In the 39th minute of a 2010 second-round World Cup soccer game, England’s Frank Lampard shot the ball at Germany’s goal. The ball hit the crossbar of the goal net, bounced down to the ground and back up to the bar again before the German goalie grabbed it out of harm’s way. The officials called it a no-goal, because the ball had not fully crossed the white goal line on the pitch that runs parallel to the cross bar....
*Editor’s Note - Please download PDF to view Illusions. I must admit that what most strongly motivates me …is sheer curiosity over the workings of the most complicated structure known. —David H. Hubel (1926–2013) In 1958 neurophysiologist David H. Hubel and his new research partner, Torsten N. Wiesel, were working like dogs to understand how cats see the world. They routinely pulled all-nighters in Stephen Kuffler’s laboratory at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University....
By Nadia Drake of Nature magazineEvery year, thousands of undocumented migrants make the dangerous crossing from Mexico to Arizona in the United States through the Sonoran Desert. One anthropologist is hoping to demystify these clandestine crossings by collecting discarded belongings and mapping rest stops, and analyzing these using scientific methods.In the United States, debate about illegal immigration is colored by myth, misconception and a paucity of scientific data, says Jason De León, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor....
In the spring of 2020 a cartoon was making the rounds on social media. It showed a city perched on a tiny island, surrounded by ocean. A speech bubble emerged from the skyline: “Be sure to wash your hands and all will be well.” Not far out at sea, a giant wave labeled “COVID-19” was about to crash over the city. Behind it was an even bigger wave marked “recession.” And beyond that one was a tower of water that threatened to swallow it all: “climate change....
Scientific American recently published an article about compulsive hoarding, which is defined as the excessive accumulation of stuff and the refusal to discard it, resulting in problematic clutter. This May, the new edition of psychiatry’s standard guidebook (the DSM-5) will recognize compulsive hoarding as an official disorder, separate from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Research in the last 10 years has shown that hoarding and OCD are distinct, changed the way psychologists think about hoarding, refuted popular assumptions about people with excessive clutter and informed new, promising treatments....
About a millennium ago, the ancestral Pueblo Indians in the Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico obtained their precious turquoise using a large trade network spanning several states, new research reveals. In the new study, researchers traced Chaco Canyon turquoise artifacts back to resource areas in Colorado, Nevada and southeastern California. The results definitively show, for the first time, that the ancestral Puebloans — best known for their multistoried adobe houses — in the San Juan Basin area of New Mexico did not get all of their turquoise from a nearby mining site, as was previously believed....
In Garrison Keillor’s Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon, “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Though the town and its characters are fictional, part of the enduring appeal of the News from Lake Wobegon is the way that Keillor captures the human experience—right down to the fact that all the children are above average. Indeed, decades of research confirm that we are all above average—at least in our own minds....
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - At least 15 countries have joined an international alliance to phase out coal from power generation before 2030, delegates at U.N. climate talks in Bonn said on Thursday. Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Chile, Mexico and the Marshall Islands have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, delegates said. The alliance aims to have 50 members by the next U....
When a male mouse senses a territorial threat from another male, an aggressive reaction toward the invader instinctively kicks in. When the same mouse detects a sexually receptive female, however, his reaction tends to be a mating attempt, not an attack. The messages may both begin with the smell and sight of another mouse. But where does the mouse brain sort out the options for the appropriate social reaction? Research has already identified two areas in a region called the hypothalamus that are involved in mice’s aggression and mating responses....
It’s one of my favorite events in the science world: the annual Art of Neuroscience contest held by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. Now in its 10th year, the competition looks a lot different than it did even five years ago. Yes, many entries still show off the vivid and fantastical microscopic images of the brain stained in rainbow colors. But thanks to more sophisticated technology, more submissions each year use interactive digital features to create immersive experiences for the viewer....
By the end of the year, Ontario will become the first jurisdiction in North America to shut down almost its entire coal fleet. Yesterday, the province announced that its last two large coal units will close before 2014, making more than 99 percent of the province’s electricity generated from non-coal sources. It is a major shift for Ontario, which fired 25 percent of its grid from coal a decade ago....
By Brendan BorrellPresident Barack Obama last week announced the full membership of his bioethics advisory council, unveiling a more diverse body and one that is likely to have a greater impact on policy than its predecessor.In the past decade, ethical questions in science have made headlines on issues such as the patenting of human genes, financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research and risk assessments related to environmental exposure to chemicals....
Editor’s note: An interactive version of this graphic appears here. People who are intrigued with physics are somewhat intrigued with computer science, too, but they are crazy about fashion. Who knew? Hilary Mason did. At Scientific American’s request, the chief scientist at bitly (www.bitly.com), which shortens URLs for Web users, examined 600 science Web page addresses sent to the company’s servers on August 23 and 24. Then she tracked 6,000 pages people visited next and mapped the connections (below)....
Editor’s Note: Lewis Dartnell’s book The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch (the-knowledge.org), distills the crucial information a group of postapocalyptic survivors would need to recover if society were ever to collapse, be it from a pandemic outbreak, asteroid impact or other disasters. This basic knowledge on the key technologies and central scientific principles that underpin our everyday lives would serve as a quick-start guide for civilization itself to help survivors rebuild as quickly as possible and avert a prolonged dark age....
In recent weeks, revelations about sexual harassment and its devastating effects have flooded the news and social media. But aside from a few legal-team-filtered statements, we don’t have an insight into the mindset of the accused harassers. So what are they thinking? How could they think this was a good idea? What makes someone prone to harass others? Before we get into the psychology of sexual harassment, let’s define exactly what we’re talking about....
Medical research can have big rewards—both in gratifying discoveries and in potentially turning them into profitable treatments. To achieve the former, researchers work hard. Very hard. To obtain the latter, they can start companies or sign commercial funding agreements—well before testing is over. So, do patients undergoing clinical trials for new treatments have a right to know about these monetary interests? Legally, no. And no empirical data has tied researchers’ financial interests in a study to negative outcomes for patients....
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force’s decision to shut down a key component of its Space Surveillance Network will weaken the service’s ability to accurately detect and characterize objects in Earth orbit, experts say. The space fence shutdown, ordered by Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, also will reduce the overall capacity of the system, these experts said. At the same time, they suggested it could increase pressure on the Air Force to award a contract on a next-generation system, which has stalled amid a Pentagon-wide review of its acquisition plans....
A consortium of environmental organizations has raised an alarm about a proposed megaresort in Belize that received maximum glam cred in May at what the Daily Mail described as the “most exclusive party” at the Cannes International Film Festival. John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston were the spokespersons for Italian developers of an eye-popping getaway that could pose a threat to the ecologically fragile Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a world-famous coral reef system....
SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. Editor’s Note: As leaders from business, politics and science convene this week at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss pressing matters of the day, Scientific American is publishing a series of interviews with leading scientists, produced in conjunction with the forum. This is the second of four interviews for the WEF by Katia Moskvitch....
Locust swarms of biblical proportions are threatening crops across a wide swath of Africa and southwest Asia—spurring alarm among top international officials. A major concern is famine. The United Nations is warning that mass swarms of desert locusts are endangering food supplies in eastern Africa. In response, officials in Rome mobilized an emergency briefing yesterday in a bid to raise money—noting the situation has a high potential to devolve into a full-blown crisis....
