Ofcom, the UK’s independent telephony regulator, has just released a Wi-Fi checker app for your smart phone. At the same time, it warned in its press release that your Christmas tree fairy lights could affect the quality of your Wi-Fi connection. Before the terrible jokes start and we all declare that this is a fit of “Bah Humbug!” from the telephone regulator, the warning is correct—your fairy lights could indeed be a Wi-Fi downer....
Six times a day, Katrin pauses whatever she’s doing, removes a small magnet from her pocket and touches it to a raised patch of skin just below her collar bone. For 60 seconds, she feels a soft vibration in her throat. Her voice quavers if she talks. Then, the sensation subsides. The magnet switches on an implanted device that emits a series of electrical pulses — each about a milliamp, similar to the current drawn by a typical hearing aid....
Those numbers made Internet security watchers and even some consumers sit up and take notice—people use such credentials to access banking, investment and social media accounts after all. If true, the CyberVor haul would dwarf last December’s data breach of retailer Target, in which 40 million customer credit cards were compromised. Although a New York Times story lent credibility to Hold Security’s claims, some observers question whether the cybersecurity vendor’s big reveal was more of a publicity stunt than a public service....
Firefighting, one of the nation’s most tradition-bound professions, is poised for an influx of eccentric assistants. They range from contraptions the size of a toy wagon to two-ton beasts that resemble military tanks and can blast out 2,500 gallons of water per minute. Some move on rubber tires, some on steel tracks, and some fly. All are robots. At a time when more than 3,000 Americans die in fires each year—including an average of 80 firefighters—these high-tech devices can enter burning buildings too hot for human survival....
Anthony Fauci is not celebrating Thanksgiving with his three adult daughters this year. The now famous director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in an American University Webinar that as much as he would love to spend the holiday with his kids, they had told him, “We want you and Mommy to have a nice, quiet dinner.” Fauci may be “a ‘young,’ vigorous guy,” they said, but he is also 79 years old—and that puts him in a vulnerable category for COVID-19....
In a discussion with Scientific American Mind executive editor Mariette DiChristina, three noted experts on creativity, each with a very different perspective and background, reveal powerful ways to unleash your creative self. John Houtz is a psychologist and professor at Fordham University. His most recent book is The Educational Psychology of Creativity (Hamptom Press, 2002). Julia Cameron is an award-winning poet, playwright and filmmaker. Her book The Artist’s Way (Jeremy P....
Greetings, Secret Agent Math! Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out where you are on Earth relative to the equator. Why might you need to be able to figure this out? Who knows! But a secret agent like yourself is always curious to learn new things, right? After all, you never know when one of these skills is going to come in handy. Perhaps it’ll be when you’re on that super secret mathematically-oriented spy mission to crack the code used to encrypt that really important message....
We know con artists are out there—from psychics and Ponzi schemers to identity thieves and insurance fraudsters—and that they will surely succeed in finding their next mark. We just never think it’ll be us. But all of us are vulnerable to the wiles of the con artist, because humans have evolved to trust one another, to empathize with other people’s stories. Science writer and journalist Maria Konnikova sets us straight in her new book, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time....
Key Concepts Physics Engineering Simple Machines Force Pressure Introduction Not even the strongest human could lift a truck into the air. Our brains, however, are smart enough to create a tool that can lift heavy objects for us: hydraulic lifts! You can find them at car repair shops, in wheelchair lifts, and even on skyscraper construction sites. They use water (or other liquids) to increase the force available to lift things....
By Nicola JonesA scientist involved in efforts to lab-grow meat for consumption, and human organs for medicine, has been suspended and his lab closed pending a “human resources” investigation.Vladimir Mironov was put on indefinite paid leave by the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston on February 11 for “a series of issues,” the university said. It is not clear whether or when the lab, which also housed a postdoc and two visiting scholars, might reopen....
John Durant really likes meat, but he does not keep much of it in his refrigerator—there is not enough room. Instead he stores his meat in a large white freezer chest in his shared Manhattan apartment. Durant, 29, opens the chest and pulls out some frozen chunks of venison wrapped in butcher paper. He digs through the ice to find a couple of cuts of grass-fed beef. He shows me lamb kidneys, pork fatback and ham hocks....
Some new cargo is officially sailing today between Los Angeles and Honolulu, part of an atmospheric research expedition to understand how clouds influence weather patterns around the world. The 892-foot Spirit, a container ship owned by Horizon Lines, is now home to a Department of Energy mobile laboratory designed to study the atmosphere. It is the second time the department is conducting such an experiment in the hopes of getting better data on clouds to improve global climate models....
WARSAW – One question, now that the world’s climate scientists have definitively declared that humanity has triggered global warming, is what to do with the United Nations agency established to assess the robustness of climate science? A group of 130 developing countries, headed by Brazil, has an answer: Instruct the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to investigate historic emissions. In their thinking, apportionment of past emissions would bring clarity to just who’s responsible for fixing the mess that’s brought the world to the brink of climate chaos....
When the crew of a KCBS television news helicopter caught sight of a growing, glowing streak in the evening sky off the southern California coast November 8, experts and amateurs alike began to wonder just what this “mystery missile” was. To the dismay of conspiracy theorists everywhere, the sky trail seems to have been caused by an ordinary passenger plane, according to the Pentagon and some independent experts. “It’s clearly an airplane contrail,” says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity....
By Jane SuttonMIAMI (Reuters) - Most of the pilot whales that were stranded in the Florida Everglades swam into deeper water on Thursday while rescuers tried to chase the rest out to sea by banging on pipes and revving their boat engines.Wildlife workers had hoped the cacophony would encourage the whales to leave the shallow water where dozens of short-finned pilot whales were first sighted on Tuesday afternoon in a remote part of the Everglades National Park....
Prions are best known as the infectious agents that cause ‘mad cow’ disease and the human versions of it, such as variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease. But the proteins also have at least one known useful function, in the cells that insulate nerves, and are suspected to have more. Now researchers have provided the first direct evidence that the proteins play an important role in neurons themselves. The team reports in the Journal of Neuroscience that prions are involved in developmental plasticity, the process by which the structure and function of neurons in the growing brain is shaped by experience....
The Health Show http://healthshow.org Ever wonder what it’s like to raise two autistic children? Do dementia medications really make a difference? How does music help people with traumatic brain injuries? These are questions recently posed by The Health Show, a nationally syndicated radio program broadcast on 160 U.S. radio stations and available online for free. Co-hosted by veteran radio personality Bob Barrett and gastroenterologist Nina Sax, the broadcast covers a range of topics, frequently exploring mental health and neuroscience issues such as autism, addiction and the aging brain....
The findings might surprise you. Academic testing, for instance, has a terrible rap these days. Yet done correctly, it beats other study methods for fixing information in a student’s mind. Moreover, telling children that they are smart can backfire; if you want them to be eager learners and creative thinkers, praising effort is far more effective. Beyond wanting our children to love learning, we hope that they will get along well with others, be happy and bounce back from adversity....
By Hannah HoagChemicals flushing into sewer systems have been in the news for years. From opiates and hormones to heart medications, studies have detected a range of pollutants. Tests of sewage from hospitals have uncovered antibiotics, and investigations of sewage systems have exposed widespread illicit drug use in cities worldwide.But now a group of water-management scientists claim that some of these studies may be making exaggerated claims, producing dramatic variation in concentration estimates or not detecting substances because of fundamental flaws in sampling protocols....
The year was 1946, and under the guise of public health hundreds of Guatemalan prison inmates were deliberately infected with syphilis. Male prisoners were sometimes infected via direct injection—including right to the penis. Still other prisoners got sick after visits from prostitutes who were often also purposely infected. None of the research subjects were asked for their consent. Some six decades later Pres. Barack Obama called Álvaro Colom, Guatemala’s president, to personally apologize for the abhorrent U....
