SELF CONTROL is one of our most cherished values. We applaud those who have the discipline to regulate their appetites and actions, and we try hard to instill this virtue in our children. Think of the marketing slogans that key off the desire for restraint: “Just say no.” “Just do it.” We celebrate the power of the mind to make hard choices, despite our emotions or other temptations, and keep us on course....
What are the odds that intelligent, technically advanced aliens would look anything like the ones in films, with an emaciated torso and limbs, spindly fingers and a bulbous, bald head with large, almond-shaped eyes? What are the odds that they would even be humanoid? In a YouTube video, produced by Josh Timonen of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, I argue that the chances are close to zero (www....
JANUARY 1960 ASTOUNDING TALES— “The press of the Soviet Union has been astounding its readers with accounts of a ‘revolution’ in science and a ‘miracle’ of technology. Nikolai A. Kozyrev, an astrophysicist, was said to have wrought the revolution, with his hypothesis that the passage of time is the source of cosmic energy. The miracle was the harnessing of a ‘concentration of energy.’ Speaking for the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, three distinguished physicists joined in a public rebuke to the press for ‘cheap sensationalism’ and for placing its pages ‘at the disposal of absolutely incompetent people....
Close your eyes. Cast your mind back to high school and a high-stakes moment in your most difficult course with your toughest teacher. I’ll go first: : Senior year, Mr. Trice, the final exam in AP Physics. I remember where I was sitting. I remember staring at the paper, feeling I didn’t know any of the answers. My heart was pounding; my palms were sweating. I was certain I would fail....
Zoë Kessler went through the first four decades of her life thinking something must be wrong with her. When she was a child, Kessler could not understand why she kept misbehaving. “I spent a ton of time in the hall for talking and being the class clown,” she says. “My mom couldn’t control me, and I couldn’t control me.” In adulthood, her behavior improved, but she was so unfocused she had trouble figuring out what she should be doing minute to minute, and she struggled to complete the projects she had once been so excited about starting....
By Bill Berkrot (Reuters) - Lowering blood pressure below a commonly used target significantly reduced serious heart problems and cut the risk of death in adults aged 50 and older, according to preliminary results of a large U.S. government-sponsored study released on Friday. In the study of more than 9,300 patients with hypertension, using a combination of medicines to reduce systolic pressure to a target of 120 versus 140 cut the rate of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure by almost a third and the risk of death by nearly a quarter....
A wave of nausea washed over Sheri J. Storm when she opened the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on a February morning a decade ago and saw the headline: Malpractice lawsuit: Plaintiff tells horror of memories. Woman emotionally testifies that psychiatrist planted false recollections. The woman in the article shared a lot with Storm–the same psychiatrist, the same memories, the same diagnosis of multiple personality disorder. At that moment, Storm suddenly realized that her own illness and 200-plus personalities, though painfully real to her, were nothing more than a figment of her imagination–created by her trusted therapist, Kenneth Olson....
Brutality now becomes my appetite Violence is now a way of life The sledge my tool to torture As it pounds down on your forehead Shakespeare it’s not. Those lyrics, from “Hammer Smashed Face” by the band Cannibal Corpse, are typical of death metal—a subgenre of heavy metal music that features images of extreme violence and the sonic equivalent of, well, a sledgehammer to the forehead. The appeal of this marginal musical form, which clearly seems bent on assaulting the senses and violating even the lowest standards of taste, is mystifying to non-fans—which is one reason music psychologist William Forde Thompson was drawn to it....
Few pet owners would admit that their pooches or other furry friends lack personality. But some dogs are more aggressive than others. The question is why. So far, the answer has been as much a mystery as why animals ranging from ants to apes behave consistently over time. For example, fish that act aggressively toward other fish also tend to be bold around predators—swimming right up to check them out. Now researchers say animal personalities may stem from what they have to lose—at least in a simplified model....
Sometime around two million years ago the number and types of large carnivore species in Africa began to drop. Were our forebears responsible? In our cover story, “Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores,” paleontologist Lars Werdelin takes us down the data trail in search of an answer. Although our ancestors were slow and weak, he posits, they also proved to be clever and collaborative and, as omnivores, able to take advantage of opportunities for obtaining nourishing calories from a variety of different sources better than more dedicated meat eaters could....
Ever since the 1940s, when researchers discovered that nerves of the spinal column can grow, scientists have tried to devise ways to coax the cells to overcome damaged areas and thereby defeat paralysis, organ degeneration and other problems associated with injury to the central nervous system. Removing scar tissue with drugs, laying down scaffolds and inserting cells have all been tried with varying degrees of success. Recent achievements, such as the restoration of some ability to walk in rodents, and other findings indicate that rather than a single approach, all may be the key....
The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee claimed yesterday he has new evidence showing that scientific research discrediting a purported pause in temperature increases was politically motivated. John Bates, who recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, told the Daily Mail newspaper in England that a 2015 federal study was intended “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus” and was rushed “to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy....
As human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, carbon cycling has helped to buffer against some of the greenhouse gas’s warming effects. But over time, if carbon dioxide levels continue to increase, the planet will become progressively less able to sequester CO2 in the soil or deep within the ocean. Scott Doney, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, compares the scenario to an open faucet flowing into a basin (of air), with drains that allow some of the CO2 to escape into the soil and ocean....
On February 18, 2017, more than 200 members of five Native American tribes gathered at a secret location on the Columbia Plateau in Washington State to return the remains of the Ancient One to the earth. The homecoming was two decades in the making for the roughly 9,000-year-old skeleton, also known as Kennewick Man, which was discovered in 1996. It had been delayed by a bitter dispute between scientists who wanted to study him and tribes who claimed he was their ancestor and wanted to rebury him, in keeping with their religious customs....
Three potentially habitable Earth-size planets have been discovered orbiting a dim, cold nearby star that is barely larger than Jupiter, researchers say. “These kinds of tiny, cold stars may be the places we should first look for life elsewhere in the universe, because they may be the only places where we can detect life on distant Earth-sized planets with our current technology,” study lead author Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium, told Space....
Killer Smile A toxin that forces a condemned victim to smile really seems to exist. The Greek bard Homer coined the term “sardonic grin” after ceremonial killings that supposedly took place in Sardinia, where Phoenician colonists gave to elderly people who could no longer take care of themselves and to criminals an intoxicating potion that put a smile on their face. (They were then dropped from a high rock or beaten to death....
Just weeks before the latest round of international talks seeking solutions for our rapidly warming world, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics highlights some of the fundamental science at the heart of Earth’s climate emergency. It was awarded for work that clarified how complex, disordered systems—such as a planet’s climate—respond to disturbances. Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University and Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg shared half of the 2021 prize, for their separate work to understand the physical basis of climate change....
Harvard University researchers have halted a pulse of laser light in its tracks and revived it a fraction of a millimeter away. Here’s the twist: they stopped it in a cloud of supercold sodium atoms, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), and then restarted it in a second, distinct BEC as though the pulse had spookily jumped between the two locations.“It’s odd,” says atomic physicist Lene Hau, the team’s leader. “We can actually revive the light pulse and send it back on its way as if nothing had happened....
Some popular diet trends recommend eliminating all forms of oil from your diet—including oils that are often promoted as healthful, such as olive oil. Is an oil-free diet healthier? Nutrition Diva listener Joy recently asked about this in a Facebook discussion. “What do you think about the idea that oil is unhealthy and should be avoided?,” she wrote. “I’ve noticed that some plant-based recipe blogs I like highlight their oil-free recipes....
Today expectant parents concerned about the diseases that could afflict their unborn children don’t have a lot of options. Blood tests can determine whether parents carry mutations for such genetic diseases as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs, but they can’t determine whether the baby will inherit them. And although fetuses can be tested for Down syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities using amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, about 1 percent of procedures cause miscarriage, so many moms opt out....
