Scientific American presents Tech Talker by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Listener Kathy M. posted a great question on the Tech Talker Facebook wall . She wanted to know how to optimize her computer, making it run faster without adding any extra hardware. This is a great question because it’s something we’ve all encountered. We buy a computer and it’s lightning-fast....
A new participant has taken center court at major tennis tournaments: Hawkeye, a tracking system that sees whether a ball lands inside, outside or partly on a line. Hawkeye’s 10 video cameras feed 24 gigabytes of data to video-processing software that tracks the real-time position of every serve and shot. Television broadcasters began using the system in 2002 to enhance commentary. In March 2006 the NASDAQ-100 Open became the first tournament on the professional circuit to allow players to challenge an umpire’s line call, with the final decision settled by a review official after consulting Hawkeye....
A year and a half ago neuroscientist Anila D’Mello scanned the brains of a dozen autistic women who had just entered her study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The all-female cluster immediately threw off the results. “When we analyzed their data, we realized that it looked really different than the data we had collected up until that point” from their all-male pool, recalls D’Mello, then a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscientist John Gabrieli’s lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at M....
Dear EarthTalk: Is air quality in the United States improving or getting worse? Is it cleaner in some parts of the country than in others?—K. Gould, Sherman Oaks, Calif. Air quality across the United States has improved dramatically since 1970 when Congress passed the Clean Air Act in response to growing pollution problems and fouled air from coast to coast. According to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), levels of all major air pollution contaminants (ozone, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and lead) are down significantly since 1970; carbon monoxide levels alone dropped by more than 70 percent....
The planet closest to the sun has shrivelled much more over its lifetime than previously thought, scientists have found. Studies of Mercury show that it has shrunk by about 11 kilometers across since the solar system’s fiery birth 4.5 billion years ago. As the planet cooled and contracted, it became scarred with long curved ridges similar to the wrinkles on a rotting apple. A new census of these ridges, called lobate scarps, has found more of them, with steeper faces, than ever before....
This story is a supplement to the feature “The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents” which was printed in the July 2008 issue of Scientific American. Methods: Genetic Prospecting Digging through DNA to find the origins of the first modern humans began 20 years ago through inspection of genetic material in the cell’s mitochondria and later in the Y chromosome. Today investigations can scan sections of the whole genome contained in the cell nucleus to compare differences, or polymorphisms, in large numbers of individual nucleotides, the “letters” of the DNA alphabet....
Like cheerleaders forming a human pyramid, particles, too, can assemble themselves into intricate patterns. In a new study, researchers at the University of Michigan found that an object’s shape greatly affects how it responds to crowding and that, with a properly designed shape, tiny material building blocks known as nanoparticles could self-assemble into predictable larger structures simply by being forced to share space with neighbors. The study, which appeared in the July 27 Science, could help researchers design new materials....
This story was co-published with the New York Times. Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified NSA documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad—including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show....
Climate change leaders from around the world are applauding the French government’s decision to press on with a landmark U.N. conference in Paris at the end of the month, even in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks. But just how robust the event will be is still unclear. Early today, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told a radio station that only the negotiations themselves will take place and not the “concerts and festivities” planned around it....
From the Mexican border to the forests of Washington State, the West Coast is ablaze. Dozens of fires have roared to life across the western states, burning millions of acres of forest and grassland. California has borne the brunt of the onslaught, with more than 3.3 million acres going up in flames so far this year. That number greatly surpasses the state’s record of more than 1.9 million acres set afire in 2018—and this year’s blazes have occurred before the prime period of the traditional wildfire season has even arrived....
One day in the future, infection may be fought by simply switching bacterial invaders off. At least, that’s the promise of new technology out of a group at Yale University that’s studying riboswitches–short sections of untranslated RNA that monitor small compounds in the cell-like nucleotides, amino acids and sugars–in order to control gene expression. This nascent technology, which is currently being tested on simple bacteria in the lab, may soon constitute a novel class of antibiotics, those wonderful “magic bullets” from the 20th century that suddenly are encountering resistance from evolving bacteria....
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a special report on the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016 produced by the World Economic Forum. The list, compiled by the Forum’s Meta-Council on Emerging Technologies, highlights technological advances its members, including Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina, believe have the power to improve lives, transform industries and safeguard the planet. It also provides an opportunity to debate any human, societal, economic or environmental risks and concerns that the technologies may pose prior to widespread adoption....
Three decades after its first, faltering steps in humans, gene therapy is emerging as a treatment option for a small but growing number of diseases. Although the concept faced scientific and ethical uncertainty when it was floated in the 1970s, the foundation of the approach—replacing or fixing a single, disease-causing gene—has proved solid. Researchers have developed different ways to correct or influence the way someone’s genes function and used those techniques to create therapies for several blood disorders, as well as degenerative eye and muscle diseases....
Bob Paine is nearly 2 meters tall and has a powerful grip. The ochre sea star, however, has five sucker-lined arms and can span half a meter. So when Paine tried to prise the creatures off the rocks along the Pacific coast, he found that his brute strength simply wasn’t enough. In the end, he resorted to a crowbar. Then, once he had levered the animals up, he hurled them out to sea as hard as he could....
In June 2018 the FDA approved the drug Epidiolex, the first pharmaceutical drug made from cannabidiol (CBD) and intended to treat two very severe forms of epilepsy. The announcement seemed to add to the growing prominence of CBD—although it remains a Schedule I controlled substance in the U.S. In many health food stores and head shops, you can find CBD in everything from body lotion and bath bombs to chocolate and pet treats....
Back in 2013, a seminal U.N. report highlighted that more people have mobile phones than flush toilets. Today we can leverage smart phones and wearables to create more representative data pools of our global population than studies done with WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) research participants—in other words, typical U.S. college students. Also, can you guesstimate how many times the average person touches a cell phone in a day?...
Even harmless bacteria suck up the energy of their hosts and hasten their deaths—or so the conventional thinking went. New findings show that flies scrubbed clean of bacteria do not outlive their infested brethren. In both flies and humans, because the number of bacteria living both inside and on the body increases with age, researchers expected infestations to prove harmful by depleting their hosts’ resources. University of Southern California scientists and their colleagues compared normal fruit flies with ones born from eggs washed in antibiotics and raised in bacteria-free environments....
A toughened crosshatch of carbon-based molecules is all that stands between plants and their total destruction at the hands of an array of microbes and fungi. Called lignin, the compound enables redwoods to tower and woody herbs to resist rot. As a result, lignin is the second-most abundant biological compound on the planet—and the bane of would-be biofuel-makers everywhere, blocking their best efforts to make fuels from the inedible parts of plants....
As a recreational vocalist, I have spent some of the most moving moments of my life engaged in song. As a college student, my eyes would often well up with tears during my twice-a-week choir rehearsals. I would feel relaxed and at peace yet excited and joyful, and I occasionally experienced a thrill so powerful that it sent shivers down my spine. I also felt connected with fellow musicians in a way I did not with friends who did not sing with me....
You and your dog no doubt have a special bond. But it’s deeper than all those scraps from the table or trips to the dog park. Something far in the shared evolutionary past of dogs and humans has linked the two species, making our canine companions especially good at understanding when we want to help or communicate with them. Point in the direction of wayward kibble on the kitchen floor, and your dog likely will follow your guidance to gobble it up....
