Posts

TRIAGING TREATMENTS The problems with the U.S. health care system described by Sharon Begley in “The Best Medicine” are accurate. It is gratifying that the National Institutes of Health is finally willing to fund real comparative effectiveness research. But the NIH, under pressure from Congress, has been reluctant to fund studies directly comparing the costs of competing treatments. I retired from the medical research field in part because of this refusal to look for the most effective and least costly answers and to support research on how to reduce unnecessary care....

SEPTEMBER 7 When artists, anthropologists and neuroscientists gather at The Brain Unravelled in London through Sep­tember 19, their creative efforts will range from paintings to performances to mixed-media works. In addition to the ­exhibition, which includes a children’s area, the event offers a daily program of film screenings, concerts, artist talks and lectures by renowned scientists. Informed by the latest research, the speakers will delve into the relation between brains and minds, plumbing the deepest reaches of human experience: our consciousness....

Sooner or later most of us suffer deep grief over the death of someone we love. The experience often causes people to question their sanity—as when they momentarily think they have caught sight of their loved one on a crowded street. Many mourners ponder, even if only abstractedly, their reason for living. But when are these disturbing thoughts and emotions normal—that is to say, they become less consuming and intense with the passage of time—and when do they cross the line to pathology, requiring ongoing treatment with powerful antidepressants or psychotherapy, or both?...

SpaceX’s SN15 stuck the landing. The private spaceflight company’s latest Starship prototype aced a high-altitude test flight today (May 5), checking every box from takeoff to touchdown for the first time. “We are down! The Starship has landed,” John Insprucker, SpaceX’s principal integration engineer, said during live commentary. Today’s uncrewed test came on the 60th anniversary of the United States’ first-ever crewed spaceflight, the suborbital jaunt of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard....

The private spaceflight firm SpaceX will try to build the world’s first completely reusable rocket and spaceship, a space travel method that could open the gates of Mars for humanity, the company’s milionaire CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday (Sept. 29). A fully reusable rocket would dramatically decrease the cost of lofting cargo and humans to space, making the exploration and colonization of other worlds such as Mars more feasible, Musk said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D....

Scientists who reported discovering feminized fish in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California now say the findings were based erroneously on samples accidentally contaminated by researchers. The 2005 discovery received worldwide attention because it was the first and only time that intersex animals – a phenomenon when males exposed to hormone-like pollutants have ovary-like testes that grow eggs – were found in the ocean. At the time, the half-male, half-female flatfish were linked to massive sewage outfalls off Los Angeles and Orange counties....

Sure, the soccer uniforms, piano lessons and college tuition add up—but there is nothing like being a parent. Or so we tell ourselves, according to a study in the February issue of Psychological Science. When parents are faced with the financial costs of a child, they justify their investment by playing up parenthood’s emotional payoffs. Psychologists at the University of Waterloo in Ontario gave parents in the study a government report estimating that bringing up a child to age 18 costs more than $190,000....

More than most people realize, dealing with climate change means addressing the problems posed by emissions from coal-fired power plants. Unless humanity takes prompt action to strictly limit the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere when consuming coal to make electricity, we have little chance of gaining control over global warming. Coal–the fuel that powered the Industrial Revolution–is a particularly worrisome source of energy, in part because burning it produces considerably more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity generated than burning either oil or natural gas does....

New research suggests why Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, waited about two million years for its early-formation growth spurt. A team led by a Swiss researcher found that kilometer-size worlds smashed into the giant planet during that time, generating zones of high energy. This bombardment made it difficult for gas molecules to accrete, forcing the planet to grow more slowly. The solar system is about 4.5 billion years old, and the a popular formation theory for planets says that they were formed out of an orbiting cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the young sun....

Panic about the looming water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, strikes Jodie Miller unpredictably during otherwise ordinary days. “I was making cupcakes this weekend and burned my finger on the pan, and whipped it under the tap,” says Miller, a water scientist at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town. “What will we do when no water comes out?” The city’s government estimates that “Day Zero”—when Cape Town becomes the first major city in the world to run out of water, as reservoirs dip too low to deliver a potable supply—will come on April 12....

It’s in the nature of presidential candidates and new presidents to promise big things. Just months after his 1961 inauguration, President John F. Kennedy vowed to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. That pledge was kept, but many others haven’t been, such as candidate Bill Clinton’s promise to provide universal health care and presidential hopeful George H.W. Bush’s guarantee of no new taxes. Now, during a once-in-a-century pandemic, incoming President Joe Biden has promised to provide 100 million covid-19 vaccinations in his first 100 days in office....

Key concepts Chemical reactions Molecules Carbonation Temperature Introduction Have you ever wondered why bubbles form when an Alka-Seltzer tablet is dropped into water? If you’ve ever tried it, you’ve seen that the tablet fizzes furiously. The moment the tablet starts dissolving a chemical reaction occurs that releases carbon dioxide gas. This is what comprises the bubbles. Some factors can change how quickly the carbon dioxide gas is produced, which consequently affect how furiously the tablet fizzes....

Six teams from three continents are preparing for a unique race on a polished gold track in the south of France this month. But this is no luxurious supercar event: competitors will be racing single molecules. In 36 hours, they aim to move them a distance of 100 nanometres—about one-thousandth the width of a human hair—on a laboratory track held in a vacuum and chilled to a few degrees above absolute zero....

In September 2020, India’s Narendra Modi government circumvented parliamentary procedures to push through three bills that eased restrictions on private players in agricultural markets. The move enraged farmers—especially in the northwestern state of Punjab, an epicenter of the Green Revolution since the 1950s. After protesting in vain for two months, tens of thousands of Punjab farmers began a march to New Delhi in late November. The Modi government responded by deploying paramilitary troops armed with water cannons and tear gas shells, and protected by barricades, concertina wires and deep trenches dug into freeways at the borders of the capital city....

For most of May Chris Darimont, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, poured liters of fermented cattle blood mixed with pureed rotten fish guts on 3,000 square kilometers of British Columbia’s coastal wilderness. Darimont’s potent cocktail, dubbed “stink sauce” by his field crew, is key to a new study that examines the relationships among salmon and coastal grizzlies by mining their hair for unprecedented data on their diet and health....

Every month, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Key information from this month’s issue: • HEALTH Experts are concerned that states are demanding tests for diseases in newborns that may not have tangible benefits. Of four million babies born in the US every year, newborn screening identifies 12,500 with developmental disorders....

Scientists, have at it: NASA has released raw data from the Kepler Space Telescope probing the many Earth-size planets around the star TRAPPIST-1. In February, data from the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that seven planets orbit the ultracool dwarf star, and now, the recently released Kepler data (and its final, processed version) will give a complementary look at the worlds, three of which might orbit in the star’s habitable zone. Kepler’s observations could provide more detail about the gravitational interactions among the planets, and perhaps reveal even more planets around the star, NASA officials said in a statement....

The magician climbs into the cage to perform a show for one. For this special event, he eschews coins and cards for peanuts. He rolls his sleeves and faces his captive audience: a corvid bird by the name of Stuka. He shows Stuka a peanut and waves it through the air, sweeping it from one hand to another. Stuka tracks the treat, moving its head like a spectator at a tennis match....

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is in calamitous straits. Cuts to the program in President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year (FY) could pull the plug on the space agency’s ensemble of orbiters, as well as its only active Mars rover, Curiosity, which has been prowling the Red Planet since 2012. If unchanged, the budget numbers would, in this calendar year, shutter an aged but functional communications relay and science orbiter, Mars Odyssey, which has operated at the planet since 2001....

“When I meet God, I’m going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he’ll have an answer for the first.” This probably apocryphal quote, attributed to physicist Werner Heisenberg, captures the way many scientists feel about turbulence: a phenomenon in which the orderly flow of a fluid (a liquid or a gas) disintegrates into seemingly unpredictable swirls, such as when a river flows round a rock, or when milk mixes with coffee....