He wore pajamas and a bathrobe, and a swollen bare foot was propped up on an ottoman. That was the figure cut by the revered science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke the one time that I, along with a few other Scientific American editors, met him. It was October 1999, and he was in New York City, making an extremely rare trip, for medical reasons, outside of his adopted home country of Sri Lanka....
A new advance in solar cells that tips the surface with minuscule cone structures could neutralize manufacturing defects, boosting efficiency up to 80 percent. In conventional solar panels, more than 50 percent of the charges generated by sunlight are lost due to defects, said Jun Xu, a researcher at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The irregularities in the formation of the crystalline structure of solar cells can trap electrons and limit the transfer of sunlight to electrical energy....
Attention training might trump language practice in treating dyslexia, and video games might provide just that, according to a recent study in Current Biology. Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy found that 10 kids with dyslexia who played an action-filled video game for nine 80-minute sessions increased their reading speed, without introducing mistakes. These reading gains lasted at least two months and outpaced gains measured in 10 children with dyslexia who played a nonaction version of the same game, as well as trumping the expected improvement that naturally occurs in a year for a child with dyslexia....
Gaining more weight during pregnancy can substantially reduce a baby’s exposure to pesticides that have accumulated in a mother’s body, according to new research. Pregnant women who don’t gain enough weight lose fat when the fetus grows. This releases fat-soluble chemicals such as DDT into the bloodstream, which reaches the fetus. “This study suggests that sufficient weight gain during pregnancy may help to dilute certain chemicals that store in fat, reducing exposure to the fetus,” said Jonathan Chevrier, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal who did not participate in the research....
Listening to speech is so easy for most of us that it is difficult to grasp the neural complexity involved. Previous studies have revealed several brain regions, collectively called the semantic system, that process meaning. Yet such studies have typically focused on specific distinctions, such as abstract versus concrete words, or found discrete areas responsive to groups of related words, such as tools or food. Now a team of neuroscientists in Jack Gallant’s laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Alexander Huth, has generated a comprehensive “atlas” of where different meanings are represented in the human brain....
Editor’s note: This article appears in print with the title “In Search of the Black Swan.” Half a world away from Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, deep in the pine forests of Georgia, hundreds of workers are prepping the ground for an American nuclear renaissance they still believe is on the way. Bulldozers rumble across sunken plateaus of fresh, hard-packed backfill that covers miles of recently buried piping and storm drains....
A future where the thinking capabilities of computers approach our own is quickly coming into view. We feel ever more powerful machine-learning (ML) algorithms breathing down our necks. Rapid progress in coming decades will bring about machines with human-level intelligence capable of speech and reasoning, with a myriad of contributions to economics, politics and, inevitably, warcraft. The birth of true artificial intelligence will profoundly affect humankind’s future, including whether it has one....
There are currently no drugs to halt or reverse the spread of Alzheimer’s disease, and researchers have tread carefully in the wake of a failed vaccine trial six years ago that was stopped after 18 patients developed potentially fatal brain inflammation and two of them suffered strokes. One experimental vaccine, however, shows promise. It not only prevented the buildup of amyloid beta (Aß), a sticky protein linked to Alzheimer’s, but it also does not appear to produce the dangerous side effects of earlier versions tested in humans....
SEPTEMBER 1958 THE CREATIVE PROCESS— “The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself. The discovery must be compared in importance with the invention of cave-painting and of writing. Like these earlier human creations, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from inside. And like them, science has surely made a critical step in human development which cannot be reversed. We cannot conceive a future society without science....
Here is a parable for our time: There once was an adult who wanted to encourage eighth graders to eat healthier food. The adult designed a lesson plan full of nutritional information—why fruit and vegetables are good for you, why junk food is bad for you, and so on. A similar approach had worked with younger children. But the eighth graders declared the intervention—and, if we’re being honest, the adult—boring. They carried on eating junk food, some of them in greater quantities than they had before....
Earth’s shielding magnetosphere crumpled and shrunk by two thirds, sending powerful geomagnetic currents rippling through the planet. Dazzling displays of “northern lights” stretched down to Spain, and overloaded power lines strained as far south as Texas. Off the southern coast of Haiphong, North Vietnam, the seas churned as the celestial disturbance prematurely detonated some two dozen U.S. Navy sea mines. The geomagnetic storm is one of the most violent solar events in recorded history, certainly the most violent of the space age....
The amount of electricity generated using coal in the U.S. slid to its lowest level since at least 1970 in November, according to data released this week by the Energy Information Administration. Coal-fired power plants generated 29 percent of the U.S. electric power supply in November, dropping from nearly 35 percent in July and 39 percent for all of 2014. The trend continues coal’s long slide away from national dominance as the primary source of electricity in the United States, EIA analyst Glenn McGrath said Wednesday....
Dear EarthTalk: I’ve read that household cleaners contain cancer-causing toxic ingredients. What should I do, then, to keep my house clean but also safe for my kids? – Christine Stewart, via e-mail While much of the research is mixed or inconclusive, a variety of human and animal studies have linked chemicals common in household cleaning products with a wide range of health risks. The most offensive common ingredients, according to a 2006 study by the University of California Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, are ethylene-based glycol, used commonly as a water-soluble solvent in cleaning agents and classified as a hazardous air pollutant by the U....
Life in the city can be taxing. For years studies have consistently linked urban living to a higher risk of schizophrenia—but researchers are only beginning to understand why this association exists. A number of factors, including elements of the social environment (such as inequality and isolation) and physical stressors (such as pollution and noise) could explain how the city erodes well-being. Conversely, people predisposed to mental illness may simply be more likely to move into urban locales....
SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. Every five years Congress passes a comprehensive bill that sets food and agriculture policy for the nation. When the current bill expires on September 30, Congress may not be able to get another one passed. Power struggles between the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have put the bill in jeopardy. A big loser could be the environment....
Finding safe and effective weight-loss medications has long been a goal for drugmakers and physicians alike—roughly one third of American adults meet the clinical criteria for obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been reviewing three new antiobesity drugs for government approval. Given the field’s checkered past, however, major questions remain about the risks of pills that pare away the pounds....
“Chained like a dog.” He gestured at the block letters he had scrawled on a yellow legal pad and then at the ventilator connection on his throat. Gregarious and charming, my father had prized autonomy above all else. A self-made man, as he called himself, he ran his own business; enjoyed “playing” with his “machines” (motorcycle, motorboat, sports car, minivan), which he fixed himself; and raised three daughters alone after our mother died when I was 12....
A century ago, in 1918, the U.S. started the collective clock-changing ritual known as daylight saving time, or DST. Today more than 70 countries observe the practice, although how it is implemented has varied over the years. In general, the one-hour shift prevents sunrise from happening too early and allows sundown to go later, when compared with a typical work day of 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Debates about the practice have raged since it began....
Before setting his sights once again on the far-off moon Pandora for the next Avatar adventure, filmmaker and aquanaut James Cameron has bequeathed arguably his greatest technological accomplishment to science. Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submarine, which he drove to the deepest part of this planet last March, arrives this summer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, ultimately helping researchers there better understand life in the earth’s last unexplored frontier. Cameron and his team of engineers outfitted the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER with cutting-edge technology that allowed it to become the first manned mission to the Pacific Ocean’s Challenger Deep site, about 11 kilometers below the water’s surface....
As galaxies go, these are a bunch of wimps. The so-called ultrafaint dwarfs are like ghost galaxies—tiny wisps against the sky that were first discovered less than a decade ago. Now about a dozen have been found that orbit our Milky Way galaxy, and they’re helping to solve an astronomical riddle called the missing satellites problem. Dark matter is an intangible, invisible substance thought to make up 23 percent of the universe, and models suggest that it should be at the heart of thousands of mini galaxies orbiting the Milky Way and other large spirals....
