Posts

On July 5, if all goes according to plan, the final countdown of the space shuttle program will begin. The launch clock at Kennedy Space Center, a giant digital display with 40-watt lightbulbs for pixels, will begin ticking down from 43 hours. When it reaches zero, Atlantis will rumble off the launch pad, and the final shuttle mission will begin. But following a shuttle launch is a bit like watching a football game—the time on the game clock does not translate to actual time....

NASA’s Kepler mission has been a smash hit. It has discovered thousands of probable exoplanets—worlds orbiting stars other than the sun—more than 100 of which have already been vetted and confirmed. Many of those planets are among the most nearly Earth-size planets known: of the 25 smallest-diameter exoplanets discovered to date, all but one were spotted by Kepler. There is just one asterisk tacked to Kepler’s immensely productive haul: the planets are hundreds or even thousands of light-years away, too distant to investigate in any detail....

On April 26 Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, put out a desperate call on Twitter for tests that detect pieces of viral genetic material in patient samples. At that time the West African country of 196 million had tested fewer than 12,000 people for the novel coronavirus. Germany, by contrast, was testing half a million people a week. Although Ihekweazu’s initial request was answered, with companies coming forward and offering stocks of testing materials, Nigeria is still struggling to keep up with the demand for tests....

In the Mexican highlands, nestled between towering cliffs blanketed with verdant temperate jungle, is the tiny mountain town of Tepotzlan. Home to an ancient Aztec outpost high in the mountains and inhabited with monkeylike creatures called coatis, it is the definition of quaint, picturesque Mexico. It’s also a great place to buy honey. Most honey you buy on Mexican streets isn’t the genuine article—it is honey-flavored syrup. For the real stuff, you have to go down a small side street in Tepotzlan and wander around asking for the “mujer de miel”—the honey lady....

In the middle of the night, Casandra Cabrera stopped breathing. She doubled over in bed, gasping for air. In the panic that followed, her lungs constricted. Her eyes filled with tears. The asthma attack continued for 10 long minutes. “I keep an inhaler with me everywhere. I have one in my purse, in my sports bag, and in my truck and by my bedside,” the San Joaquin Valley, Calif., teenager said....

Over the past 30 years, temperatures in the Arctic have been creeping up, rising half a degree Celsius with attendant increases in glacial melting and decreases in sea ice. Experts predict that at current levels of greenhouse gases–carbon dioxide alone is at 375 parts per million–the earth may warm by as much as five degrees Celsius, matching conditions roughly 130,000 years ago. Now a refined climate model is predicting, among other things, sea level rises of as much as 20 feet, according to research results published today in the journal Science....

Like many acts of pure genius, the invention of the cupcake is lost in the creamy fillings of history. According to food historian Andrew Smith, the first known recipe using the term “cupcake” appeared in an American cookbook in 1826. The “cup” referred not to the shape of the cake but to the quantity of ingredients; it was simply a downsized English pound cake. Lynne Olver, who maintains a Web site called the Food Timeline, has tracked down a recipe for cakes baked in cups from 1796....

Eating while distracted is well known to cause overindulgence, as confirmed by a recent review of 24 studies published in April 2013 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The exact mechanism behind such mindless bingeing, however, has been unclear. A recent study in Psychological Science suggests that mentally taxing tasks dampen our perception of taste, causing us to eat more. In four experiments, participants attempted to memorize either a seven-digit number (a heavy load on the brain) or one digit (a light cognitive load) while tasting salty, sweet and sour substances and rating each food’s taste intensity....

NEW DELHI and NEW YORK CITY—On rural Indian roads, a farmer occasionally comes along riding in an improvised vehicle, jury-rigged from bullock carts, irrigation pumps and whatever else is at hand. These vehicles, known in Hindi as jugaad, are iconic of a long tradition of frugal innovation in India, where machines are often repurposed in ways manufacturers had not intended, and almost nothing is thrown away. Lately, jugaad has come to signify any sort of low-cost, ingenious innovation out of India, encompassing everything from providing software services at costs that cannot be matched in the West to the rollout of the popular Tata Nano car....

Kids spend an increasing fraction of their formative years online, and it is a habit they dutifully carry into adulthood. Under the right circumstances, however, a love affair with the Internet may spiral out of control and even become an addiction. Whereas descriptions of online addiction are controversial at best among researchers, a new study cuts through much of the debate and hints that excessive time online can physically rewire a brain....

What do you do when you are left with half a chip in your hand after dipping? Admit it, you’ve wondered whether it’s OK to double dip the chip. Maybe you’re the sort who dips their chip only once. Maybe you look around the room before loading your half-eaten chip with a bit more dip, hoping that no one will notice. If you’ve seen that classic episode of Seinfeld, “The Implant,” where George Costanza double-dips a chip at wake, maybe you’ve wondered if double-dipping is really like “putting your whole mouth right in the dip!...

The new acting chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants to use “creative mechanisms” within the agency’s authority to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. As the head of FERC, Jon Wellinghoff said he will prioritize infrastructure efficiency and the integration of renewable energy into the grid, and will support the use of distributed and demand-side resources, which he described as “very underutilized in this country.” “These are very consistent with the new administration’s goals,” Wellinghoff told reporters at a Platts Energy Podium event yesterday....

Ghost writing is taking on an altogether different meaning in a mysterious case of alleged scientific fraud. The authors of a paper published in July (A. Vezyraki et al. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. http://doi.org/nxb; 2013), which reported significant findings in obesity research, seem to be phantoms. They are not only unknown at the institution listed on the paper, but no trace of them as researchers can be found. The paper, published in the Elsevier journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC), is not the kind of prank that journals have encountered before, in which hoaxsters have submitted dummy papers to highlight weaknesses in the peer-review process....

NASA has chosen the spot on the asteroid Bennu where it will attempt to land a spacecraft next year and hoover up bits of rock and dirt before returning to Earth. The OSIRIS-REx probe has been orbiting Bennu since last December, studying its surface and working out the safest place to descend. The spacecraft will target an area called Nightingale, with a back-up area called Osprey. If all goes well, OSIRIS-REx will touch down at one of the sites, blast the asteroid’s surface with a puff of nitrogen gas to kick up dirt and gather the precious samples, NASA said on 12 December....

Three Republican presidential candidates stated their belief in climate change last night during two debates that wandered from economic policies to sharp attacks on the media. The trio combined capture less than 5 percent of voters’ support in polling. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie condemned Democratic efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions through regulations while pointing to his state’s success at installing solar systems on residential rooftops and businesses. He expressed support for oil and gas production but also noted that solar and wind are cheap sources of electricity in some areas of the country....

Long known as curious mathematical objects lacking a separate “inside” and “outside,” Möbius strips have also captured the imagination of artists like M. C. Escher, whose painting Möbius Strip II shows ants in a never-ending crawl on this curious surface. Easily made by twisting a strip of paper and gluing the two ends together, it is an object that only has a single surface and a single edge; Escher’s ants crawling on the strip traverse all of its surface area without ever crossing an edge....

The familiar Nutrition Facts label that appears on all packaged foods is getting an overhaul. In a recent blog post, I highlighted three things I particularly like about the proposed changes. For example, the current label shows how many grams of sugar a food contains but doesn’t distinguish between naturally occurring sugars (such as those in fruits, vegetables, and dairy products) and sugar from added sweeteners like sugar, corn syrup, or honey....

In John Shea and John Greco’s day, the cavernous Pratt & Whitney Aircraft plant was filled with an oily mist that sprayed from the grinding machines, coated the ceiling and covered the workers, who came home drenched in pungent machine oil. Degreasing pits, filled with solvent for cleaning the engine parts, dotted the factory floor; workers used squirt cans of solvent to clean their hands and clothes. Shea spent 34 years grinding engine blades and vanes at the million-square-foot facility in North Haven, Conn....

Electronic cigarettes may not generate any smoke, but their very presence in the marketplace gives off no shortage of political heat. The slim devices that give smokers a nicotine fix devoid of cancer-causing tar have flourished in the U.S. market during the past several years even as the science on their long-term health risks has remained unsettled. Free of the restrictions that impede their tobacco-laden cousins from appearing in television ads or being puffed in public places, electronic cigarettes have become a multibillion-dollar industry that has become a lucrative new product line for Big Tobacco....

“Where we know nothing we may speculate without fear of contradiction.” With these words, written in Scientific American in 1909, English ­astronomer F. W. Henkel, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, described without apparent embarrassment much of the culture of astronomy a century ago. It was an era when experts used very limited data to make all-encompassing claims about the formation and evolution of the solar system, the existence of a planet called Vulcan and the ­presence of life on other planets....