Listener Margie sent me an interesting question recently. She said: “Hey Tech Talker, I have a ton of old software that I use on a Windows XP computer. Is there any way I can run this on my new Windows 8 laptop?” Margie, this is a great question! There are two ways you can do this. The first and easiest way to do this is to right click in the program you want to run, click Properties, and then the Compatibility tab....
Key Concepts Physics Chemistry Solid Fluid Rotation Introduction Have you ever found an egg in your refrigerator and wondered if it was raw or cooked? Although eggs drastically change inside their shell when cooked, it is still remarkably difficult to distinguish a cooked egg from a raw one without cracking it open. In this activity, you will find out how physics can help you tell the difference! Background A bird egg contains a yolk enclosed in a membrane, which is surrounded by a clear fluid (egg white, or albumen)—all packaged together in a hard shell....
For the first time in months, the Chinese province of Hubei, where the coronavirus first emerged, is getting attention for a good reason. COVID-19 cases there have dropped to practically zero, and last week authorities lifted travel restrictions in and out of the province, some 60 days after much of it was dramatically locked down. Now scientists—and the rest of the world—are watching closely to see whether easing the intense measures to keep people apart results in an emergence of new cases....
Last year Scientific American was the first outlet to report on a paper in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law that argued that the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) approval of mega constellations such as Starlink may have been in breach of U.S. environmental law—specifically, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Since 1986, the FCC has had a “categorical exclusion” that means almost none of its activities require an environmental review under NEPA....
Scientists are gearing up for a battle with the food industry after the World Health Organization (WHO) moved to halve its recommendation on sugar intake. Nutrition researchers fear a backlash similar to that seen in 2003, when the WHO released its current guidelines stating that no more than 10% of an adult’s daily calories should come from ‘free’ sugars. That covers those added to food, as well as natural sugars in honey, syrups and fruit juice....
A tangle of tubes and polyurethane pouches binds a naked man and woman—he, paunchy and unperturbed, she, slim and similarly unself-conscious. This setup is not some esoteric sex game; it’s “Smell Blind Date,” an installation created by artist James Auger on display this past spring in New York City as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind. The PVC tubes—which run between the subjects’ chests, with outlets extending to pouches attached to their noses, armpits and genitals—allow the man and woman to inhale each other’s body odor through a wall that divides them....
At the end of September the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a survey that seemed to show that nonbelievers knew more about religion than the faithful. Some media outlets crowed about the results (“Atheists Know More about Religion Than Believers,” Time magazine declared), whereas others turned to comforting the faithful (“We Didn’t Flunk the Religion Test,” FoxNews.com insisted). Few seemed to realize that the polls were far from immaculate....
Health service shortfalls are often blamed for high disease rates in slums, but service problems are not the only reason poor neighborhoods fare worse than wealthy ones. Infectious diseases can differ at a basic biological level between rich and poor locales, and these differences can cripple vaccines intended to fight them. My colleagues and I have seen these effects with rheumatic heart disease in poor parts of Brazil. This ailment has virtually disappeared from high-income countries, where antibiotics are readily available, but it is a major cause of heart trouble in less affluent nations, and it is often fatal....
In mid-October, the Board of Regents for the University System of Georgia voted unanimously to weaken tenure protections for faculty across its 26 institutions. This vote took place despite faculty protests and a petition signed by hundreds of USG faculty requesting that the board delay the vote until faculty concerns were addressed. The fact that the vote came hard on the heels of the board’s refusal to implement a mask mandate—let alone a vaccine mandate—during the state’s worst coronavirus outbreak, added insult to injury for faculty who were required to teach hundreds of students in crowded classrooms with no social distancing....
Paralympic long jump champ Markus Rehm’s bid to compete in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics fell short in July when he could not prove that his carbon-fiber “blade” prosthesis didn’t give him an advantage. His baffling case serves as a reminder that four years after South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius propelled himself into history as the first amputee Olympic athlete to compete using blade prostheses, the technology’s impact on performance remains unclear despite ongoing research....
NEW ORLEANS—A deadly complication of the measles, which can occur years after a person is infected with the virus, is more common than researchers previously thought, according to a new study. The complication, called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), is a progressive neurological disorder that involves inflammation in the brain. People with SSPE die, on average, within one or two years of being diagnosed with the disease. Some people may live longer, but the condition is always fatal, according to the U....
Dear EarthTalk: What has the nature of the agreement just forged between green groups and the U.S. government for wolf protection in the Northern Rockies?—Peggy Marshall, Boise, Idaho This past March, a coalition of 10 conservation groups finally reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Interior regarding gray wolf recovery and management in the Northern Rockies. The courtroom battle had raged since the Bush administration had announced in January 2009 its decision to take gray wolves—66 of which were reintroduced to the region in 1995 after their forebears were wiped out by hunters and ranchers a century earlier—off of the Endangered Species List....
The human body does many things well, but swimming isn’t one of them. We’re embarrassingly inefficient in the water, able to convert just 3 or 4 percent of our energy into forward motion. (Even with swim fins, we’re only 10 to 15 percent more efficient.) But a new, dolphin-inspired fin promises to fuel the biggest change in human-powered swimming in decades, putting beyond-Olympian speeds within reach of just about anyone....
In October 2004 paleoanthropologists announced they had discovered the partial skeleton of a human species new to science that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. The bones, recovered from a cave called Liang Bua on the island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago, revealed a creature little more than a meter tall, with a brain a third the size of our own. Scientifically dubbed Homo floresiensis and affectionately nicknamed the Hobbit, the find was an instant sensation....
A portal to the center of the earth sits among the ruins of an abandoned project site in Murmansk, Russia, not far from the Norwegian border. Sure, it’s covered and welded shut, but it still sounds like a horror film to me. The deepest hole ever dug may be pretty unassuming, but I suspect I’m not alone in being a little freaked out by it. An internet search about the world’s deepest hole turns up the suggestion “Kola Superdeep Borehole screams....
Key concepts Physics Gravity Friction Centripetal force Normal force Rotational motion Newton’s laws of motion Introduction Are you any good at hula-hooping? If not, don’t worry—you can do this fun project without any hula-hooping experience. You will examine some of the fascinating physics behind hula-hooping using just a pencil and a rubber band. Background Hula-hooping is all about forces! You might not think about physics much when you play with a Hula-Hoop, but there are many different forces at work that help keep a Hula-Hoop spinning and prevent it from falling to the ground....
There are many existential threats to life on Earth: a global pandemic even more deadly than COVID-19, a runaway greenhouse effect similar to what happened on Venus but with our own finger on the trigger; an impact by a giant asteroid bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs; explosions of nearby stars in the form of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts; or the inevitable brightening of the sun within a billion years, which would boil all the oceans on Earth....
Apparatus and methods for mapping retinal function: More than two million people older than 40 in the U.S. suffer from glaucoma. The disease—one of the leading causes of blindness— is the result of damage to ganglion cells in the retina. Early-stage glaucoma is treatable, and the earlier it is caught, the easier it is to reverse. But catching glaucoma is not easy, because it often starts at the edge of the retina, beyond our usual field of vision....
Key concepts Chemistry Physics Reaction Surface area Introduction Did you know that flour can explode? Luckily, this does not happen spontaneously on your kitchen counter, but only if the conditions are right. You need a very fine powder of flour to make an explosion happen. In fact, any solid flammable material that is dispersed in the air as a dust cloud will explode if it comes into contact with flame (a reason extreme caution must be used where there is a large amount of grain dust, such as in storage facilities)....
Dear EarthTalk: I see a lot of “healthy snacks” being marketed for kids that list “natural flavors” but don’t identify them. Should I use these products? —John Stein, Methuen, Mass. Beloved food writer Michael Pollan recommends steering clear of foods that advertise their green attributes on their label. According to his line of reasoning, why give a child a fruit roll-up when you can give him or her a piece of fruit?...
