OCTOBER 1957 METROPOLITAN SEGREGATION— “The white and non-white citizens of the U.S. are being sorted out in a new pattern of segregation. In each of the major urban centers the story is the same: the better-off white families are moving out of the central cities into the suburbs; the ranks of the poor who remain are being swelled by Negroes from the South. These population shifts bring with them profound economic consequences....
From a few fragments out of a collection of 23-century-old bamboo strips, historians have pieced together what they say is the world’s oldest example of a multiplication table in base 10. Five years ago, Tsinghua University in Beijing received a donation of nearly 2,500 bamboo strips. Muddy, smelly and teeming with mold, the strips probably originated from the illegal excavation of a tomb, and the donor had purchased them at a Hong Kong market....
The international community has set its sights on easing the burdens of infectious disease and malnutrition around the world. Yet some projections find that a bigger fraction of deaths in developing countries may soon come from chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness. In one example of the underlying trend, researchers report that high blood glucose exacts a global death toll comparable to any pathogen and has fueled an epidemic of diabetes in Asia....
Researchers have made a key breakthrough in a decades-old cosmic mystery by potentially identifying the source of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, rare but immensely powerful subatomic particles that strike our atmosphere each with the energy of a fast-pitch baseball. A study published in Science finds that these rays pierce the atmosphere not from any which way but rather in the direction of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs), bright galactic cores that researchers believe are powered by supermassive black holes guzzling mass quantities of matter....
By Deepa SeetharamanDETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co, the second-largest U.S. automaker, will offer this fall an F-150 pickup truck that can run on compressed natural gas to take advantage of the resurgence in truck demand.The move also allows Ford to capture consumers’ interest, as rivals General Motors Co and Fiat SpA’s Chrysler Group LLC sell revamped versions of their trucks to U.S. car shoppers. Ford is expected to introduce its overhauled truck next year....
I’m afraid of a lot of things, but two things really terrify me: heights and turbulent water. So naturally I signed up for a whitewater rafting trip in early July down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon—including hikes in side canyons featuring some don’t-look-down moments. I screwed up (keep reading) my courage because this trip was the annual canyon excursion organized by the National Center for Science Education. Since 1981 the Oakland, Calif....
Researchers say that references to planets and constellations in the Odyssey describe a solar eclipse that occurred in 1178 B.C., nearly three centuries before Homer is believed to have written the story. If correct, the finding would suggest that the ancient poet had a surprisingly detailed knowledge of astronomy. The Odyssey, commonly dated to near 800 B.C., describes the 10-year voyage of the Greek general Odysseus to his home on the island of Ithaca after the fall of Troy in approximately 1200 B....
Today’s show is a little bit of a hybrid between the usual monologue and a guest interview—think of it as a BOGO. First, we’ll dive into the history of the opioid epidemic and look at the disconnect between research-recommended opioid treatment versus the most commonly administered treatment. Then, we’ll talk about how to quit opioids with podcast host and TEDx speaker Eric Zimmer who, at the age of 24, was homeless, addicted to heroin, and facing long jail sentences....
COVID-19 vaccines offer a way out of the pandemic. The data on them are extremely promising. At this point, both approved vaccines show high effectiveness in preventing disease, and strong safety profiles with very, very low risks. But vaccination rates are low. Although accurate information about the vaccines is available, not everyone knows where to find them. Some vaccination sites have become overwhelmed by those seeking to be vaccinated. A concerted disinformation campaign by the anti-vaccine movement has made many hesitant to take the vaccine....
You can’t always get what you want—the car is too expensive, the restaurant already full, your favorite snack sold out—but you can do your best to choose the next most appealing option. Research suggests that when making that second choice, you might end up happier if you go for something very different from what you originally wanted. In a series of studies published in May in Psychological Science, researchers probed participants’ preferences by tempting them with gourmet chocolate....
For anyone fighting to save old memories, a fresh crop of brain cells may be the last thing they need. Research published today in Science suggests that newly formed neurons in the hippocampus — an area of the brain involved in memory formation — could dislodge previously learned information. The work may provide clues as to why childhood memories are so difficult to recall. “The finding was very surprising to us initially....
Fishing, fertilizer runoff, pollution, shipping, climate change—these are just a few of the ways that human activities influence the oceans that cover 70 percent of Earth’s surface. And in all that vastness—139 million square miles (360 million square kilometers)—less than 4 percent remains unaffected, and more than a third has suffered serious human impacts, according to a new map published in Science. Marine ecologist Ben Halpern of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and an international team of colleagues first listed 17 ways humans affect the oceans and then mapped each of them....
Which city is farther north–Portland, Ore., or Portland, Me.? Unless for some reason you recently committed to memory the latitudes of all large U.S. cities, you probably have only a rough map of the country in your head and can call up at best an approximate mental image of their locations. Or perhaps your mental picture is so precise that you know the right answer (Portland, Ore.). This ability to conjure internal images may seem matter-of-fact to you, but from a scientific perspective it is anything but....
Threats to wildlife survival, such as habitat loss and climate change, tend to strike some species harder than others, and the threat of chytrid, a deadly amphibian fungus, appears to be no different. A study published in this month’s Ecology Letters finds that rarer species were more likely to disappear, leading to loss of frog biodiversity in Central America. The study compares frog surveys taken at eight different sites in Costa Rica and Panama....
FLU NETWORK The title of Helen Branswell’s “Flu Factories” is the type of sensationalism that has to be overcome for influenza surveillance to be effective and was in stark contrast to the balanced report that followed. Also, since the article was written, there has been significant progress on the implementation of a national influenza surveillance program in swine. In the program, which started in May 2009, pork producers and their veterinarians submit tissues to one of 37 veterinary diagnostic laboratories nationwide....
Editor’s Note: JR Minkel is in St. Louis this week for the annual “April meeting” of the American Physical Society. See his other blog posts on dark matter, the Higgs boson and the timeline for the Large Hadron Collider, and check back for frequent updates. ST. LOUIS—Ten years ago, NASA researchers discovered that the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft had fallen slightly behind course during their 35-year journeys to the outer reaches of the solar system....
Shortly after terrorist bombs ripped through central London’s transit system on July 7, Scotland Yard dispatched trained sniffer dog teams to search for explosives and to scent out clues at the blast sites. Meanwhile, less than an hour up the M11 highway in Cambridge, engineers Billy Boyle, Andrew Koehl and David Ruiz-Alonso were lamenting the fact that the antiterrorist technology they had worked on since just after 9/11–a sensitive but inexpensive electronic nose–had not been ready to help avert this tragedy....
A small leak detected last week in a Soyuz transport capsule temporarily docked to the International Space Station may have been caused by a human before the spacecraft launched, according to Russian reports. The Soyuz is the only spacecraft currently able to bring crewmembers to the space station, and it remains connected to the orbiting laboratory until they head home again. NASA hasn’t yet commented on what might have caused the 2-millimeter (0....
A tiny chip similar to the solar cells carried by many satellites and other spacecraft today–including the surprisingly long-lived Mars Rovers–has shattered previous records for maximum efficiency in producing electricity from sunlight. “This is the photovoltaic equivalent of the four-minute mile,” affirms Larry Kazmerski, director of the Department of Energy’s National Center for Photovoltaics in Colorado. “This is a disruptive technology that eventually could provide us, at least in the Southwest, with cost-competitive electricity fairly quickly....
Art and Invention in America, 1815-1860 Edited by Laura Fecych Sprague and Justin Wolff Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019 ($39.95). Exhibit:12/12/19 to 5/31/20, Bowdoin College Museum of Art In his obituary in this magazine, published on September 6, 1884, Rufus Porter is described as a “remarkable natural genius” who had a peculiar tendency to move quickly from one occupation and place to another. “Although he might be doing well at the business which for the time engaged his attention, he would sell out and abandon it the moment a new idea came into his mind,” the writer remarked....
