Posts

Add kidney stones to the growing list of possible consequences of global warming. A new study warns that as many as 2.3 million more people may develop these mineral deposits in their kidneys by the year 2050 as the result of a warming world. The reason? There’s a greater risk that they will be subject to dehydration in more sultry climes, which is believed to be a major contributor to stone formation, according to research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA....

In the summer of 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took humanity’s first steps onto the lunar surface during nasa’s Apollo 11 mission. Yet an arguably more epochal event occurred the previous year, when the crew of Apollo 8—astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders—embarked on the first voyage to lunar orbit. Their flight was also the first time that human beings escaped Earth’s gravity and, with its live television broadcast from around the moon, the first time that billions of people on Earth witnessed their home planet from a cosmic perspective....

Los Angeles has officially stopped trying to make it rain—for now. During three separate storms in the past two months, contract workers for the L.A. County Department of Public Works ignited 25 special flares in the hills above Pasadena, sending columns of glittering smoke into the clouds to give them a literal silver lining that could boost precipitation. The efforts mark the first time since 2002 that the parched metropolis has seeded clouds in an attempt to enhance rainfall; it is currently enduring a nearly five-year-long drought with this winter’s rainfall at just 40 percent of the usual amount....

Farmers have coped with fickle weather since the dawn of human agriculture, and may have even kicked off local climate changes with early forest-clearing and the like. But agriculture has never before faced the extent of the challenge posed by contemporary global warming, which could result in an increase in extreme weather or simply subtle shifts in rainfall patterns that ultimately leave vital crops parched. Pair that with a world population growing in both absolute terms and hunger for agriculturally intensive products such as meat and you may have a recipe for disaster....

It is a safe bet that when local councilor C. Abbs testified before a royal commission in northeast England in 1866, he did not expect that his statements would be of use to a fisheries scientist nearly 150 years later. “I could buy haddocks formerly at 3d. and I have now to pay 6d.”, Abbs claimed, using the pre-decimal notation for pence (worth 1/240th of £1 at the time). His information on price doubling, along with other testimony from nineteenth-century fishermen and their customers, has now been converted into estimates of the impact of bottom trawling....

Australian tree frogs hang from tilted surfaces using the same physics as adhesive tape, experiments have found. White’s tree frogs (Litoria caerulea) secrete mucus from their toe pads to hold on to steep surfaces through capillary forces, similar to the way a wet piece of tissue sticks to a window. In this video, the researchers place a frog on a platform and begin to tilt the platform up to a vertical position (90° in the counter at top left) and then continue rotating until the frog is hanging upside down and eventually falls off (typically at around 150°)....

Having trouble remembering to take your Ginkgo supplement? The pills themselves might not help with that forgetfulness—or any other age-related cognitive decline, according to a new study published online Tuesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. “Compared with placebo, the use of G. biloba, 120 milligrams twice daily, did not result in less cognitive decline in older adults,” the authors of the study concluded. The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study is the largest of its kind, having followed 3,069 older adults (72 to 96 years old) who started the trial with no or only mild cognitive impairment....

Blistering heat waves recorded around the globe in 2013 were linked to human-caused global warming, according to a broad survey of studies on extreme weather events published yesterday. But the studies could not link climate change as clearly to heavy rainfall, droughts and storms. For instance, the link between the three-year-long California drought and climate change remains to be deciphered by future research. The studies are from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-led effort to explain the role of climate change in 16 extreme weather events in the United States and elsewhere....

The patent system in the 19th century was a driver of economic expansion (or so it is said). That was problably true for a tiny minority of devices and processes that worked well and saved money. Some devices, such as the grindstone, were old tools, but improved manufacturing and distribution systems enabled them to have a greater impact in the industries of the day. Most of the 15,269 patents granted in 1866, however, were more optimistic than useful....

Ultra-intense lasers hold much promise for improving scientific tools such as laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), and deepening researchers’ understanding of atomic, molecular, optical and plasma physics. The enormous intensity of these lasers (attributed to the brief but powerful pulses of energy they emit), however, makes it difficult for scientists to fully characterize and understand them. Researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson (U.A.) and the University of Central Florida in Orlando (U....

According to the popular series Ancient Aliens, on H2 (a spinoff of the History channel), extraterrestrial intelligences visited Earth in the distant past, as evidenced by numerous archaeological artifacts whose scientific explanations prove unsatisfactory for alien enthusiasts. The series is the latest in a genre launched in 1968 by Erich von Däniken, whose book Chariots of the Gods? became an international best seller. It spawned several sequels, including Gods from Outer Space, The Gods Were Astronauts and, just in time for the December 21, 2012, doomsday palooza, Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (the ones who failed to materialize)....

The fat-regulating protein leptin was first linked to obesity more than a decade ago. New research on mice indicates that the offspring of undernourished mothers experience a leptin surge that raises their risk of becoming overweight. A team of researchers led by Shigeo Yura and Hiroaki Itoh of the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine studied mice born to mothers that ate 30 percent less than a group of control animals did....

The August issue garnered much interest–that is, vigorous reader dissent, questions and analysis. Although most letter writers welcomed guest essayist Mihail C. Roco’s optimistic look at nanotechnology in “Nanotechnology’s Future” [Forum], some issued thoughtful caveats about its unforeseen dangers. The bulk of the dissent, however, was reserved for the cover story “The Expert Mind,” by Philip E. Ross, which suggested that studies of the development of chess grandmasters’ mental processes may reveal how expertise in all fields is fostered....

“We aren’t going to get sick, are we?” my roommate Brett asked me. He cringed as I knelt down and stuffed a plate of E. coli bacteria—which came as part of the DIY CRISPR–Cas9 kit I bought online—into our fridge next to cartons of eggs, strawberry jam, bottles of beer and a block of cheese. “No, we won’t. The label says ‘non-pathogenic,’” I replied, trying to sound assuring. But honestly, I had no clue what I was doing....

Until recently, most scientists believed that neurons were the all-important brain cells controlling mental functions and that the surrounding glial cells were little more than neuron supporters and “glue.” Now research published in March in Cell reveals that astrocytes, a type of glia, have a principal role in working memory. And the scientists made the discovery by getting mice stoned. Marijuana impairs working memory—the short-term memory we use to hold on to and process thoughts....

A spacecraft that was supposed to solve the mystery of methane on Mars has instead compounded scientists’ confusion. The European–Russian Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which began looking for the gas last year, has yet to find any whiffs of it in Mars’s atmosphere, says a study published on 10 April in Nature. “It’s a huge surprise,” says Dorothy Oehler, a planetary geologist at the Planetary Science Institute in Houston, Texas. Earlier Mars missions have detected hints of methane wafting through the atmosphere....

Uriagereka, associate provost for faculty affairs at the University of Maryland in College Park, knew exactly what his boss meant. Campus administrators around the world had been buzzing for months about massive open online courses, or MOOCs: Internet-based teaching programs designed to handle thousands of students simultaneously, in part using the tactics of social-networking websites. To supplement video lectures, much of the learning comes from online comments, questions and discussions. Participants even mark one another’s tests....

High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know about Drugs and Society by Carl Hart HarperCollins, 2013 In an absorbing memoir, Hart describes his improbable journey from a childhood of poverty and violence in Miami to Columbia University, where he became the school’s first African-American science professor to earn tenure. Combining his experience in the ‘hood with his training in neuroscience, Hart realized that drugs are far less responsible for humanity’s ills than we have all been led to believe....

As far back as 2008 NASA’s James Hansen argued that we had crossed a “tipping point” in the Arctic with regard to summer sea ice. The diminishing ice cover had moved past a critical threshold, and from then on levels would drop precipitously toward zero, with little hope of recovery. Other experts now say that recent years have confirmed that particular cliff-fall, and the September 2012 record minimum—an astonishing 18 percent lower than 2007’s previous record—was likely no fluke....

First of a three-part series. NEW ORLEANS—Ten years after Hurricane Katrina and a failed federal levee system killed more than a thousand and devastated the Gulf Coast, this city is littered with constant reminders of the risks locals face each storm season. Seventeen “evacuspots” around the city, marked by metal sculptures of 14-foot waving stick figures, cue memories of the government evacuation plan that fell apart in 2005. Katrina floodwaters trapped more than 100,000 residents left behind, many of them in harrowing conditions in “shelters of last resort” at the Superdome and the city’s convention center....