Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. You’ve probably heard all the hype over gluten sensitivity recently. You may have a friend who has advised you to try mitigating your abdominal discomfort and diarrhea by cutting out gluten, or perhaps you saw Nutrition Diva’s episode on gluten-free diets. What is the scoop on gluten sensitivity, anyway?...
We spend billions of dollars each year looking for happiness, hoping it might be bought, consumed, found, or flown to. Other, more contemplative cultures and traditions assure us that this is a waste of time (not to mention money). ‘Be present’ they urge. Live in the moment, and there you’ll find true contentment. Sure enough, our most fulfilling experiences are typically those that engage us body and mind, and are unsullied by worry or regret....
Click here for a full list of our coverage of the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. Watch a video of this interview here. LAS VEGAS—Just hours before addressing a ballroom packed with thousands of consumer electronics junkies, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates sat down for an interview with Scientific American. The Consumer Electronics Show served as the backdrop, though the truth be told, the event could just as easily have been called “Microsoft World,” given that the bulk of the gadgets on display here incorporate, are compatible with or were designed using some Microsoft product from Windows to Microsoft Auto....
Formerly known as frigidity, female sexual dysfunction (FSD) has always been a controversial diagnosis, and now studies are pointing to relationship dissatisfaction and male performance as risk factors. Just whose problem is this, anyway? New research suggests that broad tactics such as treating a woman’s anxiety and improving communication with her partner may be more useful than focusing on the physical mechanics of sex. Female sexual dysfunction is a broad diagnosis that indicates trouble in one or more of four areas: desire, pain, arousal and orgasm....
Key concepts Biology Vision Binocular vision Depth perception Introduction Did you know that there is a type of giant clam that has thousands of small eyes covering its body? It’s called Tridacna gigas, and it lives in the South Pacific Ocean. Although it has a lot of them, T. gigas’s eyes are fairly primitive compared with ours. (So don’t be too jealous that you don’t have thousands of eyes, too!) All vertebrate animals (including humans) have two eyes these days....
A woman’s mood and appetite are clearly tied to her menstrual cycle, but other, more subtle changes in thinking and behavior also occur. In particular, her sense of smell sharpens as fertility peaks in the latter half of her cycle. A study published in March in Hormones and Behavior compared the smell sensitivity of 16 women taking oral contraceptives and 17 naturally cycling women during two different phases of the menstrual cycle—around the time of ovulation and during the luteal phase, immediately after ovulation....
A new file-swapping method could speed up downloads to rates as much as three times faster than the popular service BitTorrent. The approach, outlined and demonstrated last month by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University and Intel Research, would let file-swappers seeking a specific title download bits of it from similar, but not necessarily identical files. It works a little like an enterprising mechanic who uses spare parts from a Toyota to fix an old Ford....
Fossils of what may be primitive relatives of gorillas suggest that the human and gorilla lineages split up to 10 million years ago, millions of years later than what has been recently suggested, researchers say. The finding could help resolve a controversy over the continent where the ape and human lineages first evolved, the scientists added. Although the fossil record of human evolution is still patchy, it is better understood than that of great apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas....
As of this writing, the precise nature of Marc Hauser’s transgressions remains murky. Hauser is Harvard’s superstar primate psychologist—and, perhaps ironically, an expert on the evolution of morality—whom the university recently found guilty of eight counts of scientific misconduct. Harvard has kept mum about the details, but a former lab assistant alleged that when Hauser looked at videotapes of rhesus monkeys, in an experiment on their capacity to learn sound patterns, he noted behavior that other people in the lab couldn’t see, in a way that consistently favored his hypothesis....
Although this year’s melting has progressed in fits and starts, Arctic ice coverage has been below average since reaching its annual maximum in March, according to the latest update from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. It is unclear what this early spring extent will mean for the annual minimum in September, as models have proven to be poor at predicting unusual outcomes. A new study has suggested, however, that projections might improve if the models took into account how much of the sea ice surface was covered in melt ponds, or the pools of water that collect on top of the ice as it melts....
Our brains are better than Google or the best robot from iRobot. We can instantly search through a vast wealth of experiences and emotions. We can immediately recognize the face of a parent, spouse, friend or pet, whether in daylight, darkness, from above or sideways—a task that the computer vision system built into the most sophisticated robots can accomplish only haltingly. We can also multitask effortlessly when we extract a handkerchief from a pocket and mop our brow while striking up a conversation with an acquaintance....
Buckle your seat belts and pull out your pocket protectors: We’re going full nutrition-nerd today, talking about the role of dietary protein in maximizing muscle protein synthesis. But don’t assume that this is only of interest to body-builders! Applying these insights to your daily meals can have a monumental impact on your ability to maintain a healthy body weight, age successfully, and bounce back from illness and injury. In a previous episode on preventing age-related muscle loss, I explained that you can get more protein benefit without eating more protein, simply by distributing your protein more evenly over the course of the day....
Millions of people around the world are experiencing a scorching summer, as records are broken and thermostats climb this week in parts of Europe. Temperatures in Paris and Brussels exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit at a time of year when 70-degree weather is the norm, according to Accuweather.com. In Bandar-e Mahshahr, Iran, temperatures climbed to 115 °F last week. The temperature, together with high humidity, felt like 163 °F to hapless people directly exposed to the weather, according to Accuweather....
BAMAKO (Reuters) - Mali said it had identified its first possible cases of Ebola since the start of an outbreak in neighboring Guinea, adding to fears that the deadly virus was spreading across West Africa. More than 90 people have already died in Guinea and Liberia in what medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned could turn into an unprecedented epidemic in an impoverished region with poor health services. Foreign mining companies have locked down operations and pulled out some international staff in mineral-rich Guinea....
CLIMATEWIRE | Three decades after ratifying the world’s first climate treaty, the Senate passed a sweeping budget bill Sunday that pours hundreds of billions of dollars into the clean energy projects needed to decarbonize the economy. The vote represents a breakthrough for U.S. climate policy. In clearing the Senate, Democrats overcame a hurdle that has tripped up past climate bills. And with $369 billion in climate and energy spending, the legislation has the potential to turbocharge U....
Dear EarthTalk: What’s better for the local ecology, sewers or septic tanks? —T. H., Darien, Conn. You probably won’t have much choice as to whether that home you’re thinking of buying is on sewer or septic. Most likely it’s a done deal, unless the neighborhood is presently all on septic but is considering a petition to the town to switch to sewers (in which case you can usually agree to hook up or stay put)....
(Reuters) - Southern Michigan on Saturday afternoon was shaken by a mild, 4.2 magnitude earthquake, a rarity in a state more accustomed to snow storms and tornadoes, officials said. There were no injuries and one unconfirmed report of a building suffering damage, said Michigan State Police spokesman Ron Leix. “It rattled a lot of buildings and it surprised a lot of people,” he said. “We do get these once in a while....
Global eradication of polio has been the ultimate game of Whack-a-Mole for the past decade; when it seems the virus has been beaten into submission in a final refuge, up it pops in a new region. Now, as vanquishing polio worldwide appears again within reach, another insidious threat may be in store from infection sources hidden in plain view. Polio’s latest redoubts are “chronic excreters,” people with compromised immune systems who, having swallowed weakened polioviruses in an oral vaccine as children, generate and shed live viruses from their intestines and upper respiratory tracts for years....
One body rests on its left side, head and neck pulled back toward the pelvis–a classic death pose. The arms and legs are still in their anatomically correct positions, but closer inspection reveals that bones of the hands and feet are dislocated, although most parts are present and accounted for. The skull, too, is somewhat disjointed, and here again the component pieces lie near one another. Curiously, the tip of the tail is missing altogether....
For decades, coal plants dumped toxic water laced with mercury, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants into America’s waterways. The practice contaminated thousands of miles of U.S. rivers and streams, according to federal estimates, making coal facilities the largest industrial source of toxic wastewater pollution in the country. So when EPA issued a rule in 2015 to halt the discharges, environmentalists were elated. The agency estimated that its new standards would eliminate the release of 1....
