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Scientific American presents Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. At some point in your life, you were most likely taught how to round integers and decimal numbers to some specified number of digits or decimal places. And you probably discovered that this process is, thankfully, fairly straight-forward. But even though it is a relatively easy task, it turns out there are a few details about rounding that make it a touch trickier than you might at first think....

Passing, blocking, running, tackling, kicking–the main physical actions of American football illustrate several fundamental concepts in physics, biomechanics and math. Inertia, momentum, vectors and parabolas are as much a part of the game as helmets and huddles. In partnership with the National Science Foundation and the National Football League, NBC Learn has created 10 videos that explore several concepts: Newton’s three laws of motion The Pythagorean theorem Projectile motion Vectors * Geometric shapes Kinematics * Torque * Hydration and nutrition All this week, we’ll be providing additional stories that take the concepts explored in the video further....

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazineA widely touted–but controversial–molecular fountain of youth has come under fire yet again, with the publication of new data challenging the link between proteins called sirtuins and longer lifespan.In a paper published today in Nature, researchers report that overexpressing a sirtuin gene in two model organisms–the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster–does not boost longevity as had been previously reported. Instead, the authors argue that the longer lifespan originally seen was the result of unrelated mutations lurking in the background of the experimental strains....

Editor’s Note: “Climate at Your Doorstep” is an effort by The Daily Climate to highlight stories about climate change impacts happening now. Find more stories like this here. PENN COVE, Wash. – Cookie tray in hand and lifejacket around chest, Laura Newcomb looks more like a confused baker than a marine biologist. But the University of Washington researcher is dressed for work. Her job: testing how mussels in this idyllic bay, home to the nation’s largest harvester of mussels, are affected by changing ocean conditions, especially warmer and more acidic waters....

NASA has decided not to rename its soon-to-be-launched flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), after investigating whether its namesake, former NASA administrator James Webb, was involved in persecuting gay and lesbian people in the 1950s and 1960s. The agency says it found no evidence to support the allegations. The decision and the lack of transparency with which it was announced—NASA released no report about the scope of the investigation—has angered a number of astronomers....

Dear EarthTalk: What green-friendly lawn and garden pesticides are available today? I’m particularly interested in options that won’t harm my cats. – Nancy Blanchard, via e-mail Pesticides have greatly boosted agricultural yields over the last half century, so it is no wonder, given the commercial availability of many of these synthetic chemicals, that American homeowners apply 100 million pounds of the stuff each year to make their own gardens grow bigger and faster, too....

New photos by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show Pluto in tantalizing detail, whetting researchers’ appetite for the probe’s highly anticipated flyby of the dwarf planet next week. The images reveal a great deal of variation and complexity across Pluto’s surface—including the four large dark patches near the equator first spotted by New Horizons late last month. The origin and composition of the dark blotches remain mysterious, adding to the intrigue building ahead of the July 14 flyby....

Our ability to perceive other people’s emotions plays an enormous role in our lives. Without this skill, social interaction would be fraught with peril. But how does the brain actually process the emotional signals that we sense in faces and tones of voice? An interdisciplinary research group in Germany is attempting to find out. Assessing emotions is largely controlled by the limbic system, deep in the brain. This network of small structures gives incoming sensory data its emotional coloration....

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., recently snapped the first photos of nanometer-thick ice films taken by a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). By capturing in detail how water molecules deposited on a cold solid surface (platinum in this case) aggregate into an ice film, the scientists are hoping to enhance understanding of how water and solids interact. Such basic knowledge might aid the design of better fuel cells and water purification membranes and help to decipher the complex processes in the earth’s atmosphere leading to rain and snowfall....

On January 31, US President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch, a conservative federal appeals court judge, would fill the vacancy left by the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Since then, the court has been split evenly between conservative and liberal justices; if Gorsuch is confirmed by the US Senate, the court’s ideological centre would shift towards the conservative. Nature looks at the science-related cases that are already on the court’s agenda this year, and others that are likely to advance to the highest court in the land....

SpaceX pulled off its fifth rocket landing in the last seven months early Monday morning (July 18), this time bringing a booster back during a successful cargo launch toward the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) Monday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, sending the company’s robotic Dragon spacecraft speeding toward the ISS on a resupply mission for NASA....

High blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, signs of immune dysfunction: each of these so-called biomarkers is linked with a higher chance of death, especially in the elderly. A new study of nearly 1,200 older adults reveals that certain combinations of such biomarkers seem to be indicators of impending demise. Looking for these factors in tandem might lead to successful interventions that prolong life. Beginning in 1988, 530 men and 659 women between the ages of 70 and 79 agreed to participate in a long-term study of their health....

By Marian Turner of Nature magazineTime might heal metaphorical heartbreak, but an injured heart can rarely repair itself. However, a study published today in Nature reports that a natural protein can activate stem cells in mouse hearts to replace damaged tissue with new muscle cells.Heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, are irreparably damaged by heart attack. For the heart to continue functioning properly, the damaged cells must be replaced. Heart progenitor cells–cells that can form the various tissues that make up the heart, such as blood vessels and muscle–do exist, but in adults are not active enough to repair damage....

Dolphins name one another, and they click and whistle about their lives or the dangers posed by sharks and humans. They also pass on useful bits of know-how from mother to child, such as how to catch fish or how to flee. If they had language in the same sense that we do, however, they would not only pass down little bits of information but also aggregate them into a broad body of knowledge about the world....

Garnering sufficient international support to tackle the matter has been difficult, however, in part because domestic regulatory bodies of spacefaring nations have been slow to react to the rapidly growing numbers of satellites in space. Yet a significant development last week may herald a turn in the tide: the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the first of several expected new rules meant to mitigate space junk. While only a small advancement for now, many experts are hopeful this could be the start of humanity finally sorting out the mess that’s been made in space....

“Sword swallowing is said to be dangerous.” Thus begins a short report in the British Medical Journal of November 5, 2005. One danger, according to the report’s author, radiologist Brian Witcombe, was a death sentence. That outcome occurred during the Inquisition, when sword swallowing was associated with mysticism and mysticism was associated with execution. Imagine shoving a long metal blade down your throat being the highlight of your day. Although one might assume that sword swallowing carries serious medical risks other than capital punishment, “few deaths related to sword swallowing have been described,” according to Witcombe....

Nearly all U.S. science agencies would see their budgets grow in 2018, under a US$1.3-trillion spending deal announced on 21 March. For the second year in a row, lawmakers in Congress appear set to ignore the steep cuts sought by President Donald Trump. The legislation would boost funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to a historic high of $37 billion, $3 billion over the 2017 level. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive $7....

March 1964 Vision Biology “Students of the visual system came to assume that the retina was like a photographic film, that the whole function of the eye and the optic nerve was to form and then transmit a mosaic of the visual world to the brain, there to form the basis of visual perception. Anatomical investigations have shown, however, that there are many more receptor cells in the retina than there are fibers in the optic nerve....

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - About 361,00 children were seen in U.S. emergency departments between 1990 and 2010 for injuries sustained while riding in a stroller or carrier, according to a new study. “It’s over 17,000 injuries per year, which is equivalent to about 50 children every day or two injuries every hour,” said study author Kristin Roberts, of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio....

It’s rare that a gleaming, azure legend on wheels fails to turn heads, but at the Detroit auto show earlier this month, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Shelby Cobra faced stiff competition for attention. Acura and Ford introduced their new supercars, while other automakers presented next-generation hybrids and electrics. Towering matte military fighting vehicles and shiny trucks vied for the eyes of more than 800,000 attendees. But in this showcase all about the future of the auto industry, the Oak Ridge Cobra, a throwback to 1967, was a harbinger of things to come....