Posts

After dozens of people were killed by flooding in the central United States over the past week, the question looms: How can communities better prepare for the next time? The answers are difficult. A new study warns that unprecedented events — disasters so extreme that communities haven’t experienced anything like them before — are stymieing attempts to prepare for them. Risk management strategies based on past climate norms are no longer effective for a more extreme future....

Key concepts Physics Cohesion Surface tension Hydrophobic Introduction Water. You can drink it, splash it, dive into it, float things in it. But it has its strange side: it flows, but then on some surfaces, it won’t flow, it’ll just roll up into a little bead. And on still ponds outside, in shady areas, you can sometimes see small insects with long legs walking around—on top of the water. What’s up with that?...

More than 900 people have been sickened by the Ebola virus since it began spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in early August. The outbreak, now the second-largest ever recorded, shows no sign of slowing—fuelled, aid workers and government officials say, by a toxic cocktail of violence and mistrust. Conflict in the northeastern DRC, the centre of the Ebola outbreak, has surged in recent months. Political protesters robbed and burned an Ebola-treatment facility in Beni in late December, after the DRC government blocked more than one million people in areas stricken by Ebola from voting in the country’s presidential election....

Adults are often embarrassed about asking for aid. It’s an act that can make people feel vulnerable. The moment you ask for directions, after all, you reveal that you are lost. Seeking assistance can feel like you are broadcasting your incompetence. New research suggests young children don’t seek help in school, even when they need it, for the same reason. Until relatively recently, psychologists assumed that children did not start to care about their reputation and peers’ perceptions until around age nine....

From Ensia (find the original story here); reprinted with permission. December 19, 2016 — What should we be thinking about when we think about the future of biodiversity, conservation and the environment? An international team of experts in horizon scanning, science communication and conservation recently asked that question as participants in the eighth annual Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation and Biological Diversity. The answers they came up, just published in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution and summarized below, portend both risks and opportunities for species and ecosystems around the world....

An outbreak of extreme heat across Europe this month is finally subsiding—and it may be headed for the Arctic next. According to meteorologists, the weather system is moving north toward Scandinavia and Greenland. It’s a welcome relief for cities like Paris, which reached an all-time high of 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit last week, or Cambridge, England, which logged a record-breaking 101.7 degrees. But it’s bad news for the Arctic, where experts warn that the heat may spur intense melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the region’s sea ice....

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has puzzled artists and scientists for centuries. Afflicting one in 50 people, OCD can take several forms, such as compulsively putting things in just the right order or checking if the stove is turned off 10 times in a row. One type of OCD that affects nearly half of those with the condition entails irresistible washing urges. People with this type can spend hours scrubbing their hands in agitation after touching something as trivial as a doorknob even though they know this makes no sense....

Studying corals usually requires either observing them alive in the ocean or examining their dead tissue in a laboratory. But new research offers a way to keep all coral cell types alive in a lab culture for two weeks or longer, opening novel experimental possibilities. The cells of cnidarians (a group that includes corals and sea anemones) are notoriously difficult to culture. These cells are easily damaged during extraction, and corals also have complex microbiomes that are tricky to eradicate with antibiotics—but if left alive, the microbes often take over cell cultures....

By Morag MacKinnonPERTH, Australia (Reuters) - Ports in Australia’s Pilbara region, through which almost half of the world’s seaborne iron ore is shipped, were sending ships out to sea on Saturday ahead of a tropical cyclone that is forecast to reach the coast by Tuesday.The last of more than 40 vessels in the anchorages and harbor at Port Hedland are expected to leave by the early hours of Sunday, port spokesman Steed Farrell told Reuters....

Should the world be caught without an effective vaccine or antiviral treatment for an avian flu pandemic, a last-ditch option may be to inoculate the sick with antibodies from the blood of those who are able to recover from the disease, according to a review of studies published after the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. The H5N1 virus has killed 141 of the 241 people reported to have contracted it. Current manufacturing capacity could vaccinate less than five percent of the worlds population in the event of a pandemic, however, making alternative treatments extremely desirable....

The diet of more than 800 million people revolves around neither wheat, nor corn, nor rice. Instead in many countries the main staple consists of the starchy roots of a plant variously called cassava, tapioca, manioc or yuca (not to be confused with the succulent plant yucca). Indeed, cassava contributes more to the world’s calorie budget than any other food except rice and wheat, which makes it a virtually irreplaceable resource against hunger....

The launch of the Chinese satellite Micius in 2016 could have been viewed as merely a single addition to the 2,700-odd instruments already orbiting Earth. But Micius, which is solely dedicated to quantum information science, arguably represents the nation’s lead in an emerging contest among great powers at the frontiers of physics. The brainchild of physicist Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, the satellite has helped him and his colleagues achieve several groundbreaking results that are bringing the once esoteric field of quantum cryptography into the mainstream....

By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Dozens of foreign hikers and Nepali guides returning from a trekking trip to the base camp of Mount Everest have been cut off by heavy snowfall, a police official said on Sunday. They have been forced to stay in four hotel resorts in the Gokyo area near the world’s tallest peak, which has been battered by heavy snowfall following freak rains in the last 24 hours, police officer Chandra Dev Rai said from Salleri, the nearest town....

Community based tourism refers to situations in which local people—usually those that are poor or economically marginalized in very rural parts of the world—open up their homes and communities to visitors seeking sustainably achieved cultural, educational or recreational travel experiences. Under a community-based tourism arrangement, unique benefits accrue to both the traveler and the hosts: Travelers usually accustomed to chain hotels and beachfront resorts discover local habitats and wildlife and learn about traditional cultures and the economic realities of life in developing countries....

On February 7, Eric Lander, White House science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) resigned in the wake of an internal investigation.* That investigation into Lander’s management of OSTP found “credible evidence” that he had bullied and mistreated staff. Lander’s own statements and letter of resignation verified these findings. Lander had to resign—there was no way the Biden administration could allow him to stay while abiding by their stated zero-tolerance principles—but the story shouldn’t end there....

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s capital Beijing, under fire to take effective measures against air pollution, raised its four-tiered alert system to “orange” for the first time on Friday, as heavy smog was forecast to roll into the city over the next three days. The orange level, the second highest, advises schools and kindergartens to cancel outside sports classes, but falls short of ordering school to close and keeping government vehicles off the road, provisions which come into force with the “red” level....

In a finding that may help scientists better predict the pace of climate change, research published in Science shows how the Sahara Desert, a region as big as the U.S. that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea across northern Africa, went from bountiful to bone-dry over a period of several thousand years. Scientists peered into the Sahara’s verdant past by analyzing sediment samples drilled out of the bottom of one of the desert’s last living lakes....

By Jean-Francois Rosnoblet SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France, March 24 (Reuters) - An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote snowy area of the French Alps on Tuesday and all 150 on board were feared dead. French President Francois Hollande said he believed none of those on board the A320 had survived, while the head of Lufthansa spoke of a dark day for the German airline. Germanwings confirmed its flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed in the French Alps with 144 passengers and six crew members on board....

Two patients who researchers hoped had been cured of HIV have seen their infections return, dashing hopes that the virus had been eradicated from their bodies. The patients had received a treatment regimen similar to that given to Timothy Ray Brown, known as the “Berlin patient,” who doctors said in 2009 had been cured of the virus by a bone-marrow transplant with cells that were resistant to HIV infection. Unlike Brown, however, the two “Boston patients”—nicknamed for the Massachusetts city where they were treated—received bone-marrow transplants with cells that were not resistant to HIV....

Mariah Carey, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Mozart, Beethoven, Jimi Hendrix, and Yanni. What do these musicians have in common? They’re all said to have perfect pitch. How rare is perfect pitch? If you don’t have it already, can you learn it? What is perfect (or absolute) pitch? Perfect pitch (technically known as absolute pitch) is the ability to identify, without effort, the pitch of a note. Let’s say someone plays a D on the piano....