In a grainy, black-and-white video that looks like a home movie of a UFO attack a sleek aircraft streaks through the sky one minute, only to burst into flames the next and plummet into the sea. The silent video, which Raytheon Co. debuts Monday at the U.K.’s Farnborough International Air Show 2010, however, is not science fiction. The defense contractor says it depicts part of a test conducted in May during which the U....
Individuals facing a medical dilemma are more likely to choose a riskier course for themselves than for others. Researchers at the University of Michigan and the V.A. Ann Arbor Healthcare System asked 2,400 participants in an online study to play one of four roles: a patient deciding on individual treatment, a parent choosing for a child, a physician advising a patient, or a medical director setting guidelines for many patients. The volunteers were then asked to imagine a serious flu outbreak that presented a 10 percent chance of causing death and were given the option to take a new flu vaccine that carried a 5 percent chance of being fatal....
My friend Ann (not her real name) recently tried the Paleo diet. She stopped eating dairy, grains, refined sugars and processed foods. Six weeks in, Ann had lost 15 pounds. But in that time, she had skipped happy hours, girls’ nights out, office parties—really any occasion that might have put her in arm’s reach of temptation. Ann missed her old life. She soon slid into her prediet habits and quickly gained back the pounds, plus a few more—a familiar experience for her....
Highly technical scientific debates are usually hashed out behind closed doors—in labs, in subscription-based journals, in the hallways at conferences attended only by a few specialized researchers. But in May the rest of us saw three real academic arguments playing out in public, largely via Twitter, blogs and wikis. The episodes have cheered supporters of the open-science movement, but some critics worry that the debates might descend into cacophony. Either way, the stories illustrate one clear fact: science is not usually a series of eureka moments so much as a messy, human process....
On the campaign trail last year, Joe Biden promised that, if elected president, he would get covid-19 under control. Since assuming office in January, Biden has continued to pledge that his administration would do its best to get Americans vaccinated against covid and allow life to return to some semblance of normal. Both signs of progress and setbacks have cropped up along the way. Initially, as covid vaccines became available early this year, demand exceeded supply, frustrating many....
Many industries are delighted by President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a leader in the GOP fight against the Clean Power Plan, to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But one industry group—ethanol producers—is noting Pruitt’s past differences with Trump on another hot-button EPA issue: the law that mandates the use of the crop-based gasoline additive. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, which then-President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007, requires energy companies to blend ethanol and biodiesel into gasoline and diesel fuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on oil imports, while helping rural farmers....
Swarms of cicadas are unexpectedly crawling out from under trees from North Carolina to New Jersey. The red-eyed insects are almost impossible to miss; they fly around lazily, plunking into backyard barbeques and crashing into cars. They litter the ground with their crunchy husks as they molt. Most noticeably, they chirp en masse for their mates, producing a relentless, shrill buzz that is recognized as a song of summer. And within a month they are gone....
By Joseph Milton of Nature magazine A key feature of human childbirth, long thought to be unique to Homo sapiens–the arrival of the baby facing backwards relative to its mother–has been observed in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees.The discovery, reported April 19 in Biology Letters, calls into question the argument that backwards-facing babies were an important factor in the evolution of midwifery in humans. Rather than searching for assistance when they go into labour, pregnant chimps seek solitude....
A giant star near the center of our galaxy hints, once again, that Albert Einstein was correct about gravity. A group of astronomers in Germany and the Czech Republic observed three stars in a cluster near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Using data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, among others, the researchers tracked how the stars moved as they went around the monster black hole....
The latest phase of China’s bid to become a dominant space power is underway as the nation’s new robotic mission hurtles toward an orbit overlooking the far side of the moon. The relay satellite Queqiao, or “Magpie Bridge”—a reference to Chinese folklore—departed Earth atop a Long March 4C booster on Monday local time (Sunday evening in North America) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The outbound trip will take a little over a week, although Queqiao will only reach its final orbit two months from now....
Annually, diabetes costs the U.S. upward of $132 billion, autism costs more than $43 billion, and asthma’s toll is $11.3 billion. Spending just $100 million in each of the next 20 years to understand better the origins of those conditions, if it would reduce their burden even fractionally, thus sounds like a bargain. Yet our national leaders now seem prepared to throw that opportunity away in favor of other priorities in the country’s $2....
The icy ocean around Antarctica may seem like a cold and foreboding place. But it’s actually brimming with life. Penguins and seals build their colonies on its rocky shores. Orcas, whales and a variety of fish zip through its gray waters. Seabirds glide overhead. The Antarctic Peninsula, the continent’s northernmost spit of land, is one of the most biologically diverse regions of all. And at the cornerstone of its delicate ecosystem is a small, shrimp-like creature known as the Antarctic krill....
A few weeks ago, listener Megan wrote to me on Facebook and said: “Hey Brock, would you explain heart rate variability (HRV) in layman’s terms? I’ve heard a lot about it, but don’t quite understand the concept or its use.” I thought that was a great suggestion because HRV is a technique that has been growing in popularity and acceptance in the sport and fitness world. So here you go, Megan: HRV 101....
On a gray day in mid-January of 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences between the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science fields. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding—that female brains tend to be smaller—to bolster the view that women are intellectually inferior to men....
Charles J. Limb could have been a professional jazz saxophonist. He grew up in a musical family and showed early signs of talent. He idolized John Coltrane and, as a student at Harvard University, directed a jazz band. Although he ultimately went to medical school, he chose his specialty (otolaryngology) in part because of his musical interest. As a hearing specialist and surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he performed cochlear implants in patients to restore hearing and enable the deaf to appreciate music....
On March 28, a Japanese man in his 60s became the first person to receive cells derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that had been donated by another person. The surgery is expected to set the path for more applications of iPS cell technology, which offers the versatility of embryonic stem cells without the latter’s ethical taint. Banks of iPS cells from diverse donors could make stem cell transplants more convenient to perform, while slashing costs....
ROME (Reuters) - Italian health officials have banned residents across half of Rome from donating blood because of an outbreak of the painful, mosquito-borne illness Chikungunya. At least 17 people in southeastern Rome have been diagnosed with the virus since the end of August, and the local health authority decided to suspend blood donations in the affected areas to prevent accidental transmission. The ban covers some 1.2 million residents. Anyone who has visited the affected area of the capital since Aug....
Ozone loss over the South Pole might be the reason for a two-decade rise in early summer temperatures across southern Africa, according to research published October 13 in Nature Geoscience. Desmond Manatsa, a climate scientist at Bindura University of Science in Zimbabwe, and colleagues analysed data sets of southern African climate from 1979 to 2010, covering the years before and after the development of the ozone hole over the Antarctic. They found that the size of the ozone hole seemed to influence wind patterns and triggered an upward shift in early summer temperatures....
Key Concepts Physics Motion Position Velocity Acceleration Measurement Introduction Have you ever played a video game with a controller that used motion controls? Do you ever wonder how sometimes a smartphone seems to “know” if you’re moving? How do these electronic devices measure motion? Try this activity to find out! Background You’re probably familiar with the units we use to measure distance and velocity. In the U.S., we might say someone is 5 feet 11 inches tall (measuring distance) or that we drive 55 miles per hour on the highway (measuring velocity, which is a unit of distance during an amount of time)....
Many of us think of invention as something that springs from an individual mind. It’s a romantic view, but it bears little relation to the creative process behind the technologies that are shaping our world. That process is increasingly collaborative—not so much a single lightbulb going off in someone’s head as many lightbulbs in a social network of diverse minds. The growing connectedness of the world and the rising contribution of scientists and engineers from all continents have broadened the possibilities for human creativity....
