Posts

By Julie Steenhuysen New York City’s health department on Friday reported the first documented case of sexual transmission of Zika from a woman to her male partner, raising new concerns about the spread of the virus, which is typically contracted through mosquito bites. Scientists say it may take years to fully understand how long individuals who are infected with Zika are capable of transmitting the virus, the first mosquito-borne disease ever shown to cause birth defects after a pregnant woman becomes infected....

It’s starting to get weird out there. When WikiLeaks released classified U.S. government documents in December, it sparked several rounds of online conflict. WikiLeaks became the target of denial-of-service attacks and lost the support of its hosting and payment providers, which inspired sympathizers to counterattack, briefly bringing down the sites of Master­Card and a few other companies. Sites related to the hackers were then attacked, and mirror sites sprang up claiming to host copies of the WikiLeaks docu­ments—although some were said to carry viruses ready to take over the machines of those who downloaded the copies, for who knows what end....

Imagine that we could make cars, aircraft and submarines as small as bacteria or molecules. Microscopic robotic surgeons, injected in the body, could locate and neutralize the causes of disease—for example, the plaque inside arteries or the protein deposits that may cause Alzheimer’s disease. And nanomachines—robots having features and components at the nanometer scale—could penetrate the steel beams of bridges or the wings of airplanes, fixing invisible cracks before they propagate and cause catastrophic failures....

January 1968 The Weakness of Polls “A strong caution against attaching too much weight to polls of public opinion, particularly concerning political issues, has been expressed by Leo Bogart, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. ‘“Don’t know” in response to a survey question,’ he writes, ‘often means “Don’t want to know,” which is another way of saying, “I don’t want to get involved.”’ In many such cases the attitude reflects the respondent’s feeling that the issue is no responsibility of his....

Key Concepts Gravity Thrust Lift Drag Introduction Paper airplanes are fun to make and fly. Most designs resemble miniature planes—made of folded paper, with wings, stabilizers and sometimes even flaps. These creations look like they are ready to soar. There are some designs, like the one you can try in this activity, however, that look so awkward one might imagine they would not fly at all. Find out if it will really soar!...

Take the cavity magnetron. The precursor to this curious form of vacuum tube was invented at General Electric around 1920. It wasn’t until 1940 that British scientists found a magnetron design that could pump out microwave energy at unprecedented power. That discovery fueled a crash program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build airborne radar units, an advance that helped the Allies turn back Nazi Germany in Europe. The conflict had barely ended when a Raytheon engineer noticed that microwaves could also melt chocolate....

Last summer, in an unseasonal event, more than 100 miles of Florida’s coast around Tampa Bay became an oxygen-depleted dead zone littered with fish along the nearby shoreline. In the Northwest, Dungeness crabs were washing onto Oregon’s beaches, unable to escape from water that has, in dramatic episodes, become seasonally depleted of oxygen over the past two decades. Much of the conversation around our climate crisis highlights the emission of greenhouse gases and their effect on warming, precipitation, sea-level rise and ocean acidification....

The hat with the fake bottom, which conceals a rabbit. The handkerchiefs tucked up one sleeve. And the box that has fake feet sticking out of one end, so the lady can be “sawed” in half (actually, she’s curled safely in one side). We think we know some of the common tools in the magician’s bag of tricks. But what we haven’t noticed—because of their deceptive skill—is that their number-one sleight facilitator is our own, untrustworthy mind....

By Declan Butler Nature revealed earlier this week than an international agency set up to detect nuclear tests, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), is transmitting detailed data on the spectrum of radionuclides and their levels in the air in and around Japan and the Asia-Pacific region to its member states each day, but that the CTBTO could not release these data to the public because it lacked a mandate to do so....

‘Former U.S. senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) was officially and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be the agency’s new administrator Thursday (April 29). President Joe Biden nominated Nelson for the role of new NASA administrator last month. Nelson takes the reins from acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, who had been leading the agency following the departure of previous administrator Jim Bridenstine. Bridenstine stepped down as NASA chief at the end of the Trump presidency in January 2021....

While the nation roils with ongoing protests against police violence and persistent societal racism, many organizations have released statements promising to do better. These promises often include improvements to hiring practices; a priority on retaining and promoting people of color; and pledges to better serve those people as customers and clients. As these organizations work to make good on their declarations, implicit bias training is often at the top of the list....

Dear EarthTalk: Years ago I read that children should be kept at least two feet from the television because of harmful electronic emissions. Is this still relevant? Is there a difference regarding this between older and new flat-screen models? —Horst E. Mehring, Oconomowoc, Wisc. Luckily for many of us and our kids, sitting “too” close to the TV isn’t known to cause any human health issues. This myth prevails because back in the 1960s General Electric sold some new-fangled color TV sets that emitted excessive amounts of radiation—as much as 100,000 times more than federal health officials considered safe....

By Curtis Skinner (Reuters) - Climate change is threatening U.S. landmarks from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the César Chávez National Monument in Keene, California with floods, rising sea levels and fires, scientists said on Tuesday. National Landmarks at Risk, a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted more than two dozen sites that potentially face serious natural disasters. They include Boston’s historic districts, the Harriet Tubman National Monument in Maryland and an array of NASA sites including the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida....

Organizations spend millions of dollars each year trying to get their employees to be less absentminded. Businesses shell out significant funds for planning software and systems. Administrators tack up signs and send out emails reminding employees to fill out their timesheets, enroll in benefits programs, or prepare for meetings. And of course, individuals personally wrestle with overcoming forgetfulness. We have found that some of the costly digital and paper memory jogs widely used to solve the problem of forgetting could instead be replaced with a stuffed alien toy....

Sustainable development is a tricky thing. At least 140 million people in Asia are drinking arsenic-contaminated water, and the ever-expanding use of groundwater wells—a growing population needs water to drink, and farmers need it to grow crops to feed them—has been making the situation worse. Pumping out this water has changed the courses of underground streams, so previously clean water now flows through arsenic-laden sediments, and wells that used to be pure in villages once healthy suddenly pump out death....

According to a study published recently in the journal Nature Climate Change, the total amount of carbon stored in all living biomass above the soil has increased globally by almost 4 billion tons since 2003, with China contributing in a notable way to the increase. “The increase in vegetation primarily came from a lucky combination of environmental and economic factors and massive tree-planting projects in China,” said Liu Yi, the study’s lead author, in a press release....

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazineNew descriptions of Australopithecus sediba fossils have added to debates about the species’ place in the human lineage. Five papers published today in Science describe the skull, pelvis, hands and feet of the ancient hominin unearthed three years ago in South Africa.The papers reveal a curious mix of traits, some found in apes and earlier Australopithecus fossils, and others thought to be unique to Homo erectus–the tall, thin-boned hominin that emerged around 2 million years ago in eastern Africa and colonized Europe and Asia–and its descendants, including modern humans....

The extreme weather, including a near-record number of tornadoes, in 2011 forced the debate of the impact of climate change on severe weather to resurface. While there has been research into the subject, there are still many unknowns. Is a Warming Climate Causing More Active Severe Weather Already? Before examining how climate change may affect severe weather in the future, it is important to analyze whether the frequency or strength of severe weather has changed already with warming temperatures....

CHILE Patches of glassy rocks scattered over a broad swath of the Atacama Desert contain minerals similar to a comet sampled by NASA’s Stardust Mission, new research finds. The rocks may have formed when a comet exploded over the desert and melted sand into glass. ANTARCTICA Scientists analyzing Antarctic ice cores found large amounts of soot dating back 700 years. Wind-current simulations and historical records link the soot to when the Maori arrived to New Zealand and began burning dense forests to clear land....

TOKYO (Reuters) - The operator of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant completed on Thursday the removal of the first fuel rods from a cooling pool high up in a badly damaged reactor building, a rare success in the often fraught battle to control the site.The batch of 22 unused fuel assemblies, which each contain 50-70 of the fuel rods, was transferred by a trailer to a safer storage pool, the last day of a four-day operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement....