The vast Antarctic ice sheet is held together through a precarious balancing act. It loses mass whenever ice melts or breaks off into the ocean. And it restores some of that mass when snow falls and builds up on the surface of the ice. But as the climate warms, the Antarctic ice sheet is falling out of balance. It’s losing ice faster than it can replace, raising global sea levels in the process....
COLSTRIP, Mont.—This isolated town on the eastern Montana plain is known for the coal plant at its center, its four smokestacks jutting nearly 700 feet into the state’s namesake “Big Sky.” About 770 of Colstrip’s 2,300 residents work at the power plant or the sprawling mine complex that feeds it—but this is no harsh industrial outpost. Driving through Colstrip’s tree-lined neighborhoods, a visitor might spot Lori Shaw, 24, doing the rounds for her home pet care business, a tiny gold “COAL” pin glinting on her jacket....
Before NASA even existed, science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke in 1945 imagined spacecraft that could send messages back to Earth using beams of light. After decades of setbacks and dead ends, the technology to do this is finally coming of age. Two spacecraft set for launch in the coming weeks will carry lasers that allow data to be transferred faster than ever before. One, scheduled for take-off on 5 September, is NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), a mission that will beam video and scientific data from the Moon....
In the same way that a road map helps drivers make sense of otherwise cryptic directions, a team of scientists has developed software that allows them to map the clashes between immune systems and germs, starting with the influenza virus. This integration and illustration of data culled from laboratories around the globe marks a major step toward understanding and combating a virus that typically claims more than 250,000 lives worldwide annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)....
Many people are familiar with the story of Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman in the blockbuster movie of the same name. In May 1995, while riding in an equestrian competition, Reeve was thrown off his horse, severely damaging his spinal cord when he hit the ground. In an instant, Reeve became a quadriplegic–paralyzed from the neck down. He was confined to a wheelchair and could not even breathe without a machine....
Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Tens of millions of people have flocked to theatres this summer to see Jurassic World, an action flick “starring” a team of trained Velociraptors that hunt genetically modified dinosaurs on command of their human master. It’s a preposterous storyline of course, but very entertaining. I study dinosaurs for a living and it didn’t bother me to see Velociraptors being used as hunting dogs for the sake of good cinema....
There is a gene in your body’s cells that plays a key role in early spinal cord development. It belongs to Harvard University. Another gene makes the protein that the hepatitis A virus uses to attach to cells; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services holds the patent on that. Incyte Corporation, based in Wilmington, Del., has patented the gene of a receptor for histamine, the compound released by cells during the hay fever season....
“It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever.” —From Sleep, by Haruki Murakami, 1989 We’ve all been there....
If you are trying to predict a magpie’s next move, just look into its eyes. A June 15 study in Brain Research Bulletin found that when these birds view a potential predator, they use either their left or right eye, depending on whether they intend to run away or move closer. These findings reveal clues about how the brain segregates information between its hemispheres. Neuroscientist Lesley Rogers and her colleagues at the University of New England in Australia observed wild Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) in the presence of a stuffed monitor lizard....
Key concepts Matter Colloidal solutions Physical properties States of matter Introduction Have you ever wondered what whipped cream, jelly, and milk have in common? Aside from all being tasty, they are also all made up of tiny, solid particles that are dispersed, or distributed, in water. This type of mixture is called a colloidal solution. Colloidal solutions have some very interesting physical properties, such as acting like a solid and a liquid at the same time!...
The era of the interplanetary cubesat has definitively dawned. Less than seven months ago, no tiny spacecraft had ever voyaged beyond Earth orbit. But two briefcase-size probes just blazed a trail all the way to Mars, covering 301 million deep-space miles (484 million kilometers) and beaming home data from NASA’s InSight lander during the latter’s successful touchdown on the Red Planet Monday (Nov. 26). The tiny NASA craft, known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, even photographed Mars and helped researchers collect some data about the planet’s atmosphere during their flyby, mission team members said....
As you read this word, and now this one, some billions of subatomic particles called neutrinos are whizzing through your body. The most mind-boggling aspects in physics are often the invisible ones, as well as where the biggest research booty lies. Discovering the nature of that we can’t see in the universe promises to answer the most enticing cosmic questions: What spurred the formation of the universe, and what propels it ever outward?...
By Lawrence Hurley and Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON, Feb 9 - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama by putting on hold federal regulations to curb carbon dioxide emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants, the centerpiece of his administration’s strategy to combat climate change. The court voted 5-4 along ideological lines to grant a request by 27 states and various companies and business groups to block the administration’s Clean Power Plan, which also mandates a shift to renewable energy from coal-fired electricity....
Researchers are just now beginning to discover how different biological malfunctions can give rise to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—insight that might one day lead to more targeted treatments. In the meantime they are also exploring the use of biomarkers—hallmark variations in hormones, genes, enzymes and brain function—to apply existing therapies more effectively. “Trauma exposure can result in enduring biological changes that depend on an individual’s life history, age, gender and a host of other factors,” says Rachel Yehuda, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City....
People who go through chemotherapy say one of the most frustrating side effects is that even their favorite foods taste awful. Pasta tastes like cardboard, meat tastes metallic. Patients have no desire to eat and end up getting fewer calories and less nutrition when they need it most—to battle the cancer as well as the ravages of the therapy. Why does chemotherapy ruin food’s appeal? Does radiation therapy, often involved, make matters worse?...
As the morning of June 24 dawned, just hours after a large portion of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, Fla., had collapsed, more than 150 people were unaccounted for. Despite nearly around-the-clock search-and-rescue efforts for more than 10 days—apart from a brief pause while the remainder of the building was demolished for safety reasons—as of July 5, some 117 people remained missing. How do those whose loved ones are still missing cope with such devastating uncertainty?...
As the world grapples with containing the spread and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must also act to address the origins of zoonotic diseases, including the illegal, unregulated and underregulated trade and consumption of wildlife that may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic and is widely considered to be the cause of HIV, Ebola, SARS and MERS. Many voices have begun calling for closure of high-risk “wet markets” where living and dead wildlife and domestic animals of various species and origins converge, conditions that create an ideal environment for coronaviruses and other wildlife-borne diseases to spill over to humans....
Apollo by Matt Fitch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins. SelfMadeHero, 2018 ($24.99) The world waited anxiously during late July of 1969 for news of the first footsteps on the moon. Wives of the astronauts paced, President Richard Nixon in the White House mused on how the success or failure of the mission would play politically, and soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam compared themselves to the heroes in space. Writers Fitch and Baker teamed up with illustrator Collins (no relation to the Michael Collins, who flew with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the mission) to create a graphic novel of the suspense-filled story....
When Carolyn Kurle first visited Alaska’s Hawadax Island, then known as Rat Island, she immediately noticed the silence. “When you’re on an island that’s never had rats, it’s just like birds everywhere—it’s really loud,” she says. “So when you get to an island that does have rats, you really notice because it’s cacophony versus quiet.” Nowadays Hawadax is once again a noisy place. Roughly a decade after a successful effort to rid the island of its predatory rodents, a bounty of seabirds has returned....
With the word “weed” in its name, seaweed certainly seems like a resource as unnecessary as it is inexhaustible. But nature writer Shetterly details why this hardy alga deserves safeguarding. In evocative prose, she describes seaweed’s role in the environment, especially in her coastal home of “Downeast Maine,” and the people who study, harvest, sell, eat and protect it. She profiles fishers who because their fishery has been depleted have switched to gathering a variety known as rockweed for industrial and culinary uses, as well as activists fighting to regulate the harvest to prevent rockweed from disappearing as the fish did....
