I’ll be asleep soon. I just have to write a quick WhatsApp message—and check Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And because I already have my smartphone in my hand anyway, I can read a few messages right away. In no time at all, an hour has passed, maybe even two or three. And it’s actually past my bedtime. Do you recognize this description? In fact, this phenomenon has had a name for some years now....
The world’s largest volcano lurks beneath the Pacific Ocean, researchers announced September 5 in the Nature Geoscience. Called the Tamu Massif, the enormous mound dwarfs the previous record holder, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, and is only 25 percent smaller than Olympus Mons on Mars, the biggest volcano in Earth’s solar system, said William Sager, lead study author and a geologist at the University of Houston. “We think this is a class of volcano that hasn’t been recognized before,” Sager said....
Pai, who was nominated to the FCC by Pres. Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2012, follows the Republican party line that cutting regulations will encourage internet and telecom companies to invest in communications infrastructure and new services. On Friday he circulated a plan to waive for five years FCC enhanced transparency reporting requirements for ISPs with no more than 250,000 subscribers. If passed this would neuter the part of the 2015 ruling that as of last month requires small ISPs to submit information to the agency and consumers about data caps, fees and speeds....
Leading neuroscientists are joining forces to study the brain—in much the same way that physicists team up in mega-projects to hunt for new particles. The International Brain Lab (IBL), launched on September 19, combines 21 of the foremost neuroscience laboratories in the United States and Europe into a giant collaboration that will develop theories of how the brain works by focusing on a single behaviour shared by all animals: foraging. The Wellcome Trust in London, and the Simons Foundation in New York City have together committed more than US$13 million over five years to kick-start the IBL....
Turning big, frozen deposits of methane buried under the seafloor into fuel for our cars and homes is coming closer to reality. As Japan, China and to a lesser extent the U.S. try to tap these abundant resources, important questions are arising about just how much they may contribute to climate change. The answers seem to range widely, depending on who is talking. This issue has quickly risen because Japan conducted its second production test of these deposits, known as methane hydrates, in May....
Eight months and several hurdles after receiving 510(k) clearance, mobile-health company Mobisante says its smartphone ultrasound device is officially on the market.The MobiUS system is on the market for $7,495.(Credit:Mobisante)The U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance alone took so long that the MobiUS system–intended to be used in fetal, abdominal, cardiac, pelvic, and peripheral vessel imaging–only works with the 2-year-old Windows Mobile 6.5-based Toshiba TG01 smartphone and requires a USB 2....
By Nicola Jones of Nature magazineThe spacesuits worn by the first astronauts are falling apart from old age. Conservators have a plan to give them a longer life, but first they have to pack them up into coffins.Conservator Lisa Young and curator Cathy Lewis of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC are overseeing the suits’ move from their current home in the aptly named town of Suitland, Maryland, to a newer and better facility....
Most people probably know that the universe is full of elementary particles—but not everyone knows that it is also full of extremely fast stars moving freely through space like barracuda through the ocean. These stars are ejected by gravitational slingshots located at the focal point of galaxy mergers—where a pair of supermassive black holes coalesce while kicking stars out of the host galaxy, like a batter hitting a series of home runs out of the park....
Jerry Pratt saw sky on the video monitor and knew he’d fouled up. The sky—southern California blue as usual on a June afternoon in Pomona, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles—wasn’t the problem. The problem was that there was only one reason to see sky on a monitor connected to a camera connected to the head of a very expensive, very sophisticated humanoid robot. Instead of stepping nimbly onto a small pile of cinder blocks, the robot, nicknamed Running Man, had fallen flat on its back....
Extreme heat was a constant in the news last summer: In July a punishing heat wave in Europe pushed temperatures across parts of the U.K. above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) for the first time in history. That same month was viciously hot across China, including in Shanghai—home to 26 million people—which tied its highest-ever July reading of 105.6 degrees F (40.9 degrees C). And even before the summer officially began, searing heat settled over the U....
By Jeff TollefsonSenators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) released their much anticipated global warming bill on Wednesday, setting the stage for one last attempt to get climate legislation through the U.S. Senate this year. The duo has already lost the active support of a key partner, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and many think already tricky political negotiations will only become more difficult in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico....
At least the weather outside will keep its cool in “camageddon” this weekend. However, the weather inside thousands of vehicles may get hostile. What Is Carmageddon? The stretch of the 405 which officials are closing lies between Highway 101 near Van Nuys and Interstate 10 near Santa Monica. Closures are expected to begin around 7 p.m. Friday night and continue until Monday morning at 6 a.m. Commuters and officials are fearing that the closure of this section of roadway could cause an epic traffic tie-up on other major arteries in the Los Angeles region....
More often than not a trip to Las Vegas is not a financially sound decision. And yet every year over 40 million people hand over their cash to the city’s many towering casinos, hoping the roulette ball rattles to a stop on black. Gambling and other forms of risk-taking appear to be hardwired into our psyche. Humans at least as far back as Mesopotamia have rolled the dice, laying their barley, bronze and silver on the line, often against miserable odds....
Wolves infected with a common parasite are more likely than uninfected animals to lead a pack, according to an analysis of more than 200 North American wolves. Infected animals are also more likely to leave their home packs and strike out on their own. The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, makes its hosts bold—a mechanism that increases its survival. To reproduce sexually, T. gondii must reach the body of a cat, usually when its host is eaten by one....
Powerful sound waves created during offshore surveys for oil and gas can kill microscopic animals at the base of the ocean food chain, according to a new study. And these lethal effects travel much farther than ecologists had previously assumed. Researchers fear that damage to these animals, collectively known as zooplankton, could harm top predators and commercially important species of fish that depend on such species for food. Seismic surveys blast compressed air to produce pulses of sound that can probe the sea floor thousands of meters down for natural resources....
Fallen feathers may appear innocuous, but bugs in tropical Brazilian savannas should think twice about approaching them. New research suggests Pheidole oxyops ants sometimes place feathers around their underground nest’s single entrance as bait for other creatures, which then tumble in. This behavior is an unusual example of ants using lures or traps rather than actively hunting down their prey. Inácio Gomes, an ecologist at the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil, had never seen any description in scientific studies of ants building traps....
Two clinical trials suggest that specific antibody treatments can prevent deaths and hospitalizations among people with mild or moderate COVID-19—particularly those who are at high risk of developing severe disease. One study found that an antibody against the coronavirus developed by Vir Biotechnology in San Francisco, California, and GSK, headquartered in London, reduced the chances of hospitalization or death among participants by 85%. In another trial, a cocktail of two antibodies—bamlanivimab and etesevimab, both made by Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, Indiana—cut the risk of hospitalization and death by 87%....
Did the universe start with a bang or a bounce—or something else entirely? The question of our origins is one of the thorniest in physics, with few answers and lots of speculation and strong feelings. The most popular theory by far is inflation, the notion that the cosmos blew up in size in the first few fractions of a second after it was born in a bang. But an underdog idea posits that the birth of this universe was not actually the beginning—that an earlier version of spacetime had existed and contracted toward a “big crunch,” then flipped and started expanding into what we see today....
At long last, Opening Day is nearly here. As with each new season, this one arrives with a slew of major-league questions: Can the Phillies repeat? Can the spendthrift Yankees break their World Series drought? Is this the year the Athletics reclaim their freewheeling magic? But the answers to all those big questions will ultimately arise from countless small interactions, both human (a pitcher facing down a batter, a base runner challenging a catcher’s arm, a manager’s clever double switch) and physical (a ball meeting the bat’s sweet spot, a sharp slider slicing through the air, a pop fly tracing a parabolic arc through the sky)....
ROSWELL, New Mexico – The outbreak started in January 2014. That’s when a resident of the Casa Maria nursing home here was diagnosed with Clostridium difficile, a highly contagious and potentially deadly “superbug” that plagues hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. By the end of February, six more Casa Maria residents were suffering from the infection, characterized by fever, abdominal cramps and violent diarrhea. Under New Mexico regulations, healthcare facilities must report a suspected outbreak of C....
