Dear EarthTalk: Hurricane Sandy brought more sea water onto shorelines than I’d ever witnessed before, and many communities near where I live are now being required to raise their homes up. What is the prognosis for sea level rise in the years immediately ahead?—Scott P., Fairfield, Conn. Since sea level measurements were first recorded, in 1870, global averages have risen almost eight inches. The annual rate of rise has been 0....
How do researchers trace mitochondrial DNA over centuries? —M. Sivak, Irvington, N.Y. Bert Ely, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, offers this explanation: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) does not change very much, if at all, from generation to generation. The mtDNA passes only from a mother to her children; fathers cannot impart their mtDNA. Mutations (changes) do occur in mtDNA but not often— less frequently than once per 100 descendants....
Antibiotics, the wonder drugs of the mid-20th century, are starting to run out steam. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that 70 percent of bacteria responsible for infections contracted in-hospital have become immune to the antibiotics once able to kill them. The worry is that these treatments will eventually become impotent against powerful new bacterial superstrains that are emerging. As a result, scientists have been trying to find potential new drugs to replace weakening ones....
Executives from oil companies, utilities and some of the world’s biggest companies are meeting with senators and staff this week to push a carbon-fee-and-dividend proposal. The Climate Leadership Council has organized virtual meetings with members of both parties and executives from ConocoPhillips, Exelon Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Hannon Armstrong, IBM and several other companies. The advocacy push comes as Congress prepares to consider President Biden’s infrastructure plan, widely seen as a possible conduit for climate policy....
Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery by Charles A. Nelson, Nathan A. Fox and Charles H. Zeanah Harvard University Press, 2013 When Nicolae Ceaus¸escu’s Communist regime fell in 1989, it left behind 170,000 orphaned children—remnants of the Romanian leader’s aggressive initiative to boost the national birth rate through abortion restrictions and financial incentives. Most of the abandoned children were raised in overcrowded orphanages, receiving only the most rudimentary care....
In 2012 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of baby bottles that contain bisphenol A (BPA), a compound frequently found in plastics. The ban came after manufacturers’ responded to consumer concerns of BPA’s safety after several studies found the chemical mimics estrogen and could harm brain and reproductive development in fetuses, infants and children.* Since then store shelves have been lined with BPA-free bottles for babies and adults alike....
The Army is aiming to shrink its carbon bootprint in 2011. Following in the footsteps of the Marines, which sent an initial wave of renewable energy technology into Afghanistan this past fall, the Army plans to field its own batch of specialized equipment to minimize its fuel needs. The goal is to require fewer dangerous deliveries through rugged terrain in Afghanistan. Its approach will be two-pronged. The Army thinks its first line of attack will be to ensure that it better manages the amount of power coursing from fuel-burning generators to individual buildings....
For coal, 2016 was the worst of times and the best of times. A year that began with plunging production, idled furnaces and a spate of bankruptcies ended with mining on the rise, coal plants humming and an ally set to take over the White House. And 2017 could be better yet. Declining stockpiles, reduced supply and a cold winter mean coal could take back its crown as the top power producer in the United States, financial analysts say....
Two pilots took storm chasing to a new extreme last week by chasing supercells from the sky. Caleb Elliott flew Skip Talbot and videographer Phil Bates around severe storms in North Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. Chasing from the air is “completely different” than chasing on the ground, Talbot said. In a car “you are limited by the road, the terrain, trees” but “you can get a lot closer… You can really feel the storm when you’re on the ground....
SHENYANG—Rows of new white minibuses marshal at the entrance to Brilliance Auto’s sprawling complex on the outskirts of this industrial city of 4.2 million people in northeastern China. The complex includes assembly shops, dormitories and corporate headquarters, in addition to temporary parking for the company’s products. In one cavernous, dimly lit shop, workers in tan overalls with blue highlights repeat over and over the same basic assembly task as a conveyor belt slowly but steadily carries the skeletons of future minibuses from station to station at the pace of the slowest worker....
Now, inspired by the surprising discovery that sulfur minerals are pervasive in the Martian soil, scientists are beginning to suspect that CO2 had a warm-up partner: sulfur dioxide (SO2). Like CO2, SO2 is a common gas emitted when volcanoes erupt, a frequent occurrence on Mars when it was still young. A hundredth or even a thousandth of a percent SO2 in Mars’s early atmosphere could have provided the extra boost of greenhouse warming that the Red Planet needed to stay wet, explains geochemist Daniel P....
Electronic cigarettes can change gene expression in a similar way to tobacco, according to one of the first studies to investigate the biological effects of the devices. Presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on 6 April in San Diego, California, the research looked at human bronchial cells that contained some mutations found in smokers at risk of lung cancer. The cells were immortalized, grown in culture medium that had been exposed to e-cigarette vapor and their gene expression profiled....
A super-quiet, hover-capable aircraft design, NASA’s experimental one-man Puffin could show just how much electric propulsion can transform our ideas of flight. It looks like nothing less than a flying suit or a jet pack with a cockpit. On the ground, the Puffin is designed to stand on its tail, which splits into four legs to help serve as landing gear. As a pilot prepares to take off, flaps on the wings would tilt to deflect air from the 2....
Call it Harry Potter’s invisible sleeve. New calculations show how to make an electromagnetic “wormhole”—a tube that is invisible from the sides, allowing light to shine down the center unseen [see endnote]. The concept is a twist on a spherical cloak of invisibility proposed last year. Such a device would be made of metamaterial, a thicket of metal rings or other shapes that bends light in funny ways. A hollow shell of metamaterial could in principle channel a single frequency of light around its inner space without slowing the light down, rendering that hidey-hole invisible to the outside world at that frequency....
The U.S. Air Force is investing more than $50 million to keep one of its oldest types of airplanes flying indefinitely. The U-2, nicknamed the “Dragon Lady” after a CIA program, is the world’s best-known spy plane, easily recognizable from its gliderlike shape and stealthy black color scheme. The Air Force commissioned it from the Lockheed Corporation in the 1950s as a reconnaissance aircraft that could fly above 70,000 feet—an altitude then presumed to be beyond the reach of Soviet surface-to-air missiles....
On November 15, Argentina’s Navy lost contact with the ARA San Juan, a small diesel-powered submarine that had been involved in exercises off the east coast of Patagonia. About a week later, on November 23, the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) announced that its International Monitoring System—a network of sensors designed to detect nuclear explosions wherever they happen around the globe—had picked up a sound consistent with that of an explosion near the vessel’s last-known location....
Even water tastes sweeter when you’re in love, new research finds. But not every emotion heightens the senses. Jealousy fails to bring out bitter or sour tastes, despite metaphors that suggest it might, researchers report in the December 2013 issue of the journal Emotion. That love alters one’s sensory perceptions and jealousy does not is important to psychologists who study what are called “embodied” metaphors, or linguistic flourishes people quite literally feel in their bones....
After a four-year competition, NASA has tapped the commerical spaceflight companies SpaceX and Boeing to launch astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil by 2017, agency officials announced today (Sept. 16). If all goes according to plan, the two companies will reduce or end NASA’s dependence on Russia for its orbital taxi service. Russia’s Soyuz has been NASA’s only crew access to space since the space shuttle fleet retired in 2011....
Exposing living tissue to subfreezing temperatures for long can cause irreparable damage. Microscopic ice crystals shred cells and seize moisture, making donor organs unsuitable for transplantation. Thus, organs can be chilled for only a few hours ahead of a procedure. But a set of durable new antifreeze compounds—similar to those found in particularly hardy animals—could lengthen organs’ shelf life. Scientists at the University of Warwick in England were inspired by proteins in some species of Arctic fish, wood frogs and other organisms that prevent blood from freezing, allowing them to flourish in extreme cold....
Suicide is the regular mode of cell death. When cells reach the end of their useful life, internal mechanisms kick in and the cell automatically perishes, a process known as apoptosis. But in cancer cells this mechanism has often been genetically disabled or otherwise broken, allowing tumors to proliferate. Now researchers have found a way to reactivate programmed cell death and thereby treat cancer. In preparation for apoptosis, a chain of chemical events takes place in the cell....
