Posts

When you’ve spent the weekend splurging on greasy fast foods, your bathroom scale isn’t alone in reeling from the impact. Your brain does, too. New research shows just how saturated fat tricks us into eating more and elucidates the evolutionary basis for the propensity for poundage in developed nations. Our brain physiology, it seems, is glaringly out-of-date in the modern world. Researchers have long known that the hormones leptin and insulin play key roles in appetite and food intake....

Electricity defines modernity more than any other field of science and technology. It enables me to type this on a computer and enables 40 percent of you to read this on a cellphone screen. In 1916 the science of producing and consuming electricity was advanced enough to be reliable for industry and consumer alike. Its efficiency and low cost allowed its use to expand into all major aspects of modern life: war, medicine, communication, manufacturing and of course cooking....

Pres. Barack Obama will address the future of government snooping on personal phone records and other data in a speech Friday. Ever since the revelations made last year by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, public unease and debate has swirled around the government’s dominion over telecommunications and big tech companies as well as its spy agencies’ surreptitious tracking, collecting and storage of residents’ information. Obama’s remarks will be based, at least in part, on recommendations he solicited in August from a panel consisting of CIA veteran Michael Morrell, former national security official Richard Clarke, University of Chicago constitutional law specialist Geoffrey Stone, Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire, a privacy law scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology....

The term “gadget” has come to mean “mobile device accessory.” Whether you’re playing sports, adding appliances to your home or simply making a fashion statement, your purchases typically have some tie-in with your smartphone or tablet. This year Scientific American presents 10 new gadgets that treat your smartphones and tablets as the center of your universe. The LEGO charging station, 3-D-printed headphones and levitating wireless speaker work directly with mobile devices to keep them powered up and sounding good....

Scientists have forged a promising avenue in the quest to restore mobility to patients paralyzed by disease or injury. Researchers at the University of Washington devised a way to reroute signals from the brain’s motor cortex to trigger hand movement directly. For the past decade researchers have focused on “listening to” and decod­ing the specific brain signals that trigger muscle movement, using a wall of com­puters running complex algorithms to trans­late that brain activity into instruc­tions for moving a computer cursor or a robotic arm or leg....

MARIJUANA IS INFAMOUS for its ability to muddle thoughts and dull reactions. What is less well known is that it may also blunt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, which relentlessly robs its sufferers of their memories and personality. Families and individuals tormented by this deterioration may welcome such an alternative therapy, no matter how they feel about marijuana’s illegal status. “I went through several years of a son on marijuana and had him placed in a facility to be ‘dried out,’” says Ruth, age 69, of St....

Entomologist Rick Vetter is enjoying his retirement. The extra time allows him to pursue spider research free from the distraction of what he considers the less fascinating six-legged species that most of his colleagues study. Vetter understands that not everyone shares his passion for eight-legged creatures. But he was surprised to learn that some entomologists actually have a serious aversion to them. Vetter first began noticing spider antipathy among certain entomologists during his career as a researcher at the University of California, Riverside....

Robert Goldberg sags into his desk chair and gestures at the air. “Frankenstein monsters, things crawling out of the lab,” he says. “This the most depressing thing I’ve ever dealt with.” Goldberg, a plant molecular biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, is not battling psychosis. He is expressing despair at the relentless need to confront what he sees as bogus fears over the health risks of genetically modified (GM) crops....

Contact lenses that help enhance normal vision with megapixel 3D panoramic images are being designed by scientists using military funding. For those who do not want to rely on contact lenses, future versions could involve lenses directly implanted within the eye, researchers added. Over the decades, the video displays that everyone from fighter pilots to the general public use have grown increasingly complex. One possibility for advanced displays is a virtual reality (VR) system that replaces our view of the real world with computer-generated vistas....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. For the past several months, creepy clowns have been terrorizing America, with sightings of actual clowns in at least 10 different states. These fiendish clowns have reportedly tried to lure women and children into the woods, chased people with knives and machetes, and yelled at people from cars. They’ve been spotted hanging out in cemeteries and they have been caught in the headlights of cars as they appear alongside desolate country roads in the dead of night....

Twisty beams of light could boost the traffic-carrying capacity of the Internet, effectively adding new levels to the information superhighway, suggests research published today in Science. Internet traffic is growing exponentially and researchers have sought ways to squeeze ever more information into the fiber-optic cables that carry it. One successful method used over the last 20 years essentially added more traffic lanes, using different colors, or wavelengths, for different signals. But to compensate for the added lanes, each one had to be made narrower....

It seems like a noble goal: amid growing concern about the health risks of nanoparticles, why not keep tabs on the health of people who work with the little buggers? But it turns out that’s easier said than done. “You could probably count the world’s published literature on exposure to nanoparticles on both hands,” says Paul Schulte, director of the Education and Information Division of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)....

Children with autism often focus intently on a single activity or feature of their environment. New research might help to explain this behavioral trend, providing evidence that the brains of young people with autism are slower to integrate input coming from more than one sense at the same time. During study of the disorder decades ago, research into these basic tendencies was common. But in subsequent years, scientists have tended to focus more on complex issues, ranging from communication troubles to underlying genetic patterns....

KWADUKUZA, South Africa—A Zulu crowd’s ululations welcomed Jacob Zuma, president of the Republic of South Africa, back to KwaZulu–Natal, his home province. He had come to tell them of his commitment to bring them, and the rest of the nation, better access to energy—as well as to announce the distribution of solar-powered hot water heaters and LED lighting systems as well as clean-burning cookstoves. “One of South Africa’s major challenges in poor and rural areas is access to energy,” Zuma told his constituents at this rally last month, standing on stage with Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Kandeh Yumkella, director general of the U....

The H7N9 bird flu virus has influenza scientists on edge, due to an unexpected surge of human infections — hundreds of cases — caused by the virus this spring. Some new scientific findings aren’t likely to ratchet down those concerns. Scientists at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, Calif., reported Thursday that the accumulation of several mutations in the main gene on the virus’s surface may be able to give H7N9 the ability to spread like human flu viruses do, passing from person to person through coughing and sneezing....

A multibillion-dollar slate of moderate climate-mitigation measures in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act has been met so far with general public approval. But a broader reaction to the historic federal action underlies the discourse: What took you so long? A survey-based study published on Tuesday suggests that a shared delusion among nearly all Americans could contribute to the long delay in significant federal climate policy. Despite polls showing widespread concern about climate change and majority support for policies to mitigate it, the new study shows that Americans almost universally underestimate the extent of climate concern among their compatriots....

A federal judge Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to stop dragging its feet on the fate of polar bears and decide by May 15 whether declining sea ice in the Arctic threatens their existence. The ruling marks a victory for a coalition of environmentalists—the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)—which sued to force the U.S. Department of the Interior to decide whether to protect the hoary Arctic predators under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which it had committed to do by January 9....

Hey, candidates. Want to win an election? Simple. Just appear competent—even if you’re not. A new report confirms what may be some politically inclined people’s worst nightmare: looks matter. Princeton University researchers asked student volunteers which of two candidates in gubernatorial races appeared more competent. Much to the scientists’ surprise, their picks turned out to be the voters’ choices. Study participants were shown photos of the winners and losers in 89 political races that took place between 1996 and 2002....

Tourists who visit national parks and other protected areas in the United States hope to gain a respite from the sights and sounds of their everyday lives. But evading human soundscapes isn’t easy. Many protected areas are surprisingly noisy, a new study finds, and that can interfere with more than just the peace and quiet visitors seek. Noise generated by humans—including that from development activities, traffic and the extraction of natural resources—threaten the survival of plant and animal species across the country, researchers report on 4 May in Science....

Many people will do almost anything to try to stave off aging–from undergoing painful nips and tucks to slathering on expensive creams to getting injections and downing pills that promise to erase wrinkles, lift sagging skin and keep the body forever young. One of the hottest anti-aging elixirs du jour is human growth hormone (GH), which has been touted for its supposed ability to do everything from build muscle to shave fat to thicken bones to lower cholesterol....