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Drug companies have a problem: they are finding it ever harder to get painkillers through clinical trials. But this isn’t necessarily because the drugs are getting worse. An extensive analysis of trial data has found that responses to sham treatments have become stronger over time, making it harder to prove a drug’s advantage over placebo. The change in reponse to placebo treatments for pain, discovered by researchers in Canada, holds true only for US clinical trials....

In the ninth century Persian scholars invented the first known mechanical instrument, a hydropowered organ that played music preprinted onto a rotating cylinder. It would be 1,000 years before inventors cracked the reverse process—printing sounds onto a storage device. The first machine that could pull music from the air was Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph, which he introduced in 1857. The device used a horn to focus sound waves and direct them onto a small diaphragm; attached to the diaphragm was a stylus that scratched a record of the waves onto a soot-stained rotating glass cylinder....

Now we know how Elon Musk plans to get 1 million people to Mars. At a conference in Mexico today (Sept. 27), the SpaceX founder and CEO unveiled the company’s Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which will combine the most powerful rocket ever built with a spaceship designed to carry at least 100 people to the Red Planet per flight. If all goes according to plan, the reusable ITS will help humanity establish a permanent, self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet within the next 50 to 100 years, Musk said at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara....

Dear EarthTalk: How does the microwave compare in energy use, say, to using a gas or electric stove burner to heat water for a cup of tea? – Tempie, Dexter, MI The short answer is that it depends upon several variables, including the price of electricity versus gas, and the relative efficiency of the appliances involved. Typically, though, a microwave would be slightly more efficient at heating water than the flame on a gas stove, and should use up a little less energy....

It’s halfway through first period, and 10th-grade students at Frances Perkins Academy in Brooklyn are in science class—not in school, but on a specially outfitted bus parked outside. The monitors above the microscopes flash into focus and the students are suddenly animated. “There’s something moving!” “They’re just crawling around.” “That’s crazy!” “Do we drink this?” “Those are protists,” Ben Dubin-Thaler tells the students. “And no, we don’t drink this. This is puddle water I gathered in the Bronx....

It was just a couple of months into the pandemic when patients in online support groups began describing the phenomenon. In some emergency departments, they said, their complaints were largely being dismissed—or at the very least diminished—by health care professionals. The patients felt they were not being heard, or perhaps even were outright disbelieved.
The common thread through these comments was a basic one. Each of the patients had already been infected with COVID-19 and presumably had recovered, yet each was still dealing with symptoms of the disease—sometimes vague, sometimes nonspecific—that simply would not go away....

It is late in the evening rush hour, typical stop-and-go traffic. Finally, there is a break; the tightly packed group around you is soon cruising together at 55 mph. Suddenly, you see brake lights flare up ahead. As you prepare to brake, you glance in the rearview mirror and see an alarming sight–a car closing way too fast on your rear fender. The teenage driver looks panicked, one hand clutching the steering wheel, the other hand clenching a cell phone....

THE THOUGHT of shuffling off our mortal coil can make all of us a little squeamish. But avoiding the idea of death entirely means ignoring the role it can play in determining our actions. Consider the following scenario: You’re visiting a friend who lives on the 20th floor of an old inner-city apartment building. It’s the middle of the night when you are suddenly awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of screams and the choking smell of smoke....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mandatory quarantines ordered by some U.S. states on doctors and nurses returning from West Africa’s Ebola outbreak are creating a “chilling effect” on Doctors Without Borders operations there, the humanitarian group said on Thursday. In response to questions from Reuters, the group said that it is discussing whether to shorten some assignments as a result of restrictions since one of its American doctors, Craig Spencer, was hospitalized in New York City last week with the virus....

Not long after the winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes were announced, my colleague Clara Moskowitz wrote about astrophysicist Brian Schmidt’s experience carrying his own Nobel—a half-pound gold medallion—through airport security. Schmidt’s story might be impossible to top, but we would like you to try. So tell us, what is the weirdest thing you have ever taken through airport security? Strange instruments of science or samples from the field earn bonus points....

I am a moderate procrastinator. Even when I believe that I would be best served by finishing a task (say, filing this story), I will occasionally put it off in favor of some short-term reward (like a much needed caffeine fix). This tendency on my part to delay what is in my long-term interest can now be explained by a simple mathematical equation, according to industrial psychologist Piers Steel of the University of Calgary....

Throwing on pajamas and curling up with a magazine could mean exposure to chemicals banned several decades ago. New, unpublished research has found that traces of polychlorinated biphenyls – banned in the United States 35 years ago – are leaching out of clothing and printed materials from around the world. PCB-11 was detected in nearly all samples of paper products sold in 26 countries and clothing sold in the United States....

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority. But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash, and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences. “I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who said she has been homeless most of her life....

Odds are increasing that 2016 will be the hottest year on the books, as April continued a remarkable streak of record-warm months. Last month was rated as the warmest April on record by both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released their data this week. In the temperature annals kept by NOAA, it marked the 12th record warmest month in a row. Global temperatures have been hovering around 1....

In late March astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will take off in a Soyuz rocket from the steppes of Kazakhstan, heading to the International Space Station (ISS) for a yearlong stay. NASA bills their mission as a crucial stepping-stone toward sending humans on a multiyear trip to Mars. That interplanetary voyage, part of our human drive for new frontiers, is the greatest dream of the space age. Yet rather than making that dream a reality, this mission seems to be a distracting detour....

If green energy is ever to supplant fossil fuels, portable power needs to become more efficient and cheaper. Yet as electronic goods become both more powerful and smaller, batteries are struggling to keep pace. In large part, that’s because it’s increasingly difficult to pack ever more energy into lightweight lithium-ion batteries while also making them less expensive. Few understand the problems—and possible solutions—better than Venkat Srinivasan, a leading battery scientist who directs Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS)....

From Quanta (Find original story here). In the course of exploring their universe, mathematicians have occasionally stumbled across holes: statements that can be neither proved nor refuted with the nine axioms, collectively called “ZFC,” that serve as the fundamental laws of mathematics. Most mathematicians simply ignore the holes, which lie in abstract realms with few practical or scientific ramifications. But for the stewards of math’s logical underpinnings, their presence raises concerns about the foundations of the entire enterprise....

Let’s say your company is in trouble—new competitors are coming on strong, and it’s your job to assemble a crack team to act fast, solve problems and secure the firm’s future. What qualities would you look for? Would you try to pick the people with the most experience? The strongest résumés? The highest IQs? These traits are important, but your best bet might be to observe your candidates at a cocktail party....

BERLIN, March 29 (Reuters) - The co-pilot suspected of crashing a passenger jet in the Alps may have been suffering from a detached retina but investigators are unsure whether his vision problems had physical or psychological causes, a German newspaper said on Sunday. Bild am Sonntag also reported how the captain of the Germanwings Airbus screamed “open the damn door!” to the co-pilot as he tried to get back into the locked cockpit before the jet crashed on Tuesday, killing all 150 aboard....

As 5G networks rolled out across the country last week, not everyone was focused on the prospect of faster mobile Internet communication speeds. Airlines warned that the new telecommunications standard could interfere with their instruments; this led to flight cancellations and delays. When service providers promised to postpone the deployment of 5G in the areas around some airports, the conflict was temporarily resolved. Keeping the communication bands near airports clear buys time for the aviation industry, telecommunication companies and government regulators to work out a safe protocol for the future use of 5G....