Addis Ababa is the center of the genetic world. Not because of any special skill in genome analysis but because variation in the human genetic code diminishes as distance from the Ethiopian capital increases. After all, modern humans originated in East Africa. Yet this genetic fact has led to some divergent conclusions. Some researchers have looked at the differing makeup of populations and argued that human evolution must be speeding up to explain all the variation....
By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazineThe tsunami that crippled Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant almost a year ago was as formidable as initial estimates suggested, according to the first scientific assessment of its impact on the locale.Surveys along 2,000 kilometers of coast have already generated the largest tsunami data set in the world. But no verified data have been obtained from the 20-kilometer-radius restricted zone around the shattered nuclear plant, where scientific fieldwork had previously been barred....
By Eric M. Johnson (Reuters) - North Carolina on Tuesday ordered Duke Energy Corp to plug a leak of contaminated wastewater from a decommissioned power plant, which authorities in the state said might be leaking into a river that supplies drinking water. The arsenic-laced discharge from a 36-inch stormwater pipe was the second this month from beneath a coal ash dump at the Eden plant. In early February, thousands of tons of sludge spilled into the Dan River after a 48-inch pipe broke under the 27-acre ash pond, Duke said....
In the midst of a conversation with an acquaintance, your brain might skip ahead, anticipating the words that the other person will say. Perhaps then you will blurt out whatever comes to mind. Or maybe you will nurse your guess quietly, waiting to see if—out of all the hundreds of thousands of possibilities—your conversational partner will arrive at the same word you have been thinking of. Amazingly, your companion will often do so....
Earlier this year, a research team led by Dr. Sven Karlsson published the largest scale study on the causes of human intelligence. They found an intriguing pattern of results: Focusing on arithmetic and linguistic tests, genetics predicted over 26% of people’s responses. Namely, individuals with a long allele of the 4-GTTLR gene got more right answers on the arithmetic, mental rotation, and semantic memory tasks than did individuals with the short version of the gene....
Parents anticipate sex differences from the first prenatal ultrasound but then seem amazed when their son goes gaga over trucks or their daughter will wear nothing but pink. Boys and girls are obviously different, and in many cases the gaps between them seem stark. But stereotypes do not always hold up to scientific scrutiny. Are boys really more aggressive and girls really more empathetic—or do we just see what we expect in them?...
As the first wave of the COVID pandemic washed across the world, it left devastation in its wake. The novel coronavirus rent holes in our social safety nets, nets already worn and tattered even before the pandemic took hold. And what quickly became evident was that the resulting devastation was persistently most acute among disadvantaged people and in marginalized communities. COVID made obvious what many already knew: Inequity—whether because of race, culture, skin color, income or caste—can be lethal....
After almost three decades of fighting, queer people in India won a long overdue battle when the Supreme Court of India decriminalized same-sex sexual acts among consenting adults in 2018. Since then, I have often been asked where I see India’s queer movements going. Is it going to be marriage equality? Something else? With recent celebrations of Pride Month in mind, I argue for the need of queer people to demand a better, more inclusive and more affordable public health care system....
By Gary Robertson RICHMOND, Virginia (Reuters) - Virginia’s Natural Bridge, a soaring landmark bearing George Washington’s initials and once owned by Thomas Jefferson, has been sold to a conservation group, a real estate firm said on Thursday. One of the oldest U.S. tourist attractions, the 215-foot-high (65.5-meter-high) limestone feature in western Virginia was purchased by the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, which said it would eventually turn it over to the state park system....
Planet-forming disks of material typically orbit around the equators of stars, but now scientists have discovered such rings can go dramatically awry and encircle the poles of stars instead. The new study suggests that worlds could exist with polar orbits around pairs of stars, potentially leading to seasons extraordinarily different than Earth’s. Stars are born within clouds of gas and dust. The gravitational pull of each star draws such material into spiraling orbits around it....
As the familiar story goes, not long ago there was an orphan who on his 11th birthday discovered he had a gift that set him apart from his preteen peers. Over the years he endured the usual adolescent challenges – maturation, relationships, social conflicts, general teenage neuroses. He also faced the less common challenge of battling a murderous, psychopathic wizard set on establishing a eugenic police state. I’m referring to the young wizard Harry Potter, the bespeckled, morally-upright protagonist in author JK Rowling’s wildly popular fantasy book series; his nemesis is Lord Voldemort, the story’s malevolent antagonist....
In a guest post for the SA network blog Streams of Consciousness, Mlodinow describes the importance of being social. He also wrote the article, “The Elusive Theory of Everything,” with Stephen Hawking in the October 2011 Scientific American. When I was in high school, the few times I gathered the courage to approach a girl, the experience felt like I was administering a multiple-choice test and she kept answering, “None of the above....
April 1963 Continental Drift “In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had originated in the breakup of one supercontinent. His idea has not been widely accepted, but new evidence suggests that the principle is correct. The range of opinion divides most sharply between the position that the earth has been rigid throughout its history, with fixed ocean basins and continents, and the idea that the earth is slightly plastic, with the continents slowly drifting over its surface, fracturing and reuniting and perhaps growing in the process....
By Geoff BrumfielThis year’s Nobel Prize in Physics went to the discoverers of the one-atom-thick sheets of carbon known as graphene. Andre Geim of the University of Manchester, UK, who shared the award with his colleague Konstantin Novoselov, tells Nature why graphene deserves the prize, and why he hasn’t patented it. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)In one sentence, what is graphene? Graphene is a single plane of graphite that has to be pulled out of bulk graphite to show its amazing properties....
A long-standing puzzle in ocean photosynthesis was why phytoplankton failed to grow fast in parts of the Pacific Ocean; after all, the microscopic plants have access to plenty of carbon dioxide thanks to upwelling water. Lack of iron is the answer, marine scientists conclude. Photosynthesis is reduced among phytoplankton in water with poor iron concentrations as compared with those in iron-rich conditions, even though phytoplankton in both conditions make the same amount of chlorophyll....
What behaves like a solid and a liquid and is red all over? Rafts of fire ants, according to new research that describes the unusual physical nature of these structures for the first time. Solenopsis invicta, a common species of fire ant, originates from the rainforests of Brazil, where heavy precipitation can cause flooding to occur up to twice daily. In order to stick together as a colony during these deluges, the fire ants hook their legs and mouths together to create a living, breathing waterproof material that floats for hours, or even weeks, if necessary, until floods subside....
When neurons fire together uncontrollably, epileptic seizures ensue. Yet what sparks the cells to go haywire in the first place? In January scientists found an unexpected answer. When glial cells in the cortex of fruit flies cannot properly control their calcium levels, they leave neighboring neurons vulnerable to seizures. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology identified a genetic mutation that causes fruit flies to seize when they are exposed to heat or vibration....
Consider the humble pencil. It may come as a surprise to learn that the now common writing instrument at one time topped the list of must-have, high-tech gadgets. In fact, the simple pencil was once even banned from export as a strategic military asset. But what is probably more unexpected is the news that every time someone scribes a line with a pencil, the resulting mark includes bits of the hottest new material in physics and nanotechnology: graphene....
[This is Part 1 of an In-Depth Report on The Future of Nuclear Power.] Nearly 400 miles (645 kilometers) north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, lies the McArthur River uranium mine.* Owned and operated by Cameco Corp., the world’s largest producer of uranium, the mine disgorged about 18.7 million pounds (8.5 million kilograms) of the nuclear element in 2007. The year’s output was enough to supply roughly one quarter of the annual fuel needs of the 104 U....
In many faiths, a specific place is reserved for the ritual of reaching out to God, be it a church, synagogue, mosque or some other venue. Researchers recently examined whether certain brain locations are specially activated when a religious believer communes with his or her deity. About a decade ago scientists advanced the hypothesis that neural activity during religious rapture occurs in a “God module” in the temporal lobes. The theory was inspired by the study of epilepsy patients in whom temporal lobe seizures induced mystical feelings....
