Posts

Patients with COVID-19 have inundated hospitals in Italy, forcing doctors to make agonizing decisions about who should receive lifesaving care. Patient surges could soon demand distressing triage decisions in U.S. intensive care units (ICUs), too. As of Thursday, there were more than 13,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., and the nationwide death toll had risen to 175. In February a study in Operations Research used mathematical modeling to determine which kind of triage policy could be useful in an ICU during such a surge....

Since the early 20th century, with the rise of mass secular education and the diffusion of scientific knowledge through popular media, predictions of the deity’s demise have fallen short, and in some cases—such as in that of the U.S.—religiosity has actually increased. This ratio is changing. According to a 2013 survey of 14,000 people in 13 nations (Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Brazil, India, South Korea, the U....

In Colorado’s far western reaches is a valley called Paradox. Unlike most, it is cut crosswise through the middle. The Dolores River runs perpendicular through it, creating a geologic anomaly that is also the valley’s namesake. Brilliant orange cliffs cradle the valley floor under the white gaze of Utah’s La Sal Mountains. Sagebrush plains and irrigated hay fields are broken only by herds of cows and the tiny hamlets of Bedrock and Paradox....

Tossing the old smartphone and buying a new one every couple of years has become a wasteful but inescapable ritual for many. Nearly two thirds of U.S. adults own a smartphone, according to Pew Research Center, and we dispose of about 130 million of them each year. One proposed solution would be modular smartphones that allow owners to replace broken parts, upgrade to better components—or even customize their devices based on their preference for, say, a better camera or more digital storage space....

Why have sex? Are you kidding? There may be 23 positions in a one-night stand, but there are 237 reasons (at least) for getting yourself in that position. University of Texas at Austin psychologists asked 400 students to list their reasons for doing the deed and had a separate group rate the importance of each of the 237 motivations on the titillating list (available here). The top 10 reasons for men and women were largely identical (“I was attracted to the person”; “I was sexually aroused and wanted the release”; “I was ‘horny”)—and a bit redundant....

Abscission I liked reading that leaves don’t fall in autumn; they’re pushed. It captures nature’s cold practicality, and the human tendency to fall for appearances, illusions. When light and warmth dwindle, a layer of cells starts to spread where leaf stalk meets twig, like cauterization. The death-pitted dormant tree looks ahead without a flicker in its heartwood. Marcescence Everything is mostly gray, sleeping or decayed. A few brittle curls cling to the willow’s bones—dead but life won’t let go of them, as though their shreds still have something to give....

IMAGINE THAT you are looking at a dog that is standing behind a picket fence. You do not see several slices of dog; you see a single dog that is partially hidden by a series of opaque vertical slats. The brain’s ability to join these pieces into a perceptual whole demonstrates a fascinating process known as amodal completion. It is clear why such a tendency would have evolved. Animals must be able to spot a mate, predator or prey through dense foliage....

Experts say the cascading blackout that put millions of Westerners in the dark last week was no surprise: Major power outages have more than doubled in the last decade. “This is just evidence that we need a smarter, better, more secure system,” said Massoud Amin, director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, who has analyzed federal data on the reliability of the nation’s electric grid. Blackouts disrupt power to at least a third of U....

Life starts with a puzzle. Out of sight in a mother’s womb, 3 billion letters of DNA code somehow turn into 3D bodies, all in the space of a mere 40 weeks. Fetuses form eyes, brains, hearts, fingers and toes—in processes that are meticulously coordinated in both time and space. Biologists have pieced together parts of this puzzle, but many gaps remain. Now, a crop of molecular technologies is giving scientists tantalizing hints about how to fill in those gaps....

The US Department of Energy rolled out $2.4 billion in stimulus grants on 5 August to develop next-generation technologies for electric cars.The awards, made to 48 projects in more than 20 states after a highly competitive application process, aim to reduce greenhouse gases and oil imports by spurring electrification of the automobile sector and boosting domestic manufacturing of ‘green’ vehicles.The bulk of the grants will support factories to make battery components....

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence,” wrote that connoisseur of wit, Oscar Wilde. Whether sarcasm is a sign of intelligence or not, communication experts and marriage counselors alike typically advise us to stay away from this particular form of expression. The reason is simple: sarcasm expresses the poisonous sting of contempt, hurting others and harming relationships. As a form of communication, sarcasm takes on the debt of conflict....

As COVID-19 claimed victims at the start of the pandemic, scientific models made headlines. We needed such models to make informed decisions. But how can we tell whether they can be trusted? The philosophy of science, it seems, has become a matter of life or death. Whether we are talking about traffic noise from a new highway, climate change or a pandemic, scientists rely on models, which are simplified, mathematical representations of the real world....

In the fight to protect Earth from solar storms, the battle lines are drawn in space at a point 1.6 million kilometres away. There, a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite waits for electrons and protons to wash over it, a sign that the Sun has burped a flood of charged particles in our direction. As early as the end of this month, NOAA should have a much better idea of just how dangerous those electromagnetic storms are....

Night-vision windshields on cars might one day be possible with advanced thermal imaging technology based on flexible, transparent, atomically thin sheets of carbon, researchers say. Thermal imaging lets people see the invisible infrared rays that objects shed as heat. Thermal imaging devices have helped soldiers, police, firefighters and others see in the dark and in smoky conditions so they can better do their jobs. Currently, many thermal imaging devices need cooling systems to filter out background heat in order to create useful images....

In the first week of the trial of Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s physician, Los Angeles jurors heard audio recordings of the late pop star’s slurred speech, in addition to the litany of prescription drugs he had taken in the hours and weeks prior to his June 25, 2009, death. It will be up to them to decide if they agree with the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, which labeled Jackson’s death a homicide....

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is typically tasked with conducting critical science, and its myriad jobs include trying to prevent Zika-related birth defects and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among transgender women. But when the CDC makes its case for 2018 budget funds, it should not use seven specific words: evidence-based, science-based, vulnerable, fetus, transgender, diversity or entitlement, according to the Trump administration. The news, broken by The Washington Post, sent tremors through the public health and policy communities....

Storytellers have traditionally found it useful to isolate the strange lands, people and events of their wildest fictions far from the precincts of their audiences. L. Frank Baum put Oz on the other side of a whirlwind; George Lucas set Tatooine a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away; C. S. Lewis had Narnia; and Homer’s Odysseus navigated uncharted isles of the ancient Mediterranean. Enough separation in space and time can make almost any circumstance seem more plausible....

Knowing how the human brain develops is critical to understanding how things can go awry in neurodevelopmental disorders, from intellectual disability and epilepsy to schizophrenia and autism. But between the fact that researchers cannot poke around inside growing human brains and the inadequacies of animal models, scientists currently do not fully understand the process. “We know a bit about the early stages because [the situation is] very similar to what happens in rodents,” says psychiatrist Sergiu Paca of Stanford University....

In this excerpt from Humanity in the Machine: What Comes after Greed? futurist Brian David Johnson describes his job as a “futurehunter” and his fascination with both algorithmic trading and high-frequency trading (HFT). Both methods use computer programs to automate and accelerate the execution of certain financial transactions. Yet heavy reliance on such technology in the finance world can be dangerous—the Flash Crash of 2010 cited by Johnson stands out as a prominent example....

Avi Loeb has an unorthodox new idea about how to search for alien civilizations—and it is hardly a surprise. Loeb, who chairs the astronomy department at Harvard University, has spent much of his career thinking about how the first stars came to life after the big bang, and how galaxies were born. But lately he’s become intrigued with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, and he tends to come at it in unusual ways....