiting to hear what President-elect Donald Trump has in mind for governing the U.S. Among the biggest questions is what will happen to the budget for climate and energy-related activities. Though they’re a relatively small piece of a federal budget that is in excess of $1 trillion, how the administration deals with climate and energy will go a long ways toward determining the future of the planet. “We don’t get a second chance,” Secretary of State John Kerry said last week at the United Nations climate talks in Morocco....

It actually worked. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has always sounded like an unlikely proposition: create a virtual Earth-size telescope to take a picture of the shadow of a black hole. Every piece of that sentence is a little bit absurd. But it worked. After more than a decade of technical development and fundraising and astronomer herding and telescope wrangling, the astronomers of the EHT unveiled the first picture of a black hole—a bubble of pure gravity, a hole in spacetime, a prediction of general relativity so strange that Albert Einstein himself long refused to believe the concept was possible....

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazineOur last line of defence against hospital ‘superbugs’ is faltering, with resistance to the antibiotics usually used to tackle intractable pneumonia and urinary tract infections on the rise and spreading across European countries.The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Solna, Sweden, announced last week that 29 new cases of bacteria resistant to the broad-spectrum carbapenem antibiotics had been reported across a total of six European Union (EU) countries between early October 2010 and the end of March 2011....

“Today we’re revolutionizing pricing,” said Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi, right before announcing that the company would be giving away OS X Mavericks, Apple’s new flagship Mac operating system. On the screen behind him, the word “Free” appeared from behind a glimmer of light, one of the hokey slide animations that Apple has used in its keynote slides since Steve Jobs was the ringmaster. 1-2 of 30...