You love your dog. Does your dog love you back? A group of Swedish and Danish researchers went looking for an answer. More specifically, knowing that dogs are highly attuned to cues from humans, the researchers suspected that dogs belonging to owners who felt they had a great relationship with their pets would also perceive that the relationship was close, perhaps because the owners’ attitude would lead to a high frequency of positive interactions between the duo....
A roaring waterfall such as the iconic Niagara, Yosemite or Iguazu is a mesmerizing sight. But waterfalls are not just beautiful; they also help scientists decipher Earth’s history because of the geologic clues that can be gleaned from the ways they form. Now a new study reveals a previously unknown origin of waterfalls: They can form spontaneously. Scientists have long known some waterfalls form due to external forces. For instance, retreating glaciers leave behind big valleys with steep walls that rivers run over, forming falls....
Imagine visiting a far distant galaxy and addressing a postcard to your loved ones back home. You might begin with your house on your street in your hometown, somewhere on Earth, the third planet from our sun. From there the address could list the sun’s location in the Orion Spur, a segment of a spiral arm in the Milky Way’s suburbs, followed by the Milky Way’s residence in the Local Group, a gathering of more than 50 nearby galaxies spanning some seven million light-years of space....
The dusty-red sphere now called Mars has fascinated stargazers since the dawn of humanity, but Earthlings’ view of the planet has changed drastically over the years. Once thought of as a lush alien world teeming with life, it was later dismissed as an arid, desolate orb. But now, scientists have announced the Red Planet has long, fingerlike strips of seeping, salty, liquid water that just might aid in the search for extraterrestrial life....
Kelp, green and nutritious, could be Maine’s ticket into a multibillion-dollar global aquaculture industry. The state’s nascent seaweed business is thriving, experts say, and that puts Maine in a front-row seat as the U.S. market for homegrown sea veggies grows. It could also help provide an alternative source of income for lobster fishermen subject to the constant challenges of fluctuating prices, changing ocean temperatures and unpredictable catches. “I worry every year that the price is going to drop out,” said Karen Cooper, who has been catching lobster for the past three decades....
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism Riding in a Manhattan subway car the other morning, I read that quote by 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer on one of the transit authority’s “Train of Thought” posters. It amused me that I had actually gone underground to see the light. That is, Schopenhauer’s words captured clearly what I had been only vaguely mulling about some of this issue’s major features and what they represent: the utility of looking at an area of science anew by coming at it from a different perspective....
As psychiatrists who have worked on the front lines of the pandemic, we’ve seen firsthand how the COVID-19 outbreak has ruthlessly tested the limits of our health-care system. Just as the pandemic seemed to be momentarily abating, the country began reckoning with another public health crisis—that of anti-Black racism and police violence. Data show that COVID disproportionately affects minority communities, likely resulting from racism’s downstream effects on socioeconomic opportunities, health outcomes and insurance coverage....
By Alla Katsnelson Days after an announcement that a strain of bacteria can apparently use arsenic in place of phosphorous to build its DNA and other biomolecules–an ability unknown in any other organism–some scientists are questioning the finding and taking issue with how it was communicated to non-specialists. Many readily agree that the bacterium, described last week in Science and dubbed GFAJ-1 (F. Wolfe-Simon et al. Science doi:10.1126/science.1197258; 2010), performs a remarkable feat by surviving high concentrations of arsenic in California’s Mono Lake and in the laboratory....
Near-death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features. The details of what happens in near-death experiences are now known widely—a sense of being dead, a feeling that one’s “soul” has left the body, a voyage toward a bright light, and a departure to another reality where love and bliss are all-encompassing. Approximately 3 percent of the U....
Recent work with mice has revealed that the antidepressant Prozac spurs growth of new neurons in the brain. Prozac, or fluoxetine, is thought to ease depression by raising the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. But now researchers have learned that the drug also causes more neurons to form than normally would. In mice, blocking this growth nullifies the drug’s effects on behavior, suggesting that neuron formation may be part of the mechanism that alleviates depression....
The trees are also growing fast—faster than expected for a “mature” rainforest—according to a network of measurements. “When we measure that a particular stand of mature forest is accumulating carbon, it is difficult to say whether that might be due to recovery from some unrecognized disturbance long ago or whether it is due to more recent changes in climate and CO2,” explained Woods Hole Research Center Senior Scientist and Executive Director Eric Davidson, lead author of the review, in an e-mail....
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) originated in southern China in November 2002, and soon spread to people on six continents, killing nearly 800 people all told. For the first time, researchers have identified a crucial SARS receptor in vivo that helps explain how and why SARS infection causes lung failure. The findings should help researchers treat other diseases that compromise lung function. Previous research using cell lines had identified ACE2, a protein involved in regulating blood pressure, as a potential SARS receptor....
U.S. mathematician Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck has won the 2019 Abel Prize—one of the field’s most prestigious awards for her wide-ranging work in analysis, geometry and mathematical physics. Uhlenbeck is the first woman to win the 6-million-kroner (U.S.$702,500) prize, which is given out by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, since it was first awarded in 2003. Uhlenbeck learned that she had won on March 17, after a friend called and told her that the academy was trying to contact her....
The company already has permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch up to 12,000 Starlink craft to low Earth orbit. And SpaceX recently filed paperwork with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for up to 30,000 additional Starlink satellites, SpaceNews reported yesterday (Oct. 15). It’s unclear how many Starlink satellites SpaceX will actually build and launch, however. Submitting to the ITU—a United Nations agency that, among other things, manages the global satellite radio-frequency spectrum—is a preliminary step, as SpaceNews noted....
Editor’s Note (4/23/20): Our partners at Live Science have edited this story after posting. It originally said the forensic practitioner it describes had died of the coronavirus. BuzzFeed News has now reported that that individual is not dead. And the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, where the case was published, has issued a correction. In the original report, researchers wrote that “this is the first report on COVID-19 infection and death among medical personnel in a Forensic Medicine unit....
A bright spot drifting in the dark Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, the dwarf planet Ceres becomes more intriguing the more astronomers learn about it. Recently scientists announced that NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in orbit around Ceres had made the first clear detection of water ice there, bolstering the possibility that a liquid ocean lies hidden underneath the hard crust of the dwarf planet’s surface. Two years ago Dawn spotted hints that water exists at least briefly on the surface of the dwarf planet when the spacecraft detected plumes of water vapor rising above the ground as it approached Ceres....
When Allison Vanore stepped onto a plane last week, she was shocked to find scores of empty seats. Vanore, a 37-year-old television producer, had an entire row to herself on the United Airlines flight last Thursday from Newark to Los Angeles. Out of roughly 200 seats, only 20 or 30 were filled. “It felt completely empty. Everyone could spread out as much as they wanted to,” she said in a phone interview....
Electric vehicles have the potential to substantially reduce carbon emissions, but car companies are running out of materials to make batteries. One crucial component, nickel, is projected to cause supply shortages as early as the end of this year. Scientists recently discovered four new materials that could potentially help—and what may be even more intriguing is how they found these materials: the researchers relied on artificial intelligence to pick out useful chemicals from a list of more than 300 options....
A speculative search for a belt of debris stemming from one of Saturn’s outer moons has turned up what appears to be the largest known planetary ring in the solar system. The newfound ring, associated with the far-flung moon Phoebe, stretches to roughly 12.5 million kilometers from Saturn, if not more, according to a paper announcing the finding in this week’s Nature. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group....
VIENNA (Reuters) - While much of the West has barred smoking in restaurants and bars, Austria’s impending ban is set to be stubbed out. The small, affluent country is famed for its Alpine scenery and its capital, Vienna, is regularly rated as the world’s best city to live in. But many visitors are surprised to find that nights out often feature the acrid smell of decades past. Austria passed a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants as of May 2018....
