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Often we view Chinese culture through an East versus West lens. But joint research from the U.S. and China indicates that northern Chinese may have a mind-set closer to individualistic Americans than their southern compatriots. And the reason is rice. The Yangtze River splits China into north and south and serves as an agricultural and cultural divide, explains University of Virginia doctoral candidate Thomas Talhelm, first author of the study, which appears in Science....

Key concepts Acid Base Chemicals pH Introduction This fun and useful project turns mundane house chores into a magnificent learning experience. Make homemade nontoxic glass and surface cleaner that not only gets those windows streak-free shiny but also sneaks in a lesson about household chemicals and the pH scale. Enjoy! Background The pH scale measures the concentration of hydrogen ions in an aqueous (water) solution. The “p” stands for percentage, or power....

The atom is like a solar system, with electrons whirling around the nucleus like planets orbiting a star. No, actually, it isn’t. But as a first approximation to help us visualize something that is so invisible, that image works as a metaphor. Science traffics in metaphors because our brains evolved to grasp intuitively a world far simpler than the counterintuitive world that science has only recently revealed. The functional activity of the brain, for example, is nearly as invisible to us as the atom, and so we employ metaphors....

The 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics—the theory that now serves as the basis for coordinating activities in the global market system—are credited with transforming their field into a scientific discipline. But what is not widely known is that these now legendary economists—William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, Maria Edgeworth and Vilfredo Pareto—developed their theories by adapting equations from 19th-century physics that eventually became obsolete. Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated....

Fritz Zwicky’s scatological tendency may have left him outside the company of high society, but his observation that there had to be more matter than we can see gave him a permanent place among the giants of science. In preparation for “Dark Universe,” the new Hayden Planetarium Space Show premiering November 2, 2013, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, a team that includes astrophysicist and curator Mordecai-Mark Mac Low has produced this cheeky and informative overview....

Chris Weiss, assistant professor of atmospheric science at Texas Tech University, explains. Simply put, wind is the motion of air molecules. Two concepts are central to understanding what causes wind: air and air pressure. Air comprises molecules of nitrogen (about 78 percent by volume), oxygen (about 21 percent by volume), water vapor (between 1 and 4 percent by volume near the surface of the earth) and other trace elements. Every time we breathe, the air we inhale is composed of about the same relative ratios of these molecules, and a cubic inch of air at ground level contains about 1020 molecules....

After a fight and before forgiveness often comes an apology. But saying “I’m sorry” comes more easily for some people than it does for others. A new study suggests that specific personality traits offer clues about whether a person is likely to offer a mea culpa. Psychologist Andrew Howell and his colleagues at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton devised a questionnaire to measure a person’s willingness to beg someone’s pardon. They asked participants to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements, such as “My continued anger often gets in the way of me apologizing” or “If I think no one will know what I have done, I am likely not to apologize....

It’s been a long day, and you are still at the office. With your blood sugar plummeting, your brain starts to obsess: Where can I get some food? You gather your money and dash across the street to the fast-food place. But as you bite into the greasy burger, your conscience suddenly kicks in: What am I doing? It is a common scenario for many of us. Hunger is a potent, if only temporary, condition that can overpower our very best nutritional intentions....

It’s never aliens—until it is. On December 18th news leaked in the British newspaper the Guardian of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nonetheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)—a so-called “technosignature....

When St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter picked up a bat for the 2016 baseball season opener Sunday against the Pittsburgh Pirates, he selected one made of maple. These days, maple is the bat material of choice for most pros, and it has been ever since San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds broke the record for the number of home runs hit in a season. But scientists say that if ballplayers like Carpenter ever want to go back to traditional ash bats, they might not have that chance....

Predatory ‘patent trolls’ could soon find it harder to operate in the United States. Legislation to curb frivolous patent lawsuits has regained momentum after lawmakers in the US Senate added a provision to stop university patent holders from being penalized along with the trolls. The process is moving quickly. The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the bill by the end of the month, readying it for a final Senate vote this summer, and the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee is likely to vote this week on a similar measure....

Despite its promise, stem cell research in the U.S. has been stymied, time and again, by bioethical landmines. The explosive debate revolves around the fact that, until recently, the only way to get pluripotent stem cells was to extract them from human embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization—a process that destroyed the five-day-old embryo. The ongoing debate about when life begins has led many to oppose stem cell research on the grounds that it is immoral to destroy something that could eventually grow into a person....

A hungry mosquito can sense the carbon dioxide a person exhales from 100 feet away, and a new study reveals that the gas triggers the insect’s visual system to pinpoint human skin tones. “The odor is just telling them that something is out there, but their vision is telling them where it could be located,” says University of Washington neurobiologist Jeff Riffell, lead author of the study in Nature Communications. Tracking 1....

NASA’s newest planet hunter just bagged some big game. For the first time, the agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a roughly Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of its host star, the zone of orbital distances where liquid water could be stable on a world’s surface, researchers announced today (Jan. 6). The newfound exoplanet, known as TOI 700 d, lies just 101.5 light-years from Earth, making it a good candidate for follow-up observations by other instruments, scientists added....

By Manuel Mogato and Roli NgTACLOBAN, Philippines (Reuters) - Desperate survivors of one of the most powerful storms ever recorded begged for help and scavenged for food, water and medicine in the central Philippines four days after an estimated 10,000 people were killed by a Typhoon Haiyan.Thousands of people were believed to be missing in the ruins of towns and villages in the southeast Asian island country hit by the typhoon on Friday....

The early universe was a rough-and-tumble place. Galaxies smashed together with much more regularity than they do today, and the insides of galaxies were chaotic, clumpy pods of stars. It was no place for an orderly, delicate swirl of a galaxy like the Milky Way or Andromeda. But by scanning hundreds of galaxies that existed just a few billion years after the big bang, a group of astronomers has turned up a diamond in the cosmic rough....

CAUGHT TOO EARLY In discussing the search for better detection of breast cancer in “Beyond Mammograms,” Nancy Shute misses one key problem: when tests become too “perfect.” As we have learned from our experience in detecting prostate cancer by testing for high levels of the prostate-specific antigen protein, finding cancers at extraordinarily early stages raises new issues. Are we now left to treat cancers that have no clinical relevance? We already often diagnose breast cancers at one to three millimeters in size....

Electronic cigarettes could save the lives of millions of smokers, or they could set millions of non-smokers on the path to nicotine addiction, revolutionizing the tobacco industry into the bargain. So the question on the lips of health experts, policy-makers and consumers alike is, are the devices a health problem that needs tight regulation, or a welcome aid to smokers trying to quit? In less than a decade since their first appearance, electronic or e-cigarettes have become a multibillion-dollar industry....

When Mikhail Gorbachev freed Andrei Sakharov to travel to the U.S., one of the Russian nuclear physicist’s first stops was the New York Academy of Sciences. Members of the academy’s Board of Governors at that time, in 1988, had been leaders in mobilizing the scientific community to fight for Sakharov’s freedom, and Sakharov wanted to extend his thanks for all their efforts. The story shows how much the world has changed—particularly the scientific world—in the past quarter of a century....

Oil and gas interests trump truth for many state legislators. The first of a two-part series. First a quick note to our readers: TheGreenGrok tries to remain nonpartisan in its coverage of all things environmental. Some may feel that this post crosses the line. But when the facts lead to a conclusion, you just gotta go there. Republicans and the fossil fuel industry. If the flow of cash from the latter to the campaign coffers of the former is any indication, you gotta admit that many a GOP’er has a good thing going....