Posts

Scientists who study the Arctic’s icy cap now have a new weapon at their disposal – nuclear-powered Navy submarines. Civilian researchers have signed an agreement with the Navy to revive a dormant program that uses the vessels to collect information on parts of the Arctic’s ice and ocean that normally lie beyond scientists’ reach. Called SCICEX – short for “Science Ice Exercise” – the program began in 1993 when the USS Pargo carried five civilian scientists to the Arctic on a test cruise....

Attempts to understand and control new synthetic recreational drugs are being hindered by analysis laboratories’ inability to obtain pure samples of the compounds, experts say. The growing problem of synthetic drugs — which include mimics of cannabis and amphetamine — came to the fore in the United Kingdom last year as politicians rushed to ban mephedrone, which had been linked in the media to several deaths. Mephedrone and several related compounds, known collectively as cathinones, are now controlled substances in the United Kingdom and in many other countries....

Key concepts Physics Gas Pressure Suction Introduction Do you think you could break a wooden ruler using just the air around you? What about if you added a newspaper and just one hand? In this cool physics demonstration you’ll use the sheer force of our atmosphere’s pressure to break a ruler with nothing but newspaper and a single hand. Background Our atmosphere is a blanket of gas nearly 125 kilometers thick, and just like all matter in the universe the air in our atmosphere, which is made up of molecules, has mass....

By Bernie Woodall (Reuters) - More than half of American teens have had sex by age 18, but teenage pregnancy and birth rates extended their 2-1/2-decade decline because of increased contraceptive use, according to a U.S. government study released on Thursday. Most of the 55 percent of teens who have had sex by 18 used some type of protection, typically a condom, the study of more than 4,000 teenagers by the U....

Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night. So began an article in another December issue of Scientific American —one from 137 years ago, on December 22, 1877. As we welcome you to the latest edition of our annual “World Changing Ideas,” this month’s cover story, I am reflecting on just how many of this magazine’s issues and 160,000 articles since its founding in 1845 have documented progress in a globe-changing innovation....

Gadget buyers today can purchase PCs, cell phones and mp3 players with significantly more memory than their predecessors for just a few dollars more than they paid a few years ago. To wit: you can purchase an 80-gigabyte iPod today for the same price (around $250) you paid for one with just 30 gigabytes of memory two years ago. But consumers are in for a rude awakening if technology makers fail to find a way to shrink memory components enough to continue packing more of them into ever-tinier gadgets....

There are over 7 billion people on Earth today, and occasionally a bunch of them decide to converge for one reason or another. We’re talking thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people in the same place at the same time. As those of us in the United States (and no doubt around the world) have recently witnessed, such events include things like U.S. presidential inaugurations and political marches....

Facebook can lose a few users and remain a perfectly stable network, but where the national grid is concerned simple geography dictates that it is always just a few transmission lines from collapse. That is according to a mathematical study of spatial networks by physicists in Israel and the U.S. Study co-author Shlomo Havlin of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, says that the research builds on earlier work by incorporating a more explicit analysis of how the spatial nature of physical networks affects their fundamental stability....

Volkswagen’s ruse to circumvent U.S. auto emissions standards has left many wondering about the precise environmental impact of its cars, which emitted more pollutants than regulations allow. Although the extra pollution is impossible to quantify so soon, experts agree that although the amount is globally insignificant, it might add to Europe’s regional health concerns. On September 18 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that four Volkswagen vehicles from model years 2009 to 2015 had been rigged with illegal software....

An emergency is a serious situation that requires immediate action. When someone calls 911 because they can’t breathe, that’s an emergency. When someone stumbles on the sidewalk because their chest is pounding and their lips are turning blue, that’s an emergency. Both people require help right away. Multiply those individuals by millions of people who have similar symptoms, and it constitutes the biggest global health emergency in a century: the COVID-19 pandemic....

We here at the Math Dude ranch get numerous questions every week from math fans around the world. By far the most common questions we receive have to do with calculating percentages. In particular, how to quickly calculate percentages in your head. You know, things like: What’s 25% of $14,000? Or what’s the final price after a 33% discount on a $25 item? Or what’s the percentage increase from 30 to 40?...

When Albert Einstein proposed his special theory of relativity in 1905, he rejected the 19th-century idea that light arises from vibrations of a hypothetical medium, the ether. Instead, he argued, light waves can travel in vacuo without being supported by any material–unlike sound waves, which are vibrations of the medium in which they propagate. This feature of special relativity is untouched in the two other pillars of modern physics, general relativity and quantum mechanics....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. “Arthritis is for old people, right?” This is an outdated view of a spectrum of diseases that affect people of all ages in the population. In the past decade, there has been a revolution in the understanding and treatment of many forms of arthritis, particularly one devastating variety, namely rheumatoid. So what is rheumatoid arthritis?...

Could the International Space Station (ISS) serve as a repair hangar for satellites or a way station for craft headed beyond its orbit? Jack Bacon of the Mission Analysis and Integration Group at NASA’s ISS Program Integration Office explains: Repairing satellites onboard the ISS may prove impractical, but chances are better for the way-station option. The main issue with repair is that a service platform must start in the same orbital plane as the satellite, and the chances are slim that any particular satellite would meet that condition....

The newest generation of global climate models is running hotter than earlier versions, with many models predicting stronger future warming than their predecessors. It‘s a confusing trend, and scientists have been working to figure out why it‘s happening. A review paper out this week suggests that clouds—and the tiny particles that help them form in the atmosphere—have something to do with it. For the past several years, researchers have been working on an international project known as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP....

For more than 300 years paleontologists have operated under the assumption that the information contained in fossilized bones lies only in the size and shape of the bones themselves. It was thought that when an animal dies under conditions suitable for fossilization, inert minerals from the surrounding environment eventually replace all the organic molecules—such as those that make up cells, tissues, pigments and proteins—leaving behind what is essentially a “cast” of the once living bones, now composed entirely of mineral....

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - Testing of surface air near an underground nuclear waste site in New Mexico’s desert showed elevated levels of radiation but did not pose a threat to humans or the environment, a U.S. Department of Energy official said on Thursday. Trace amounts of man-made radioactive elements such as plutonium were found at an air-monitoring site half a mile from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and are tied to a radiation leak in the underground salt formation where waste from defense research and nuclear weapons production is stored, said Joe Franco, manager of an Energy Department field office that oversees the plant....

There are many ways to learn about the world around us. We can experience it ourselves or we can read about it from other people who have pushed the boundaries of knowledge to fill in a few more pages of what we know about natural history. Some explorers wanted to be the first to go where no human had ever gone. Some wanted to show natural wonders to those sitting in the comfort of their daily lives....

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – State Highway 14 cuts a tightly winding channel through the canyons of the Cache la Poudre Wilderness, a section of national forest in this state’s northwest corner and the site of last year’s High Park fire. Each hairpin turn opens onto a different landscape: around one, a hillside flush with lodgepole pine; around the next, a blackened slope where bare trunks stand out like so many toothpicks against the sky....

As COVID-19 continues its fateful march around the globe, researchers have seen patterns of characteristics tied to bad cases of the disease. Increased age, diabetes, heart disease and lifelong experiences of systemic racism have come into focus as risk factors. Now some connections to certain genes are also emerging, although the links are fuzzier. Combing through the genome, researchers have tied COVID-19 severity and susceptibility to some genes associated with the immune system’s response, as well as a protein that allows the disease-causing SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus into our cells....