In the moments after the big bang, spacetime expanded so rapidly that, in addition to our own, many—maybe infinite— universes exploded into existence (I envision these universes as bubbles that surge up when you blow air through a straw into your glass). So goes the “multiverse” component of string theory. To be sure, the multiverse is decidedly centered in the pop physics zeitgeist, capturing the minds of the public in books, comics and film....
As countless unmade beds and unfinished homework assignments attest, kids need rules. Yet how parents make demands can powerfully influence a child’s social skills, psychologists at the University of Virginia recently found after the conclusion of a study investigating the notorious transition from adolescence to adulthood. Initially 184 13-year-olds filled out multiple surveys, including one to assess how often their parents employed psychologically controlling tactics, such as inducing guilt or threatening to withdraw affection....
Nearly eight months after Cassini entered into orbit around Saturn, the spacecraft has amassed quite a collection of images of the ringed planet and its moons. A suite of articles published in the current Science discusses observations made thus far in the mission. Highlights from this grand tour follow below. CRATER FACE A close flyby of Phoebe, Saturn’s outermost moon, revealed an ancient, pockmarked surface. The many craters are thought to have resulted from collisions with smaller objects....
The first squeeze of my left thumb is gentle, almost reassuring. I rate it as 0 out of 100 on the pain scale. But as a technician ramps up pressure on the custom-made thumb-squeezing device, it becomes less pleasant. I give ratings of 2, 6 … then 36. A few squeezes later, I’m at 79. At 84, I’m glad the test is over as I put my tender thumb to my lips....
An ambitious plan to prevent the Italian city of Venice from being swallowed by the sea could spell disaster for the lagoon that surrounds it. MOSE, for Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (Experimental Electromechanical Module), which is in the final stages of construction and is expected to be completed in 2022, would consist of a complex network of 78 flap gates designed to separate the lagoon within which the city sits from the Adriatic Sea....
The animal world seems to burst with sugar and spice these days. Evidence for cooperation and compassion among swimming, flying and walking creatures has captured public imagination. In the ocean, groupers, wrasse and eels form a multispecies team, working together to flush out and consume prey in bouts of collaborative hunting. In the sky, variegated fairy wrens and splendid fairy wrens recognize one another, form stable partnerships and jointly defend patches of eucalyptus scrubland....
In my Scientific American column this month I mused on the increasing urgency of our need, as a species, to rescue everything we’ve ever recorded on magnetic tape. All those billions of hours of VHS tape, camcorder tape and audio tape are slowly rotting in our basements and attics. During the camcorder/audiocassette era few of us thought about a future when the tapes would deteriorate and when even the machines capable of playing them would become increasingly rare....
By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazineMicrobiologist David Lewis knew he might upset the biosolids industry with his research, which suggested that the spreading of sewage sludge on land could make people sick. But he didn’t expect his employer, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), not to back him up.Following complaints from a biosolids company, an EPA official used agency letterhead to spread allegations of research misconduct against Lewis, a situation that Lewis says led to him being forced out in 2003....
Stanford University is betting big on Earth’s future. It is launching a giant new initiative, the Doerr School of Sustainability, that was kick-started with a $1.1-billion donation by Bay Area venture capitalists John and Ann Doerr. With that kind of money, you might think the Stanford school could easily protect its integrity and independence by declining money from the businesses that have done more than any other to threaten planetary stability: the fossil-fuel industry....
When the Winter Olympics commence this month in Sochi, Russia, there should be no shortage of heart-stopping action. Alpine skiers will carve downhill turns at 80 miles per hour. Hockey players will battle one another for the puck. Snowboarders will twist and flip multiple times in a single jump. And then there is curling, in which a more sedate bunch will push a 44-pound rock down a long sheet of ice and then sweep the ice with brooms to “curl” that stone toward a target....
During this school year, thousands of children will begin reading. Despite their best efforts, however, up to a tenth of them will struggle. If we were aware of the early warning signs, we could help these children by using research-based remediation. But dyslexia is poorly understood by the public. Unveiling these misconceptions can help millions of children. It could also help decode the human mind. To shed light on the public view of dyslexia, let us take a moment to play clinician....
This holiday season, the most special thing to see in the sky won’t be flying reindeer pulling a sleigh, but rather a rare celestial rendezvous—a cosmic gift of sorts, many lifetimes in the making. On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will meet in a “great conjunction,” the closest they could be seen in the sky together for nearly 800 years. An astronomical conjunction occurs when any two heavenly bodies appear to pass or meet each other as seen from Earth....
Lasers shone into the brains of mice can now activate individual neurons—and change the animals’ behaviour. Scientists have used the technique to increase how fast mice drink a milkshake, but it could also help researchers to map brain functions at a much finer scale than is currently possible. Neuroscientists at Stanford University in California conducted their experiments on mice that were genetically engineered to have light-sensitive neurons in a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex....
Ever since its launch in 2013 the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has been billed as a mission destined to transform our understanding of our galaxy. Tasked with tracking the position, motion, brightness and color of more than a billion stars, Gaia’s primary purpose is to create a dynamic three-dimensional map of the Milky Way that will be a standard for galactic cartography for generations to come. But with the mission’s latest catalogue of data, released last April, astronomers are also using Gaia’s precision mapping to infer more about the nature of the mysterious dark matter that permeates the cosmos....
A lack of rules regulating the registration of raw ivory and the licensing of importers, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers has allowed illicit stocks into Japan’s domestic market, according to the report by the independent London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Under current rules, only whole elephant tusks must be registered with Japan’s Environmental Agency. “Japan’s ivory controls are flawed and there is evidence that large amounts of illegal ivory … have been laundered into the domestic market,” said the report, which was co-authored by animal welfare group Humane Society International....
Mounting research shows that optimism could extend your life. The latest study comes from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. For 999 elderly Dutch men and women, agreement with statements such as “I still have many goals to strive for” was highly predictive for longevity. When subjects were traced nine years after being surveyed, death rates of optimistic men were 63 percent lower than those of their pouty peers; for women, optimism reduced the rate by 35 percent....
A shrinking share of Americans support such warrantless government surveillance. Yet we have not effectively advocated against the growing surveillance of our personal data. That’s because we aren’t taking a principled view on government surveillance as a whole. Instead, we are starting to see viewpoints devolve into ostracization and hatred of the “other.” Our original research suggests that Americans’ fears about government surveillance change based on who is in power and what we fear that political party may do with our data....
A strange event occurred off the Antarctic coast in the dark midwinter of 2016. A gaping hole opened in the middle of the sea ice on the Weddell Sea, eventually expanding to nearly 13,000 square miles in size. It was the largest ice break observed in that region for decades. The following winter, another hole formed, this time exposing a whopping 20,000 square miles of ocean water. Holes in the sea ice, known as polynyas, are observed from time to time in the waters of both the Antarctic and Arctic....
If you’re wearing a sleep monitor that is awkward and gets in the way, you might choose not to use it, and even if you do, the act of wearing it might change the way you sleep. It’s a bit like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the observer changes the outcome of the experiment. If a sleep monitor has electrodes and wires that look like something from Frankenstein’s lab, you might not wear it consistently, and the information it gathers and reports may be compromised....
Fingerprints are so familiar that they are mostly taken for granted. Except, however, for people who don’t have any at all. Although rare, such a deficiency poses a problem for immigration, the border patrol and the criminal justice system, which all rely on tools such as biometric scans and other devices that read these tiny, unique, markings found on the hands and fingertips of most people. A recent study in The American Journal of Human Genetics claims to have found a gene associated with the absence of fingerprints....
