If we are honest, most of us in the world’s richer countries would concede that we like our transportation systems. They allow us to travel when we want to, usually door-to-door, alone or with family and friends, and with our baggage. The mostly unseen freight distribution network delivers our goods and supports our lifestyle. So why worry about the future and especially about how the energy that drives our transportation might be affecting our environment?...
Temperatures on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can plummet below –50 degrees Celsius in winter. But under the ice scientists have found intense geothermal heat seeping up from Earth’s interior. The heat production that they measured is nearly four times the global average—“higher than 99 percent of all the measurements made on continents around the world,” says Andrew Fisher, a hydrogeologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked on the project....
Could lab-grown bones replace tissue grafts and multiple painful surgeries? Nina Tandon is the CEO and co-founder of EpiBone, a Brooklyn-based biotech company that was chosen as one of the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Technology Pioneers. Tandon is also a World Economic Forum Young Scientist who will be speaking at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China, from June 26 to 28. [An edited transcript of the interview follows....
By Matt Kaplan of Nature magazineArchaeologists have long thought that Homo erectus, humanity’s first ancestor to spread around the world, evolved in Africa before dispersing throughout Europe and Asia. But evidence of tool-making at the border of Europe and Asia is challenging that assumption.Reid Ferring, an anthropologist at the University of North Texas in Denton, and his colleagues excavated the Dmanisi site in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. They found stone artifacts–mostly flakes that were dropped as hominins knapped rocks to create tools for butchering animals–lying in sediments almost 1....
Scientists today announced that they have crafted a bacterial genome from scratch, moving one step closer to creating entirely synthetic life forms–living cells designed and built by humans to carry out a diverse set of tasks ranging from manufacturing biofuels to sequestering carbon dioxide. Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Md., report in the online edition of Science that they pieced together the genes of Mycoplasma genitalium, the smallest free-living bacterium that can be grown in the laboratory and a common culprit in urinary tract infections....
Tiny ants terrorize Texans A new species of ant—temporarily dubbed paratrenicha species near pubens—has been giving Texans the heebie-jeebies for the past six years since its arrival in Houston via, it is believed, a cargo ship, the Associated Press reported this week. The origin of these “crazy rasberry ants” (named after exterminator Tom Rasberry) is unknown, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean....
By Reuters Staff WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Heavy users of the Internet and social media do not have higher levels of stress, and women who use Twitter, email and photo sharing show less stress than women who do not use them, a survey released on Thursday showed. But the survey of 1,801 Americans by the Pew Research Center showed that such social media as Facebook can add to users’ stress since they hear more about other people’s tough times, such as job losses and deaths....
Orphans have a hard lot in life, particularly in Eastern Europe, where state institutions sometimes provide care that has been reduced to simple feeding and changing with a minimum of physical contact. That neglect–even without any other abuse–can take a profound emotional and physical toll, potentially deeply affecting a child’s neurobiology. New research shows that children adopted from such institutions who have spent as many as three years in their new homes still suffer from depressed levels of hormones that have been linked to bonding, caring, communicating and stress regulation, among other things....
A chance observation about warts on a pea plant led a group of teenagers on a three-year mission to ease the world food crisis using agricultural science. Their perseverance paid off when they won the Grand Prize at the annual Google Science Fair in Palo Alto, Calif., in September. (Scientific American co-sponsors the awards.) The mission started after Émer Hickey, a now 17-year-old from Kinsale, Ireland, and her mother first embarked on gardening a few years ago....
2022 is shaping up to be a solar boom. That is, if supply chain constraints don’t undercut the industry. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects U.S. solar companies will install 21.5 gigawatts of utility-scale capacity this year, shattering the annual record of 15.5 GW set last year. But EIA’s projection comes amid a period of considerable uncertainty for the industry. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, warned last month that supply chain constraints were driving cost increases and could limit the industry growth in 2022 (Climatewire, Dec....
A biofuel made from used cooking oil could slash aviation-related carbon emissions—if its unblended form can work with existing aircraft. Two flying machines partially powered by unblended sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, performed successful test flights in France this fall. An Airbus A319neo plane and an Airbus H225 helicopter each fueled one of their two engines with unblended SAF during flights that lasted three and two hours, respectively. The aviation sector is investigating various kinds of SAFs in hopes of eventually making flying carbon-neutral....
The insect Issus coleoptratus cannot fly, but it can certainly jump. The diminutive bug belongs to the taxonomic grouping Fulgoromorpha, commonly known as the plant hoppers. When researchers noticed that the legs of I. coleoptratus move within 30 microseconds of perfect synchrony, it became clear that the insects have more than just a spring in their step. In fact, they have gears at the base of their legs, as biologists in the U....
PALO ALTO, Calif.—Technology for tapping ocean waves, tides and rivers for electricity is far from commercial viability and lagging well behind wind, solar and other fledgling power sectors, a panel of experts said last week during a forum here on climate change and marine ecosystems. While the potential for marine energy is great, ocean wave and tidal energy projects are still winding their way through an early research and development phase, these experts said....
Scientific American presents Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Did the brainy droid C-3PO get the calculation right? Are the odds really 3,720 to 1? Those are exactly the questions we’ll be answering today. Star Wars Math In case you haven’t seen The Empire Strikes Back (the second film in the original Star Wars trilogy) in a while, (or if, heaven forbid, you’ve never seen it!...
The Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles features the great Grimpen Mire, a treacherous marsh in Dartmoor, England. Holmes’ protagonist, the naturalist Stapleton, knows where the few secure footholds are, allowing him to cross the mire and reach the hills with rare plants and butterflies, but he warns Dr. Watson that a false step can be fatal, the bog inexorably consuming the unsuspecting traveller. Trying to unravel the complexities of the brain is a bit like crossing the great Grimpen Mire: one needs to know where the secure stepping-stones are, and a false step can mean sinking into a morass....
The number of smartphones, tablets and other network-connected gadgets will outnumber humans by the end of the year. Perhaps more significantly, the faster and more powerful mobile devices hitting the market annually are producing and consuming content at unprecedented levels. Global mobile data grew 70 percent in 2012, according to a recent report from Cisco, which makes a lot of the gear that runs the Internet. Yet the capacity of the world’s networking infrastructure is finite, leaving many to wonder when we will hit the upper limit, and what to do when that happens....
Over the past 12 years, anesthesiologist Scott Reuben revolutionized the way physicians provide pain relief to patients undergoing orthopedic surgery for everything from torn ligaments to worn-out hips. Now, the profession is in shambles after an investigation revealed that at least 21 of Reuben’s papers were pure fiction, and that the pain drugs he touted in them may have slowed postoperative healing. “We are talking about millions of patients worldwide, where postoperative pain management has been affected by the research findings of Dr....
LSD, “magic” mushrooms and mescaline have been banned in the U.S. and many other countries since the 1970s, but psychedelic medicine is making a comeback as new therapies for depression, nicotine addiction and anxiety. The drugs have another scientific use, too: so-called psychotomimetics, or mimics of psychosis, may be useful tools for studying schizophrenia. By creating a brief bout of psychosis in a healthy brain, as indigenous healers have for millennia, scientists are seeking new ways to study—and perhaps treat—mental illness....
The early universe was a rough-and-tumble place. Galaxies smashed together with much more regularity than they do today, and the insides of galaxies were chaotic, clumpy pods of stars. It was no place for an orderly, delicate swirl of a galaxy like the Milky Way or Andromeda. By scanning hundreds of galaxies that existed just a few billion years after the big bang, however, a group of astronomers has turned up a diamond in the cosmic rough....
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Infestations of the Helicoverpa caterpillar in Brazil’s grain belt prompted the agriculture ministry on Monday to declare a state of emergency in the leading soy state of Mato Grosso, highlighting the potential risk to large parts of the crop.The ministry’s head of supply, Antonio Andrade, also declared an emergency in the state of Bahia, a smaller but important producer state where difficulty controlling pests caused financial losses for producers last year....
