Posts

Now in its 15th year, The Tribeca Film Festival of New York City has a long-standing commitment to showcasing films with “realistic and compelling” science and technology stories, dating back to its founding sponsorship by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. That often means digging deeply into topics in the headlines, like last year’s Short Documentary Award winner, Body Team 12, did with the Ebola outbreak in Liberia. This year’s festival made some headlines of its own, when founder Robert De Niro selected, and then, under pressure, rejected Vaxxed, a documentary by disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield that rehashes his debunked theory that vaccines cause autism....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Building a new runway is often a tight squeeze. For example, part of the opposition to a new runway in London, which has provoked national debate, comes from the hundreds of families whose homes will be demolished to make way for the airport expansion. But a team of Dutch scientists have now come up with an airport design that would allow large numbers of aircraft to take off in a much smaller space than currently possible – by using a circular runway....

In my 20s, I had a friend who was brilliant, charming, Ivy-educated and rich, heir to a family fortune. I’ll call him Gallagher. He could do anything he wanted. He experimented, dabbling in neuroscience, law, philosophy and other fields. But he was so critical, so picky, that he never settled on a career. Nothing was good enough for him. He never found love for the same reason. He also disparaged his friends’ choices, so much so that he alienated us....

Credit: BernardaSv Getty Images Within medicine, few technologies have had more impact than vaccines. Each year they prevent more than 3 million childhood deaths worldwide from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and measles, to name a few. Vaccines, such as those for HPV and Hepatitis B, have extended those preventative benefits for young and mature adults. And now a new generation of vaccines, ones that harness a body’s immune system to treat disease rather than prevent it, are moving through clinical trials and into the marketplace....

The drive from Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex to the launch facilities that line the Atlantic coast offers spectators a beautiful glimpse into American innovation: the gargantuan Blue Origin facility, the SpaceX landing zones and multiple NASA launch complexes. It’s on this path that the now-deserted Launch Complex 34 sits, “ABANDON IN PLACE” spray-painted in black on the four columns holding up the concrete launching cradle. A barely noticeable plaque fastened to the structure reads, “Ad Astra Per Aspera (A Rough Road Leads to the Stars)....

Astronomers have observed a white dwarf acting as a magnifying glass for another, Sun-like star that it is orbiting. The binary star system, 808 parsecs (2,600 light years) away from Earth in the constellation Lyra, was previously classified as a possible exoplanet system. Using data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, physicists Ethan Kruse and Eric Agol of the University of Washington in Seattle observed an increase of just 0.1% in the larger star’s brightness every 88 days, lasting for 5 hours....

If researchers were predicting which coronavirus variant would take over the world, the Delta variant would not have been their first guess. But since its first appearance in India in December 2020, the highly contagious variant has become the predominant strain of the virus, accounting for more than 90 percent of new COVID cases in the U.S. Delta’s emergence has caused a number of countries to reinstate travel and mask restrictions that had been loosened as vaccination rates rose....

A nearly 13-year-old skin cancer drug rapidly alleviates molecular signs of Alzheimer’s disease and improves brain function, according to the results of a new mouse study being hailed as extremely promising. Early-stage human clinical trials could begin within months. In the study, published online February 9 by Science, researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and colleagues used mice genetically engineered to exhibit some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Most notably, the mice produced amyloid beta peptides—toxic protein fragments that gum up neurons and lead to cell death—and showed signs of forgetfulness....

Brain disease robbed five British men of their ability to remember by inflicting permanent damage on their hippocampus–a pair of brain regions in the limbic system associated with memory and navigation. But it also robbed them of the ability to imagine the future, according to a new study published online January 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of University College London and her colleagues compared the imaginations of the aforementioned amnesiacs with 10 control subjects who had healthy hippocampi....

When Albert Einstein proposed his special theory of relativity in 1905, he rejected the 19th-century idea that light arises from vibrations of a hypothetical medium, the “ether.” Instead, he argued, light waves can travel in vacuo without being supported by any material–;unlike sound waves, which are vibrations of the medium in which they propagate. This feature of special relativity is untouched in the two other pillars of modern physics, general relativity and quantum mechanics....

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—Diplomats from eight Arctic nations are facing a standoff today over the Trump administration’s efforts to downplay the importance of climate change in an Arctic Council ministerial statement marking the end of the United States’ two-year council chairmanship. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the top foreign ministers from the world’s seven other Arctic nations are due to arrive in Fairbanks today for tomorrow’s Arctic Council ministerial meeting. During that meeting, the top government officials are scheduled to sign a final statement highlighting the accomplishments of the U....

Nobody who was there at the time, from the most seasoned astrophysicist to the most inexperienced science reporter, is likely to forget a press co n ference at the American Astronomical Society’s winter meeting in San Antonio, Texas, in January 1996. It was there that Geoffrey W. Marcy, an observer then at San Francisco State University, announced that he and his observing partner, R. Paul Butler, then at the University of California, Berkeley, had discovered the second and third planets ever found orbiting a sunlike star....

Autism shares genetic roots with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) andattention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The three conditions have features in common, such as impulsivity. New findings suggest that they also share a brain signature. The first comparison of brain architecture across these conditions has found that all are associated with disruptions in the structure of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that links the brain’s left and right hemispheres....

On a spring day more than 5,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, a foreign merchant sold his wares in exchange for a large bundle of silver. He didn’t want to carry the bundle home because he knew he’d be back in Ur again to buy grain at the end of harvest season. Instead the merchant walked to the local temple, where valuables were often stored, and asked the priest to hold onto the silver for him....

Mini robot vacuums are one thing, but larger robots may soon become a part of everyday life for the elderly, performing tasks that could help delay the dreaded move of loved ones to a nursing home or assisted living facility. Researchers and robotics companies worldwide are designing prototypes to provide automated assistance to the elderly at home, targeting a market that promises to grow as people live longer. “Most elders prefer to stay at home, and families prefer that as long as possible,” says Karen Robinson, professor and executive director of the Volunteer Caregivers Program at University of Louisville School of Nursing in Kentucky....

The H1N1 virus has packed less of a pandemic punch than initially feared, but it has uncovered some hard truths about our readiness—or lack thereof—for coping with a more deadly pathogen. Despite vast medical advances since the 1918 influenza epidemic, a novel, highly contagious illness could still devastate populations and upend social, economic, political and legal structures the globe over. A new virulent strain—of flu or any other virus—could kill off millions, even those who appear to be in their prime, says Lawrence O....

BOSTON – Are people exposed to doses of bisphenol A in their canned foods and other consumer products that can harm them? Or are the amounts too low to cause any harm? This is the crux of a vehement debate that is being waged as federal officials are trying to decide whether the chemical, known as BPA, should be regulated. A group of toxicologists, including some who work for federal agencies, is questioning the likelihood that BPA is harming human health....

For most of my life, I’ve been disappointed in robots. Movies always depicted them as walking, talking, humanoid, smart—and cool. But for decades, real robots have been little more than assembly-line arms at car factories. In the past three years, though, something has shifted. Self-driving cars have logged nearly two million miles on public roads. Drones have gotten smart enough to avoid hitting things. And two-legged, walking robots are suddenly real....

River flooding could affect 54 million people worldwide in 2030 as more extreme rainfall and the rapid expansion of cities double exposure to inundation, according to a new analysis. Currently, 21 million people are affected annually by floods. The project by several research organizations in the Netherlands and the World Resources Institute developed the first public tool that shows the estimated flood risk in most countries and how it’s expected to rise over the next 25 years....

For years the story on rat sex has been this: the male seeks above all else to ejaculate quickly, and once he has done it with one female, he is eager to move on to new partners. The female, meanwhile, seeks to extend the sex encounter through “pacing.” A new study finds that if pacing is slow enough, the male will prefer that familiar partner to someone new. The wait, it seems, makes the female more attractive....