Posts

By Stephanie Nebehay The World Health Organization said on Tuesday governments should raise taxes on sugary drinks to fight what it says are global obesity and diabetes epidemics. If retail prices of sugar-sweetened drinks are increased by 20 percent through taxation, there is a proportional drop in consumption, it said in a report titled “Fiscal Policies for Diet and Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases”. Obesity more than doubled worldwide between 1980 and 2014, with 11 percent of men and 15 percent of women classified as obese—more than 500 million people, the WHO said....

Local transmission of the Zika virus in Florida may have occurred as early as June 15 of last year and likely infected people who lived not only in Miami-Dade County, but in two nearby counties, U.S. health officials said on Monday. The warning means that some men who donated semen to sperm banks in the area may not have been aware that they were at risk of infection, and may have donated sperm infected with the Zika virus, officials from the U....

Key Concepts Physics Materials Mixture Buoyancy Introduction Have you ever noticed that the dried fruits or nuts in your breakfast cereal are not evenly spread out inside the box—or that in a container of mixed nuts, Brazil nuts gather at the top? This phenomenon is commonly called the “Brazil nut effect,” and the science behind it is surprisingly complex and far-reaching. This [Repeat above]situation can be a nuisance when you want to fill silos, bags or bins with different types of materials....

Helicobacter pylori is one of humanity’s oldest and closest companions, and yet it took scientists more than a century to recognize it. As early as 1875, German anatomists found spiral bacteria colonizing the mucus layer of the human stomach, but because the organisms could not be grown in a pure culture, the results were ignored and then forgotten. It was not until 1982 that Australian doctors Barry J. Marshall and J....

In the courtroom, eyewitness testimony can lead to a life sentence in jail. But in science, such testimony is of limited value. Science mandates quantitative measurements by instruments, removing the subjective impressions of humans from the balance scale of reliability. This is for a good reason. Some people truly believe in a reality that does not exist, either because of hallucinations or as a consequence of deep psychological forces that drive them to ignore facts, especially those that are not flattering to their forecasts or ego....

As with most decision points around pregnancy, cannabis use is a fraught subject. Researchers can’t assess it in randomized trials because dosing pregnant people with the psychoactive substance is unethical. The next best thing is studies with enough participants who use cannabis on their own, allowing for comparisons with those who do not. The findings of one such study, published on November 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, highlight symptoms of increased anxiety, hyperactivity and aggression in children whose parents used cannabis during pregnancy....

By Bruce DormineyThe star Eta Carinae (Eta Car), once one of the brightest in the southern sky, has long been shrouded in mystery. After a huge outburst of gas that occurred more than 150 years ago, it has largely been hidden by a dense cloud of dust–a strong indicator of sporadic eruptions.Now, Eta Car, which sits in our part of the Milky Way some 2,300 parsecs (7,500 light years) from the Sun, is puzzling researchers and theorists all over again....

Other than dung beetles, most animals try their best to avoid poop. Humans typically build entire rooms designed to flush the stuff away. The ick factor evolved for good reason: fecal matter is a great place for microorganisms to live and grow, some of which can lead to serious infection and illness. Like us, many insects that live in colonies have evolved ways of keeping their nests and hives sanitary. Honeybees perform so-called defecation flights, in which they leave the nest to do their business....

A revision of peak rainfall estimates in Texas could reshape future development, including the way buildings, highways, bridges and other infrastructure are constructed in floodplains. In an update to the “Precipitation-Frequency Atlas of the United States,” or Atlas 14, NOAA determined that major storm events across the southern half of Texas produce substantially more rain than earlier thought. The new estimates, which NOAA officials describe as “the federal government’s authoritative source of precipitation frequency estimates” for all 50 states and U....

The recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old legal precedent that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, has people scrambling for access to medications that can end a pregnancy or prevent one. But there is already confusion over the difference between drugs for medication abortion, which are prescribed to end a pregnancy, and emergency contraceptives (including Plan B), which are taken soon after sex and prevent pregnancy....

In December 2015 then president Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines and others negotiated a deal with pharmaceutical company Sanofi to purchase three million doses of Dengvaxia, the first vaccine ever licensed for dengue. The plan was to give a million schoolchildren, nine years of age, three doses of the vaccine each, sparing them from the worst outcomes of dengue: shock, organ failure and death. The virus comes in four varieties....

The Perseid meteor shower will burst into light this August as Earth passes through the long trail left by Comet Swift-Tuttle—and this year, it’s slated to put on a spectacular show. Here’s how and when to see the Perseids. According to NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke, the Perseids are perhaps the most popular meteor shower of the year. They will be in “outburst” in 2016, which means they’ll appear at double the usual rates....

Thirty-six years ago, we were, like today, in the midst of a new and still somewhat mysterious global pandemic. In the U.S. alone, more than one million people were infected with HIV, and 12,000 had already died of AIDS. At the time, we were just beginning to understand how the virus worked. But that didn’t stop some leaders from making wildly optimistic claims about an AIDS vaccine being delivered within two years....

A ‘molecular movie’ has revealed how perovskite solar cells respond to light. The work could help to explain why these structures are so adept at converting light into electricity. Silicon solar devices remain the dominant market force in photovoltaics, accounting for around 94% of device production in 2016. Although other cells have failed to surpass silicon’s performance, perovskites offer a promising alternative. Since their discovery in 2009, efficiencies for the fledgling device have continued to climb, moving from 14% to 20% in under two years....

When the Society for Neuroscience asked Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (the leader of Tibetan Buddhism), to address its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in 2005, a few hundred members among the nearly 35,000 or so attending the meeting petitioned to have the invitation rescinded. A religious leader, they felt, had no place at a scientific meeting. But this particular leader turned out to have a provocative and ultimately productive question to pose to the gathering....

Not a single polar-bear haven in the rapidly warming Arctic is safe from the effects of climate change, researchers have found. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) rely on sea ice for roaming, breeding, and as a platform from which to hunt seals. When the ice melts in the summer, the bears spend several months on land, largely fasting, until the freeze-up allows them to resume hunting. So if they are to survive, they need pockets of ice to persist almost year-round....

Edited by Dava Sobel In a year of panic, envy any creature who estivates in the heat. Line a cavity with mucus & hunker down. A bunker hardens around you. Watch the river shrivel without worry. In the 1950s, humans dug up backyards, poured concrete, stocked canned goods. The lungfish feeds not off Spam but from its own muscle, digests itself into slime & vitamin. When the rivers flood again, emerge from your opposite hibernation....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A group of 37 U.S.-based scientists whose research focuses on Arctic wildlife asked two U.S. senators in a letter on Thursday not to open the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, according to a copy seen by Reuters. The scientists, including several retired former officials from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, said in a letter to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington that drilling for oil and gas in the refuge would be “incompatible with the purposes for which the refuge was established,” protecting fish and wildlife populations and the environments in which they live....

As people continue to go after the biggest fish in the sea, global fisheries are shrinking—both in number and in the actual body size of their catches. But that rapid evolution can be reversed, according to a new 10-year study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Previous research has shown that the size of plants and animals harvested from the wild—from cod to ginseng—is actually decreasing two and a half times the rate Mother Nature would dictate....

Small-armed, two-legged dinosaurs may have wagged their tails to help them run, for the same reason humans swing their arms, according to a new study. Figuring out how extinct species moved about in the world is not easy, as just bones and footprints are left to analyze. Most previous studies on bipedal dinosaurs — those that stand on two feet, such as Tyrannosaurus rex — have deduced movement by focusing on the animals’ legs....