Prince Shotoku was a seventh-century politician attributed with authorship of Japan’s first constitution. Famed as a nation builder, he is said to have been able to listen to many people simultaneously, hearing the petitions of up to 10 supplicants at once and then handing down judgments or advice.Inspired by the legendary prince, Japanese researchers have spent five years developing a humanoid robot system that can understand and respond to simultaneous speakers....
Despite the wide availability of potassium iodine to mitigate ingestion exposure to radioactive iodine in the air, food or beverages, there is still no magic medicine to give to people who have been—or will be—exposed to high levels of direct radiation. But years before the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, the U.S. government had started lobbing millions of dollars at contracts to speed the development of drugs to combat dangerous doses of ionizing radiation....
Scientists in Costa Rica have found some new species of fungi thriving in an odd place: on a collection of lithographs by 19th-century French artist Bernard Romain Julien. The microorganisms are speeding the degradation of the printed artworks, which are among the oldest items in the University of Costa Rica’s art collection and were acquired as a tool to teach drawing techniques. To preserve the lithographs, Geraldine Conejo-Barboza, a researcher at the university’s chemistry department and its Institute of Art Research, and her colleagues are developing a spray that could eliminate or slow the fungi’s growth and stop natural acidification processes that are destroying the artwork....
Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow players to adopt virtual personas or engage in combat on digital battlefields, but what if similar technology could let government intelligence analysts play out antiterrorism scenarios that would help with better understandings of the consequences of Middle East policy recommendations? A team of researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., believe they have created just such a virtual world using computational models that mimic terrorist behavior based a variety of factors, including social, political and religious beliefs....
Washington, D.C., home of the CIA, National Security Administration (NSA) and FBI, is a well-known haven for spies and surveillance. But new satellite pictures of the White House, Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial show these government agencies aren’t the only ones watching and being watched. These latest images from Dulles, Va., satellite-imaging company, GeoEye, are among the first to be collected by the GeoEye 1, a satellite launched into polar orbit on September 6 that can “see” objects on Earth as small as 16 inches (0....
From the moment Donald Trump was declared the president-elect, many on the losing side—about half the nation—have been stunned. Gone is the future they expected. Disappeared the America they believed in, the country that represented their values and all they hold dear. In New York City some saw the faces of people on the subway or walking through Times Square as reminiscent of the shock and sadness they had seen in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks....
Dear EarthTalk: We have an invasion of phragmites in the wetlands bordering our neighborhood. I understand they are a non-native plant that, if left unchecked, will overrun the whole ecosystem. How does one remedy this situation in an eco-friendly way?—Jeff Willets, via e-mail Fast-growing, fast-spreading phragmites (Phragmites australis), which most of us know as common reeds, can present a major problem in freshwater and tidal wetland habitats. This is especially so in eastern U....
With Valentine’s day here again, many singles may be hoping Cupid’s arrow will strike. And if you’re wondering whether a new mate is marriage material, the results of a new study hint that you’re better off looking for a bird of the same feather instead of waiting for an opposite to attract. Eva C. Klohnen and Shanhong Luo of the University of Iowa analyzed data collected from nearly 300 couples that participated in the Iowa Marital Assessment Project....
The biggest thing stopping the sun is money. Installing a rooftop array of solar panels large enough to produce all of the energy required by a building is the equivalent of prepaying its electricity bill for the next seven to 10 years—and that’s after federal and state incentives. A new innovation in financing, however, has opened up an additional possibility for homeowners who want to reduce their carbon footprint and lower their electric bills: get the panels for free, then pay for the power as you go....
In two weeks officials from nearly every country on Earth will gather at the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris. This is the latest gathering of nations, convened by the U.N., to discuss and potentially agree on a global strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting our planet. To date, the international community hasn’t been able to act together with the kind of commitment, urgency and ambition that’s needed to confront the climate challenge....
British ministers insisted today that they are still committed to reducing the number of animals used in research, but warned that this might not mean a reduction in the overall number of scientific procedures involving animals. Science minister David Willetts told reporters in London that the government was “absolutely committed” to the so-called 3Rs of reducing, replacing and refining the use of animals. “This is about the scientific community doing its best whenever possible to reduce and replace the use of animals,” he added....
On Tuesday, fourteen conservation groups and a Colorado county sued the federal government, alleging that it violated environmental, property and energy laws in designating “energy corridors” along 6,000 miles (9,650 kilometers) of public land and wilderness areas in the U.S. West. Such corridors refer to land that utilities can use to run pipelines, transmission cables and other energy-related structures. The Bush administration originally touted these right-of-ways in 2005 as a means to link solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, but proposals officials approved before leaving office in January have them connecting existing coal-fired power plants and natural gas facilities....
A House-Senate deal to fund the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration includes enough cash to stabilize the nation’s struggling environmental satellite program, a top agency official said yesterday. A conference agreement released Monday night includes $924 million for NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), just shy of the Obama administration’s fiscal 2012 request, $1.07 billion. NOAA’s deputy undersecretary for operations, Mary Glackin, told a Senate committee yesterday that the funds would help firm up the launch schedule for the program’s first satellite and limit a projected gap in weather and climate data....
This map shows that path (well, paths actually) in the most beautiful way possible. It uses the dreamy Earth wind map for inspiration. But rather than using temperature, wind and sea level pressure data, Dan Majka, a web developer at The Nature Conservancy, used data from two studies to show all the feasible paths that mammals, birds and amphibians can use to find their way to a more suitable climate as their habitat becomes too hot....
Nature certainly has a way of one-upping the fruits of human ingenuity. Extreme astrophysical objects have long been known to accelerate the particles that make up cosmic rays to whopping energies that make the Large Hadron Collider look like a child’s slingshot. The mammoth collider near Geneva, Switzerland, which resumed service in 2009 after an aborted start-up the year before, will ultimately boost protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts....
At a recent party, a man was telling me about something that had happened at his nine-year-old’s elementary school. Apparently the teacher was having trouble getting his laptop to work with a projector. In the end, a kid—a kid, mind you—stood up, walked to the front of the classroom and solved the problem. “Can you believe it?” this guy concluded. “We’ve reached the point where the students know more than the teachers!...
The young girl wanted to unburden herself about her problem. She told her doctor that she worried excessively and that she felt overwhelmed by these thoughts. One memory that she described to Douglas Mennin, director of the Yale Anxiety and Mood Services at Yale University, was particularly telling. Her grandmother had shared intense feelings about the recent passing of a good friend. As the young girl listened, her mind wandered to thoughts of her grandmother dying....
It was a year when people were fed up. With pipelines in Canada. Fracking in the UK. Coal trains along the Columbia River. A crematorium and an oil refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area. A waste recycling plant in Ohio. Fluoride in Portland, Ore. While there’s nothing new about civil disobedience and other environmental protests, in 2013 they seemed to intensify and spread globally. Grassroots protests attracted large numbers of local and native people who worry about their environmental health but don’t consider themselves activists....
There’s an ironic trend in the medical field: Health care workers often come to work while they’re sick themselves, endangering colleagues and patients. Although researchers have worried about the health implications of this trend for roughly five years now, two new studies have finally targeted whysick health workers are continuing to come into the office and offer potential solutions. In a study, published in JAMA Pediatrics last month, Julia Szymczak from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and her colleagues surveyed 536 hospital workers....
Many of the astronomers and physicists invited to the meeting feared for their safety. Others felt that the event should be cancelled outright. To hold a conference in Dallas, Texas, only weeks after US President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated there — it just seemed disrespectful. In the end, the first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics went ahead as scheduled, starting on 16 December 1963, and most of the invited scientists did go — after the mayor of Dallas sent them a telegram urging their attendance....
