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The Atlantic
No, Vaccinated People Are Not 'Just as Likely' to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People
Breakthrough COVID
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For many fully vaccinated Americans, the Delta surge spoiled what should've been a glorious summer. Those who had cast their masks aside months ago were asked to dust them off. Many are still taking no chances. Some have even returned to all the same precautions they took before getting their shots, including avoiding the company of other fully vaccinated people. Among this last group, a common r
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The Atlantic
Adam Kinzinger: Republicans Are 'Frigging Crazy'
 
In each edition of my newsletter, I'll bring readers inside The Atlantic , and discuss the issues that concern us the most. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get future issues of Notes from the Editor in Chief . Political courage is a fascinating phenomenon, particularly at moments when it is largely absent. Which is why I'm so interested in the imperiled career of Representative A
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Futurism
Scientists May Have Discovered the Cause of Alzheimer's Disease
Cause Alzheimer Disease
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For years, scientists have been studying how the buildup of toxic molecules in the brain might cause or contribute to Alzheimer's disease. But much more difficult has been figuring out what sets off the process that makes those molecules begin to accumulate in the first place. Now, a team of researchers from Curtin University say that "leakage" of a toxic compound called beta-amyloid from the blo
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Phys.org
Evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed ancient city in the Jordan Valley
 
In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger
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Phys.org
Ancient Mayans built pyramid partly from ash after catastrophic volcanic eruption
 
Akira Ichikawa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, has found evidence of Mayans returning to a part of Central America that was destroyed after a catastrophic volcanic eruption, much sooner than previously thought. In his paper published on the Cambridge University Press site Cambridge Core, he describes his study of the area around what was once the site of San Andrés in the
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Science | The Guardian
Autism therapy aimed at infants may reduce likelihood of later diagnosis
 
Study suggests tailored therapy could help some children develop social skills before school age Doctors have shown for the first time that a new therapy aimed at infants can reduce autistic behaviour and the likelihood the children will go on to be diagnosed with autism before they reach school age. Infants who received the therapy after displaying early signs of potential autism, such as avoidi
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Futurism
Tiny Neural Implant Could Give Spinal Injury Patients Control Over Their Own Limbs Again
 
A team of scientists recently published intriguing research on a tiny, splinter-like brain implant that doctors can slide deep into the folds of the brain and use to restore both muscular control over and sensation from a paralysis patient's limbs. In a pair of scientific papers about research on three patients, one published in the journal Brain Stimulation and the other in Frontiers in Neurosci
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Futurism
NYT Confirms Israel Killed an Iranian Nuclear Scientist With a Robot Sniper
Israel Iranian Fakhrizadeh
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AI Assassination Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by an AI-assisted sniper rifle remotely controlled by Israeli operatives, reports The New York Times . This confirms Iran's Revolutionary Guard's account of the events of November 27, 2020 when they claimed a "smart satellite-controlled machine gun" killed the scientist as he was driving his wife to their country ho
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Phys.org
Melting of polar ice shifting Earth itself, not just sea levels
 
The melting of polar ice is not only shifting the levels of our oceans, it is changing the planet Earth itself. Newly minted Ph.D. Sophie Coulson and her colleagues explained in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that, as glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth's crust beneath these land masses warps, an impact that can be measured hundreds and perha
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The Atlantic
The Conservatives Who'd Rather Die Than Not Own the Libs
 
At Breitbart News , the politics of vaccination have taken a strange turn. A longtime writer at the populist-right website who wants to save his Donald Trump–supporting readers from COVID-19 is speculating that the left has tricked them into rejecting safe and effective vaccines. John Nolte is vaccinated himself and, in an article this week, correctly notes that the shots are "a lifesaver." But e
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Science | The Guardian
Human footprints thought to be oldest in North America discovered
 
Ancient tracks found in New Mexico are believed to be between 21,000 and 23,000 years old, study says New scientific research conducted by archaeologists has uncovered what they believe are the oldest known human footprints in North America. Research done at the White Sands national park in New Mexico discovered the ancient footprints, with researchers estimating that the tracks were between 21,0
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Science | The Guardian
Fraudulent ivermectin studies open up new battleground between science and misinformation
 
Studies suggesting ivermectin is an effective Covid treatment relied on evidence 'that has substantially evaporated under close scrutiny', fresh research shows Follow the Australia coronavirus blog Covid vaccine rollout and rates tracker ; Cases, trends and data tracker Get our free news app ; get our morning email briefing Dr Carlos Chaccour ran into difficulty when he and his colleagues began r
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Science | The Guardian
The smart toilet era is here! Are you ready to share your analprint with big tech?
 
Loo design has barely changed in 150 years – until now. Will people trade their privacy for the chance to find out exactly what is in their waste? For the past 10 years, Sonia Grego has been thinking about toilets – and more specifically what we deposit into them. "We are laser-focused on the analysis of stool," says the Duke University research professor, with all the unselfconsciousness of some
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Science | The Guardian
Research suggests a diet rich in dairy fat may lower the risk of heart disease
 
Study's lead author says evidence shows 'type of dietary fat, or the source of dietary fat, is actually more important than the amount' Get our free news app ; get our morning email briefing A higher consumption of dairy fat may be linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, according to new research that suggests choosing full-fat dairy options is no worse for heart health. The study, from
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Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology
Organic molecule remnants found in nuclei of ancient dinosaur cells
 
A team of scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature (STM) has isolated exquisitely preserved cartilage cells in a 125-million-year-old dinosaur from Northeast China that contain nuclei with remnants of organic molecules and chromatin. The study was published in Communication
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The Atlantic
Democrats' Free Pass on Immigration Is Over
Biden US Haitian Del Rio
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Throughout the last administration, Department of Homeland Security officials at all levels—from Senate-confirmed power brokers in Washington to rank-and-file agents along the border—often complained that they were facing a double standard: They were doing the same work, using the same methods, as they had under previous presidents, they said, but because their boss was now Donald Trump, the publ
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Phys.org
Microneedle patch delivers COVID-19 DNA vaccine, doesn't require cold storage
 
More than 2 billion people worldwide are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. However, many who live in resource-limited countries haven't been able to get vaccines, partly because these areas lack temperature-controlled shipping and storage facilities. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a microneedle patch that delivers a COVID-19 DNA vaccine into the skin, causing strong immune
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Phys.org
Ancient DNA analysis sheds light on a dark event in medieval Spain
 
An international team of researchers led by the University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group, including geneticists, archeological scientists, and archeologists, has published the genome sequence of a unique individual from Islamic medieval Spain—al-Andalus—the results of which have shed light on a brutal event that took place in medieval Spain.
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Phys.org
Carbon dioxide reactor makes Martian fuel
Reactor Mars Martian Fuel
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Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel to address climate change and get astronauts home from Mars.
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Phys.org
Cloud-spotting on a distant exoplanet
 
An international team of astronomers has not only detected clouds on the distant exoplanet WASP-127b, but also measured their altitude with unprecedented precision. A presentation by Dr. Romain Allart at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2021 shows how, by combining data from a space- and a ground-based telescope, the team has been able to reveal the upper structure of the planet's atmosphere
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Phys.org
Intensified water cycle slows down global warming, new study finds
 
A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, in collaboration with scientists at Princeton University, shows that the intensification of global hydrological cycle drives more ocean heat uptake into the deep ocean and moderates the pace of global warming.
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Phys.org
Can we see quantum correlations at the macroscopic scale?
Quantum Computing
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One of the most fundamental features of quantum physics is Bell nonlocality: the fact that the predictions of quantum mechanics cannot be explained by any local (classical) theory. This has remarkable conceptual consequences and far-reaching applications in quantum information.
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Phys.org
Nano-scale discovery could help to cool down overheating in electronics
 
A team of physicists at CU Boulder has solved the mystery behind a perplexing phenomenon in the nano realm: why some ultra-small heat sources cool down faster if you pack them closer together. The findings, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could one day help the tech industry design faster electronic devices that overheat less.
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Phys.org
Extreme volcanism did not cause the massive extinction of species in the late Cretaceous
 
A study published in the journal Geology rules out that extreme volcanic episodes had any influence on the massive extinction of species in the late Cretaceous. The results confirm the hypothesis that it was a giant meteorite impact what caused the great biological crisis that ended up with the non-avian dinosaur lineages and other marine and terrestrial organisms 66 million years ago.
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Phys.org
Exotic mix in China's delivery of moon rocks
 
On 16 December 2020 the Chang'e-5 mission, China's first sample return mission to the Moon, successfully delivered to Earth nearly two kilograms of rocky fragments and dust from our celestial companion. Chang'e-5 landed on an area of the Moon not sampled by the NASA Apollo or the Soviet Luna missions nearly 50 years ago, and retrieved fragments of the youngest lunar rocks ever brought back for ana
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Phys.org
Solar electric propulsion makes NASA's Psyche spacecraft go
NASA Psyche Spacecraft
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When it comes time for NASA's Psyche spacecraft to power itself through deep space, it'll be more brain than brawn that does the work. Once the stuff of science fiction, the efficient and quiet power of electric propulsion will provide the force that propels the Psyche spacecraft all the way to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The orbiter's target: A metal-rich asteroid also called
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Phys.org
Tiny porous crystals change the shape of water to speed up chemical reactions
 
Chemical engineers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign now understand how water molecules assemble and change shape in some settings, revealing a new strategy to speed up chemical reactions critical to industry and environmental sustainability. The new approach is poised to play a role in helping chemical manufacturers move away from harmful solvent catalysts in favor of water.
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Phys.org
Uncovering how T-cells recognise the SARS-COV-2 virus spike protein
Antibody Sars Cov 2 IgG
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The immune system is vitally important for resolving COVID-19 when individuals are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Moreover, the vaccines that are being administered to millions of people across the globe are designed to 'pre-warn and arm' the immune system so that if infected with SARS-CoV-2, individuals are significantly less likely to develop severe disease or die. Here, two crucial arms of
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forskning.se
Hormoner hämmar signalsubstans bakom migrän
 
Hur kan det komma sig att många kvinnor får migrän vid mens? Forskarna tror att nivåerna av hormonerna oxytocin och östrogen kan spela in. Omkring en miljard människor drabbas av migrän i varierande grad. Kvinnor i fertil ålder påverkas i tre gånger så hög grad som män. Sedan länge har vetenskapen antagit att det till stor del beror på kvinnors reproduktionscykel och att hormoner spelar in. Exakt
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ScienceDaily
Researchers call for a focus on fitness over weight loss for obesity-related health conditions
 
The prevalence of obesity around the world has tripled over the past 40 years, and, along with that rise, dieting and attempts to lose weight also have soared. But according to a new article, when it comes to getting healthy and reducing mortality risk, increasing physical activity and improving fitness appear to be superior to weight loss. The authors say that employing a weight-neutral approach
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ScienceDaily
Using internet in retirement boosts cognitive function
 
Scientists have studied the effect of internet usage on cognitive function. Examining more than 2000 retirees from 10 European countries, researchers found that, on average, retirees who used the internet were able to recall 1.22 extra words in a recall test compared to non-internet users (which equates to performing around 8 per cent better in the tests). The effects were more significant in wome
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The Atlantic
The Quietest Emmys Speech Was the Loudest
 
When the camera turned to Michaela Coel after she won an Emmy for limited-series writing, she looked overwhelmed. The creator, star, writer, and co-director of I May Destroy You kept her head down, her shoulders slouched. Next to her, Coel's former co-star Cynthia Erivo whispered something into her ear—a pep talk, maybe. But for a few seconds, Coel remained still, as if the weight of her first, h
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The Atlantic
Trump's Plans for a Coup Are Now Public
Peril Trump 2020 Woodward
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L ast year, John Eastman, whom CNN describes as an attorney working with Donald Trump's legal team, wrote a preposterous memo outlining how then–Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election by fiat or, failing that, throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Republicans could install Trump in office despite his loss to Joe Biden. The document, which was first reported
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The Atlantic
Six Rules That Will Define Our Second Pandemic Winter
Covid Vaccines
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Updated at 9:28 a.m. on September 21, 2021. For nearly two years now, Americans have lived with SARS-CoV-2. We know it better than we once did. We know that it can set off both acute and chronic illness, that it spreads best indoors, that masks help block it, that our vaccines are powerful against it. We know that we can live with it— that we're going to have to live with it —but that it can and
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Futurism
There's a Hole in the Ozone Layer Bigger Than Antarctica, Scientists Sigh
 
Looming Problem Whelp, the hole in the ozone layer is as big as ever. Scientists with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service announced that the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole is now larger than Antarctica, according to a press release from the organization. Researchers say that the hole has grown "considerably" in the past two weeks, and is currently larger than 75 percent of h
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Futurism
Harvard Study: Melting Polar Ice Is Physically Warping the Planet
 
Elastic Earth As rising temperatures melt Arctic ice at an alarming rate, the resulting rise in the sea level stands to reshape coastlines around the world. But the effects on the planet itself may be even more dramatic, according to a new study on how melting ice physically reshapes the Earth's crust. The outermost layer of our planet is surprisingly elastic, according to research published in t
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Futurism
Gen Z Kids Apparently Don't Understand How File Systems Work
 
Giant Bucket Over the past few years, many professors have noticed an alarming trend among their students. Overall, members of Gen Z, even those studying technical scientific fields , seem to have a total misunderstanding of computer storage, The Verge reports , and many fail to conceptualize the concept of directories and folders filled with digital files. "The most intuitive thing would be the
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Futurism
China Makes Crypto Transactions Illegal, Prompting Bitcoin Market Crash
China Bitcoin Illegal
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Crypto Crackdown China has declared all cryptocurrency transactions and any related activities within its borders illegal — a massive crackdown that has sent Bitcoin plummeting yet again. The cryptocurrency fell from highs of just over $45,000 early Friday morning down to under $41,000 around 7 am Eastern. The People's Bank of China made the announcement in a Q&A posted to its website . "Overseas
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Futurism
Scientists Manage to Study Weather on Planet in Different Solar System
 
Weather Channel Thanks to a combination of observations from both terrestrial and orbital telescopes, a team of scientists got their closest look yet at the distant exoplanet WASP-127b. Not only were scientists able to determine the chemical composition of the exoplanet's atmosphere, but they even managed to study its clouds at an unprecedented level of detail, according to research presented at
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Futurism
Scientists Build World's Tiniest Flying Machines, Smaller Than a Grain of Sand
Microchip Smallest Flying
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A team of engineers at Northwestern University have built tiny microchips with wings that glide like a maple tree's winged seeds — and they're only about the size of a grain of sand, making them the "smallest-ever human-made flying structures," according to a statement by the university. The tiny "microfliers" could serve an important purpose by monitoring pollution, airborne diseases, and other
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Futurism
Brain Protein Named After Sonic the Hedgehog May Be Key to Treating Parkinson's
 
A team of scientists say they've identified a possible new way to treat Parkinson's disease and improve the quality of life for patients — thanks, in a strange twist, to a protein named after the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog. In patients with Parkinson's, the brain loses the neurons that produce the brain molecule dopamine. Treatments exist to replace dopamine with a molecule called L-
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Futurism
Thrusters on New NASA Spacecraft Are Solar Powered
NASA Psyche Spacecraft
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Psyche Hall Problem NASA is building a spacecraft designed to travel about 1.5 billion miles through our solar system — using propulsion that's almost entirely solar electric . The small probe, called Psyche, was named after a 140-miles-across space rock in the asteroid belt believed to be the building block of an early rocky planet. NASA scientists are hoping to learn about the formation of othe
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The Atlantic
'Post-Vax COVID' Is a New Disease
COVID 19 Vaccine Infection
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Boghuma Kabisen Titanji was just 8 years old when the hyper-contagious virus swept through her classroom. Days later, she started to feel feverish, and developed a sparse, rosy rash. Three years after being fully dosed with the measles vaccine, one of the most durably effective immunizations in our roster, Titanji fell ill with the very pathogen her shots were designed to prevent. Her parents rus
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Futurism
63 Endangered Penguins Die After Being Attacked by Enraged Bees
 
Birds vs. Bees Last week, enraged Cape Honey bees killed 63 highly endangered South African penguins during an attack at the penguins' colony in Simon's Town, South Africa. While conservationists say that the freak incident is unlikely to bring about the species' extinction, Reuters reports that the sudden, dramatic loss of dozens of healthy adults puts the birds in a dire position. Fair warning:
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Futurism
Elon Musk and Grimes Just Broke Up After Dating Three Years
Elon Musk Grimes Years
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Big Breakup According to an exclusive by celebrity gossip magazine Page Six , SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and acclaimed musician Claire "Grimes" Boucher, who had been dating for three years, have broken up. "We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms," Musk told the publication. "It's mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primari
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Science | The Guardian
Doctor's 'brilliant' new first aid technique can stem blood loss after shark attack
 
Described by another expert as a 'fantastic life-saving idea', the simple procedure could save lives by stopping catastrophic blood loss from shark bites Get our free news app ; get our morning email briefing An emergency department doctor says he has developed a simple new way to help save the lives of shark attack victims in the crucial moments after a bite. The technique is described in a pape
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Science | The Guardian
Dinosaur fossil with 'totally weird' spikes in skeleton stuns experts
 
Extraordinary ankylosaur remains dating back 168m years a first for Africa Fossil hunters have unearthed remnants of the oldest – and probably weirdest – ankylosaur known so far from a site in the Middle Atlas mountains in Morocco. The remains of the heavily armoured animal are extraordinary in being the first to have defensive spikes that are fused to the skeleton, a feature researchers say is u
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Science | The Guardian
Covid-19: how effective are face masks, really? – podcast
 
Since the start of the pandemic, face coverings and their ability to prevent the transmission of Covid-19 have been under constant scrutiny by scientists, politicians and the public. More than a year and a half in, what do – and don't – we know? Madeleine Finlay speaks to Prof Cath Noakes about how effective different face coverings are, how best to use them, and when we should be masking-up Cont
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Science | The Guardian
Genetics reveal how humans island-hopped to settle remote Pacific
 
Study using DNA analysis reveals not only are statues on these distant islands connected, but inhabitants too Easter Island's famous megaliths have relatives on islands thousands of miles to the north and west, and so did the people who created them, a study has found. Over a 250-year period separate groups of people set out from tiny islands east of Tahiti to settle Easter Island, the Marquesas
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Futurism
Scientists Alarmed by Telltale Sign of Global Mass Extinction
 
Mass Extinction About 251 million years ago, roughly 90 percent of the species on Earth went extinct in what's called the "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian era. Now, researchers say that human activity has brought back one of the top warning signs that preceded it. Toxic algal and bacterial blooms — in which algae and other microbes rapidly blanket freshwater systems and essentially choke o
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NPR
The Autumnal Equinox Is This Afternoon. Fall Is Here
 
According to the National Weather Service, at 3:20 p.m. EDT today, the Autumnal Equinox (the moment when the length of daylight and darkness are almost perfectly equal) occurs. (Image credit: DAVID GANNON/AFP via Getty Images)
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Futurism
Video Shows SpaceX Tourists Opening Spacecraft's Glass Dome For the First Time
 
Pod Bay Doors After much waiting , we're finally getting to some of the footage recorded during last week's historic all-civilian flight into orbit. SpaceX tourist and science communications specialist Sian Proctor shared a video of a truly precious moment: the first time the Inpsiration4 crew got to open the hatch to the Crew Dragon's massive glass dome — a "true highlight of the Inspiration4 mi
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Science | The Guardian
Insects are vanishing from our planet at an alarming rate. But there are ways to help them | Dave Goulson
 
In Germany, flying insects have declined by 76% in 26 years. In the UK, common butterfly populations have fallen by 46% since 1976. We should be alarmed by this insect apocalypse Insects have been around for more than 400m years, their ancestors crawling from the oceans to colonise the land long before dinosaurs appeared. They have been enormously successful, evolving into a staggering diversity
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Science | The Guardian
Elon Musk welcomes SpaceX crew home with $50m donation to charity
 
Four-person crew asked for the public's help in reaching fundraising target of $200m for the children's charity St Jude Elon Musk surprised his first all-private crew of space tourists with a welcome home gift after their trailblazing trip to orbit ended on Saturday night: a $50m donation to the children's charity St Jude. Related: 'The point is ambition': are we ready to follow Netflix into spac
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The Atlantic
Why Biden Bet It All on Mandates
 
When President Joe Biden rolled out his plan requiring vaccinations on a mass scale, he sounded a bit like a gambler at a point of desperation. Biden's presidency, and much of his legacy, hinges on defeating the prolonged pandemic. During a dismal summer of rising infections and deaths due to vaccine holdouts and the Delta variant, the pandemic seemed to have defeated him . Under the new rules, B
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Science | The Guardian
To mask or not to mask? Opinion split on London underground
 
Commuters explain their reasons for not covering up Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage The "do as I say, not as I do" approach to political messaging was again displayed last week when Boris Johnson urged people to wear masks in enclosed spaces, shortly after leading a cabinet meeting of 27 maskless ministers and eight similarly uncovered observers. Studies suggest mask
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The Atlantic
Hardly Anyone Showed Up at the 'Justice for J6' Rally
Trump Jan. 6 Capitol
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No one overran the U.S. Capitol this time or tried to subvert American democracy. What the people who came to the rally on a stretch of grass near the Capitol Reflecting Pool on Saturday afternoon really wanted to do was talk. Talk and argue. And then talk and argue some more. The "Justice for J6" rally was supposed to highlight the plight of those charged with nonviolent crimes in the January 6
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The Atlantic
The Experts Somehow Overlooked Authoritarians on the Left
 
D onald Trump's rise to power generated a flood of media coverage and academic research on authoritarianism—or at least the kind of authoritarianism that exists on the political right. Over the past several years, some researchers have theorized that Trump couldn't have won in 2016 without support from Americans who deplore political compromise and want leaders to rule with a strong hand. Althoug
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The Atlantic
The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier
 
As the pandemic drags on into a bleak and indeterminate future, so does the question of its origins. The consensus view from 2020, that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally , through a jump from bats to humans (maybe with another animal between), persists unchanged. But suspicions that the outbreak started from a laboratory accident remain, shall we say, endemic. For months now, a steady drip of revelati
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The Atlantic
The Redemption of a Televangelist
 
A memorable scene in the new film The Eyes of Tammy Faye encapsulates the biopic's modern perspective on its much-maligned subject. A dashing and boyish TV preacher named Pat Robertson (played by Gabriel Olds) has thrown a swanky poolside soiree at his palatial Virginia mansion. The era is the early 1970s, and fundamentalist Christians are alarmed that progressive cultural movements—for civil rig
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The Atlantic
Fully Vaccinated Is Suddenly a Much Less Useful Phrase
Biden CDC Pfizer Americans
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The definition of full vaccination against COVID-19 has, since the winter, been somewhat difficult to nail down. It takes one dose of Johnson & Johnson, but two doses of an mRNA vaccine. The CDC counts you as fully vaccinated as soon as you get your last shot, but tells you that you won't be fully vaccinated until two weeks after that. People have a hard time knowing exactly when it might be safe
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The Atlantic
Many Parents Won't Vaccinate Their Kids. Here's Why.
 
The announcement that the Pfizer vaccine appears to work in children ages 5 to 11 is welcome news for many families across the United States. Parents who expect their children's classrooms to soon be full of vaccinated students shouldn't be overly optimistic, though. Many moms and dads will wait to get their kids immunized, if they do at all—and that includes those who are vaccinated themselves.
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Futurism
Scientists Use AR to Make Arachnophobes See Huge Spiders
 
A new app takes a gamified approach to exposure therapy, using augmented reality to make it look like an arachnophobic user is surrounded or even covered by huge, realistic-looking spiders. Scientists at the University of Basel recently developed and tested an app called Phobys in order to make it easier for people to face and hopefully overcome their fears, according to a university announcement
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The Atlantic
The Most Important Vaccine I'll Get This Fall
Flu Shot COVID Vaccine
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On Saturday morning, I finally rolled up my sleeve for the vaccine I'd been waiting for all summer: my annual flu shot , a technological marvel that I opt to receive every fall. During non-pandemic times, the flu vaccine is a hot autumn commodity that holds a coveted place in the public-health spotlight. As of late, though, the shot's been eclipsed by the prominence of its COVID-blocking cousins,
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The Atlantic
American Gentry
 
American wealth and power usually have a certain look: glass-walled penthouse apartments in glittering urban skyscrapers, sprawling country mansions, ivy-covered prep schools, vacation homes in the Hamptons. These are the outward symbols of an entrenched oligarchy, the political-economic ruling class portrayed by the media that entertains us and the conspiracy theories that animate the darker cor
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Futurism
Wall Street Glitch Showed Bitcoin Crashing to $5,400
 
Bubble Burst On Monday, some crypto investors may have noticed that the price for Bitcoin plummeted down to about $5,400. That would be catastrophic, coming down from around $50,000 earlier this month. But the price never actually dropped — at least not that much. The precipitous devaluation was a glitch on Pyth, a crypto data platform that's contributed to by several finance giants on Wall Stree
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Science | The Guardian
More microplastics in babies' faeces than in adults' – study
 
Researchers say children's mouthing behaviour and products such as bottles may be to blame Infants have more microplastics in their faeces than adults, a study has found. Microplastics are plastic particles smaller than 5mm in size that have been released into the environment from the breakage of bigger plastic objects. They are a threat to the environment because they do not easily biodegrade, a
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The Atlantic
Not Getting Vaccinated to Own Your Fellow Libs
 
Conspiracy theorists who discount the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and other public-health mandates are often portrayed in the media as right-wing. That's for good reason: a not-insignificant number of the most vocal conspiracists tie their ideology firmly to President Donald Trump and the right-wing MAGA movement he inspired. Videos of angry red-state demonstrators pushing back again
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The Atlantic
The Emerging Artistry of Hunter Biden
 
A t some point in the coming weeks, hundreds of thousands of dollars will be funneled to the son of the sitting American president—and none of us will know anything about who sent the money, or where it originally came from, or why anyone chose to send it in the first place. The transactions will nominally center on artwork created by Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son. After spending years
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Science | The Guardian
Mathematicians discover music really can be infectious – like a virus
 
New music download patterns appear to closely resemble epidemic curves for infectious disease, study finds Pop music is often described as catchy, but it seems you really can infect friends with your music taste. The pattern of music downloads after their release appears to closely resemble epidemic curves for infectious disease – and electronica appears to be the most infectious genre of all. Do
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Futurism
Doctors Intrigued by Man Who Jizzed Out of Butthole
 
Scientists were puzzled by a bizarre case stdy: a 33-year-old male with a history of illicit drug use who'd been experiencing "a substantial amount of sperm passage from his rectum with ejaculation for the past two years," according to study titled " A Curious Case of Rectal Ejaculation ," published last month in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science . In crude terms, the unfortunate patient was
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Futurism
Volcano Flings Lava Nearly a Mile High, Swallows Houses Whole
 
Kaboom! On Sunday, a powerful volcanic eruption rocked the small island of La Palma, sending lava flying 5,000 feet into the air — reaching heights twice that of the world's tallest skyscraper. After 50 years of dormancy — aside from the occasional rumbling — the Cumbre Vieja volcano burst open at several different points at once, National Geographic reports . Dramatic footage of the eruption sho
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Quanta Magazine
Mathematician Answers Chess Problem About Attacking Queens
 
If you have a few chess sets at home, try the following exercise: Arrange eight queens on a board so that none of them are attacking each other. If you succeed once, can you find a second arrangement? A third? How many are there? This challenge is over 150 years old. It is the earliest version of a mathematical question called the n-queens problem whose solution Michael Simkin… Source
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The Atlantic
Texas Is Alienating Abortion Moderates
Joe Biden Texas Abortion
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Since September 1, about 6 million Texans of childbearing age have been living under one of the strictest abortion laws in the developed world. Texas Republicans wrote the law in part to score points with the state's staunch opponents of abortion rights. But this time, they might have gone too far: Even some people who support certain abortion restrictions, or would not themselves get an abortion
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Science-Based Medicine
Get Your Flu Shot!
 
COVID-19 vaccines are important, but so are flu shots. They are safe, effective, and protect others (the elderly, the immunocompromised, and those too young to get the vaccine). The post first appeared on Science-Based Medicine .
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Futurism
In Response to Dip, El Salvador Buys a Bunch More Bitcoin
 
Buying the Dip El Salvador recently became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender — and thanks to a recent dip in the value of the digital currency, president Nayib Bukele is looking to cash in. Bukele announced he bought 150 bitcoins over the weekend, equivalent to around $6.7 million. "We just bought the dip," he wrote in a tweet early Monday morning. "150 new coins! El Salvador no
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Futurism
SpaceX Says It May Build Starships Exclusively for Space Tourism
 
Soaring Demand SpaceX successfully sent four space tourists on a three day joyride around the Earth inside its Crew Dragon spacecraft last week — and the mission has sent demand soaring, according to the company. "The amount of people who are approaching us through our sales and marketing portals has actually increased significantly," the company's senior director of human spaceflight programs Be
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Futurism
Billionaire Space Tourist Tries to Explain Lack of Footage From Inside Spaceship
 
The four space tourists on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft had very little footage to share while on their three day journey circling the Earth last week. Apart from a brief, scheduled broadcast on Friday evening , we heard almost nothing from any of the four civilians — leaving us with plenty of questions , especially in the era of ubiquitous social media. The unusual silence from the crew
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Science | The Guardian
Starwatch: the arrival of autumn brings the lovely harvest moon
 
This is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, the day when the lengths of day and night are equal This week watch for the beautiful harvest moon to rise above the horizon on Tuesday. The harvest moon is defined as the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. This year, the equinox falls on the 22 September, and the moment of full moon takes place on 21 September at 00.54 BST. The moon wi
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Science | The Guardian
'Highly effective' ovarian cancer treatment could help thousands of women
 
New drug combination shrunk tumours significantly in 46% of patients with treatment-resistant form of disease Thousands of women with ovarian cancer could benefit from a revolutionary drug combination after it was shown to shrink tumours in half of patients with an advanced form of the disease. The pair of drugs – which work together to block the signals cancer cells need to grow – could offer a
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Science | The Guardian
'I felt this huge relief': how antibody injections could free the immunosuppressed under Covid
 
FDA expected to issue full emergency authorization for periodic antibody injections, or PrEP, to complement vaccinations A proud sports mom, Shantay Brown longs to pack into a crowded stadium for her son's Ohio State football games and scream her face off over the action on the field. Related: Doctors treating unvaccinated Covid patients are succumbing to compassion fatigue Continue reading…
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Futurism
William Shatner Is Reportedly Taking a Ride on Jeff Bezos' Rocket
Shatner Jeff Bezos
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Kirk in Space Beam me up, Scotty! Acting legend William Shatner, who famously played the role of Captain Kirk on the original run of "Star Trek," will reportedly go to space during an upcoming Blue Origin launch slated for later this year, according to TMZ . The 90-year-old Canadian actor will be part of the second crew to fly to the edge of space on board the Jeff Bezos-led company's New Shepard
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Futurism
Scientists Say New Technique Could Turn Martian Air Into Rocket Fuel
Reactor Mars Martian Fuel
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Fueling Up Scientists say they've developed a trick that can turn Martian air into rocket fuel — and that it's so efficient that a spacecraft wouldn't need to bother carrying any extra fuel for its return mission. A reactor using new chemical catalysts can efficiently convert carbon dioxide into methane and ethylene, essentially turning the greenhouse gas into a useful building block for fuels, e
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Science | The Guardian
Prosecutors in Mexico seeking arrest warrants for more than 30 scientists
 
Scientific community is outraged, saying charges of organised crime are an attempt by Mexico's president to silence them Mexico's scientific community has reacted with outrage after the country's chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for 31 scientists, researchers and academics on accusations of organised crime, money laundering and embezzlement – charges that could land them alongside drug
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The Atlantic
Why Can't Democrats Pass Gun Control?
 
P resident Joe Biden was dealt a significant setback this month when he was forced to abandon David Chipman, his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The nomination was only the second he was forced to withdraw, and it was a blow to the gun-control groups who had backed Biden's pick. What went wrong? One explanation gun-control advocates often lean on when the
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Science | The Guardian
Return of the common cold: infections surge in UK as autumn arrives
 
After 18 months of social distancing, scientists believe people's immune defences have weakened The return of schools and the arrival of autumn means common colds and other respiratory infections are firmly on the rise, spreading coughs and sneezes, more severe illnesses, and prompting some to report their worst colds ever . According to Public Health England, there is no particularly nasty new v
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Futurism
Several People in ICU After Attending "COVID Party"
 
A number of misguided residents in Edson, Alberta, a small Canadian town two hours west of the city of Edmonton, organized a "COVID party" intended to infect as many guests as possible with the coronavirus to "build up natural immunity," local news station CityNews reports . Unsurprisingly, several partygoers ended up in the ICU. After all, COVID-19 isn't the common flu — nor is it chicken pox. L
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Futurism
Astronaut Who Helped Build Space Station Says Damage Is "Serious"
NASA Space Station tISS
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Warning Signs Bill Shepherd, the retired NASA astronaut who served as captain of the first crew to work on the International Space Station, just issued a serious warning to Congress. The space station has been showing its age, with new damage and other signs of wear being found in various modules. Most recently, Russian cosmonauts spotted about half a dozen new cracks in their Zarya module . And
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Phys.org
Come on in, the water is superionic
 
The interiors of Uranus and Neptune each contain about 50 000 times the amount of water in Earth's oceans, and a form of water known as superionic water is believed to be stable at depths greater than about one-third of the radius of these ice giants.
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Quanta Magazine
The Simple Math Behind the Mighty Roots of Unity
 
If you've ever taken an algebra or physics class, then you've met a parabola, the simple curve that can model how a ball flies through the air. The most important part of a parabola is the vertex — its highest or lowest point — and there are many mathematical techniques for finding it. You can try vertex form, or the axis of symmetry, or even calculus. But last week one of my students located the
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Futurism
The Bunks in the Chinese Space Station Are Absolutely Enormous
 
A new image shared by Chinese state-owned news agency CGTN shows astronaut Tang Hongbo relaxing on board the country's brand new space station — and the amenities are surprisingly luxurious. The photo shows Hongbo's sleeping quarters, a large section of the side of the Tianhe core module of China's brand new Tiangong space station. The astronaut appears to have stuck manuals, headphones, and phot
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Quanta Magazine
Single Cells Evolve Large Multicellular Forms in Just Two Years
 
To human eyes, the dominant form of life on Earth is multicellular. These cathedrals of flesh, cellulose or chitin usually take shape by following a sophisticated, endlessly iterated program of development: A single microscopic cell divides, then divides again, and again and again, with each cell taking its place in the emerging tissues, until there is an elephant or a redwood where there was non
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Science | The Guardian
A new therapy for children who may have autism risks carrying a hidden cost | James Cusack
 
Support that boosts toddlers' social development can lead to them missing out on a diagnosis that secures ongoing help James Cusack is chief executive of Autistica, a British autism research charity Being autistic, for me and the 700,000 other autistic people in the UK, often means spending a lot of time inhabiting a world that doesn't work well for you. This is why it's vital that the needs and
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The Atlantic
Arctic Horror Is Having a Comeback
 
This article contains spoilers for The Terror and The North Water . Of all the horrors of a 19th-century European voyage to the Arctic—noses and cheeks turned necrotic by frostbite, snow blindness, sea madness, broken bones badly knit—perhaps most ghastly was scurvy . The disease often starts with stiff limbs and ulcerating skin. Gums bleed and blacken, then engorge and protrude over the teeth or
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The Atlantic
The State of Texas v. Jesus Christ
 
Charles Ommanney / Getty Devotees to the cause of religious liberty may be startled to discover during the Supreme Court's upcoming term that the latest legal-theological dispute finds the state of Texas locked in conflict with traditional Christian practice, where rites for the sick, condemned, and dying disrupt the preferences of executioners. A recent stay in Ramirez v. Collier has again put T
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Futurism
Cyberattack on Farming Group Could Lead to Food Shortages
 
Hunger Strike A new ransomware attack on a major agricultural services provider could lead to food shortages down the road if the hackers and target don't come to an agreement. The hacking group BlackMatter forced the agricultural company NEW Cooperative to bring its systems offline and is holding them hostage for $5.9 million, Ars Technica reports . NEW Cooperative, which says it provides softwa
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The Atlantic
Americans Have No Idea What the Supply Chain Really Is
 
At this point, the maddeningly unpredictable Delta variant has changed the expected course of the coronavirus pandemic so much that it can be hard to know exactly what you're waiting for, or if you should continue waiting at all. Is something like before-times normalcy still coming, or will Americans have to negotiate a permanently changed reality? Will we recognize that new normal when it gets h
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Futurism
Elon Musk Confirms "Challenges" With Toilet on Tourist Spacecraft
 
What's That Smell? As if going to the bathroom in microgravity wasn't complicated enough . It sounds as though the four space tourists on SpaceX's historic Inspiration4 flight last week had a bit of a smelly mishap. The Waste Management System experienced an "anomaly" — that's code of "uh oh" in space jargon — with its suction fan causing the crew to struggle with doing their business while float
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The Atlantic
The Democrats' Greatest Delusion
 
Democrats in Congress are divided on a slew of important issues right now, leaving President Joe Biden's signature $3.5 trillion spending plan in jeopardy. What unites them is the illusion that the way they handle the plan will make or break the party's fortunes in next year's midterms. If only things worked that way. The election is almost certainly a lost cause for Democrats, and, if it's not,
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The Atlantic
When a Hit Musical Becomes a Bad Movie
 
When Dear Evan Hansen premiered on Broadway in 2016, it drew near-universal praise from New York's theater critics. Ben Platt, playing an anxious teenager who becomes an internet celebrity after misrepresenting his role in a local tragedy, was showered with plaudits, and the show ended up winning six Tony Awards—the most of the season—including Best Musical and a leading-actor trophy for Platt. A
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The Atlantic
The World Won't Miss Angela Merkel
Merkel Germany Europe
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D uring the darkest days of Donald Trump's presidency, Angela Merkel looked like the last adult on the world stage. With the United States led by an extremist, the United Kingdom in chaos, India barreling toward autocracy, and Russia and China ever more repressive, the German chancellor was widely hailed as the "leader of the free world." Now that Merkel is about to step down from the post she ha
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The Atlantic
Where Is the Reckoning Over Disability Rights?
 
Photographs by Dannielle Bowman W hen Angel Love Miles arrived at Penn State in 1998, she realized she was going to have to fight to finish school. To begin with, Miles was a low-income Black student, and Penn State was mostly white. In addition, she has spina bifida, a condition that affects spinal development in utero. In Miles's case, this means she uses crutches or a wheelchair. As a child, s
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Science | The Guardian
The bias that blinds: why some people get dangerously different medical care
 
Medical research and practice have long assumed a narrow definition of the 'default' human, badly compromising the care of anyone outside that category. How can this be fixed? I met Chris in my first month at a small, hard-partying Catholic high school in north-eastern Wisconsin, where kids jammed cigarettes between the fingers of the school's lifesize Jesus statue and skipped mass to eat fries a
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Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology
Human whistled languages may offer model for how to study dolphin communication
 
Whistling while you work isn't just a distraction for some people. More than 80 cultures employ a whistled form of their native language to communicate over long distances. A multidisciplinary team of scientists believe that some of these whistled languages can serve as a model for elucidating how information may be encoded in dolphin whistle communication. They made their case in a new paper publ
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Futurism
Brain Implant Entrepreneur Says His Inbox Is Filled With Furries
 
Fursona Non Grata Max Hodak, who cofounded Neuralink with Elon Musk and served as president until he left the neural implant company this May, tweeted out an unusual request this weekend. "To all the furries in my inbox," Hodak tweeted on Sunday, "patience please. Hopefully technology will enable everyone to be their best selves." Hodak didn't specify what, exactly, the furries were asking of him
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Futurism
Elon Musk Mocks Joe Biden for Not Congratulating SpaceX Fast Enough
 
Notice Me Last week, SpaceX successfully completed the first all-civilian spaceflight with the successful splashdown of its Inspiration4 mission. Shortly thereafter, the company and CEO Elon Musk racked up praise and congratulations from government officials including NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and spaceflight industry competitors including Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos . But apparently that was
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Futurism
Defying Congress, Elon Musk Calls for Cooperation Between NASA and China
 
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is calling for at least "some amount of cooperation" between NASA and China — despite legislation that restricts NASA from using any federal funds to engage with the Chinese government. The Wolf Amendment, passed by Congress in 2011, severely restricts any bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government — an effort to put a stop to espionage, effectively painting China as a
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Quanta Magazine
Mathematical Analysis of Fruit Fly Wings Hints at Evolution's Limits
 
Two years ago, to prepare for an unusual photo shoot, a team of scientists plucked the wings from thousands of fruit flies and pressed each flake of iridescent tissue between glass plates. As often as not, the wing tore or folded, or an air pocket or errant piece of dust got trapped along with it, ruining the sample. Fly wings are "not like Saran wrap," said Madhav Mani… Source
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The Atlantic
A World Without Children
 
Miley Cyrus vowed not to have a baby on a "piece-of-shit planet." Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mused in an Instagram video about whether it's still okay to have children. Polls suggest that a third or more of Americans younger than 45 either don't have children or expect to have fewer than they might otherwise because they are worried about climate change. Millennials and Gen Z are not
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The Atlantic
America's China Strategy Is Working
China US American
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Executives at the fashion brand Eileen Fisher are no strangers to China—or to its enormous benefits and dangerous pitfalls: The American outfitter began manufacturing its clothing there about a quarter century ago, but last year, it realized that working in China could no longer be business as usual. The catalyst was Beijing's repression of China's Uyghurs in the far-west province of Xinjiang. A
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The Atlantic
Elon Musk Must Be Pretty Relieved
 
The space tourists are back. On Saturday night, the private astronauts braced themselves as their spacecraft streaked through Earth's atmosphere, deployed parachutes, and then drifted down off the coast of Florida. When the capsule touched the waves, they might have heard a voice from mission control radio in: " Thanks for flying SpaceX ." As if the passengers had just touched down on a runway at
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Science | The Guardian
Ministers told to bar EU from UK trial data in vaccines row
 
England's deputy medical chief asked for data to be withheld unless British vaccine guinea pigs allowed to travel abroad • Coronavirus – latest updates • See all our coronavirus coverage England's deputy chief medical officer asked ministers to withhold all UK clinical trial data from the EU if European countries continued to deny entry to British vaccine trial volunteers, the Observer can reveal
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Futurism
Boston Dynamics Deploys Robot Guard Dog at Factory
 
See Spot Guard Robotics company Boston Dynamics has announced that it's started a pilot program for a robot guard dog on Friday. The guard dog is known as Spot and is technically known as a "Factory Safety Service Robot," according to a press release from Hyundai , which acquired Boston Dynamics in June 2021. The carmaker says that the robot has begun operations at a Kia plant in South Korea. "Th
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Science | The Guardian
UK teachers targeted by Covid anti-vaxxers as schools prepare to vaccinate pupils
 
One headteacher threatened with legal action by own governor over student jabs Secondary schools in the UK have been plunged into the centre of the row over Covid vaccines for 12- to 15-year-olds , with anti-vaxxers at school gates and a headteacher threatened with legal action by one of his own governors. Letters circulated by campaign groups and parents are accusing schools of sanctioning "medi
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The Atlantic
Arizona's Audit Continues to Be a Chaotic Mess
Arizona Senate C. Ninjas
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If you've forgotten about the Arizona "audit" of Maricopa County's votes in the 2020 election, you can be forgiven. At times, it seems like the audits' backers have forgotten about it too. Arizona state-Senate Republicans launched the process this spring as a response to false claims of election fraud spread by several of themselves, as well as former President Donald Trump. The Senate hired Cybe
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The Atlantic
All Is Not Well That Ends Well in Arizona
Arizona Trump Biden
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The so-called audit of votes in Maricopa County, Arizona, will confirm that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election there, and all it took was five months, millions of taxpayer dollars to replace voting machines tainted by the audit, and a full-frontal assault on faith in elections, the foundation of American democracy. The review didn't merely confirm that Biden won Maricopa County—it reported
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Futurism
Driver Claims Tesla Locked Up in Middle of Six-Lane Highway
Tesla Middle Highway
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Close Call A bizarre failure brought a Tesla to a complete stop in the middle of traffic, according to the driver's account of the incident. Alan "Pooch" Puccinelli, owner of 3D printing supply company called R3PKORD, tweeted the harrowing saga of how his Tesla Model S locked up in the middle of a six-lane highway in North Auburn, California on Wednesday night. Thankfully, Puccinelli managed to a
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Phys.org
NASA satellites show how clouds respond to Arctic sea ice change
 
Clouds are one of the biggest wildcards in predictions of how much and how fast the Arctic will continue to warm in the future. Depending on the time of the year and the changing environment in which they form and exist, clouds can both act to warm and cool the surface below them.
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The Atlantic
Murders Are Spiking in America
FBI US Murder 2020 30%
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If 2020 was a year of death, COVID-19 was not the only culprit. Last year saw the largest increase in murders on record, according to new federal-government data. There were some 21,500 murders in 2020—nearly 5,000 more than in 2019. That's a 29 percent spike, far outpacing the previous record increase, 12.7 percent, set in 1968. Those numbers come from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, an annual r
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Phys.org
Study unveils the minimum temperature for droplets levitating from smooth surfaces
 
The Leidenfrost effect is a well-known physical phenomenon first discovered in 1756. It occurs when a liquid is in the proximity of a surface that is significantly warmer than its boiling point. This produces an insulating vapor layer that prevents the liquid from quickly boiling. Due to this effect, a droplet would hover over the surface instead of physically touching it.
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The Atlantic
The Difference Between Hope and Optimism
 
" How to Build a Life " is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. D uring the Vietnam War, a U.S. Navy vice admiral who was held for more than seven years in a North Vietnamese prison noticed a surprising trend among his fellow inmates. Some of them survived the appalling conditions; others didn't. Those who didn't tended to be the most optimistic of the gr
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MIT Technology Review
2021 has broken the record for zero-day hacking attacks
 
A zero-day exploit—a way to launch a cyberattack via a previously unknown vulnerability—is just about the most valuable thing a hacker can possess. These exploits can carry price tags north of $1 million on the open market. And this year, cybersecurity defenders have caught the highest number ever, according to multiple databases, researchers, and cybersecurity companies who spoke to MIT Technolo
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Phys.org
Music download patterns found to resemble infectious disease epidemic curves
 
A team of mathematicians at the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind in Canada, has found that music download patterns resemble the patterns found in disease epidemics. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the group describes applying a standard model used to describe the spread of disease to a large database of downloadable music.
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ExtremeTechExtreme – ExtremeTech
Blast More Powerful Than Tunguska May Have Devastated Ancient City
 
(Image: Ted E. Bunch et al/Nature) People have been in the valley of the Jordan River for a long, long time. Long enough, in fact, that we're aware of a strange gap in the physical record of human history there, beginning with the mass abandonment of almost every city, village, and settlement in the area, around 3,600 years ago. When the entire population of a twenty-mile-wide metropolitan center
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Phys.org
Infants have more microplastics in their feces than adults, study finds
 
Microplastics—tiny plastic pieces less than 5 mm in size—are everywhere, from indoor dust to food to bottled water. So it's not surprising that scientists have detected these particles in the feces of people and pets. Now, in a small pilot study, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology Letters discovered that infants have higher amounts of one type of microplastic in their
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The Atlantic
Democrats May Be on the Verge of Climate Disaster
Climate Charter Democrats
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This is an excerpt from The Atlantic 's climate newsletter, The Weekly Planet. Subscribe today . Updated at 11:26 a.m. on September 23, 2021 I'm starting to become concerned about President Joe Biden's ability to pass a climate bill . They're speaking sotto voce, but still: In the past few days, Democrats on the party's left and right flanks have started to hint that, well, in some circumstances,
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Science | The Guardian
Einstein's handwritten calculations for theory of relativity to be auctioned for €3m
 
The rare document, which records attempts to explain an anomaly in the orbit of Mercury, is 'a fascinating dive into the mind of the greatest scientist of the 20th century' A crucial series of Albert Einstein's calculations, scrawled down as the physicist struggled to account for an anomaly in the orbit of Mercury while developing his theory of general relativity, is set to be auctioned for an ey
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Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology
Darwin's short-beak enigma solved: Mutation in the ROR2 gene is linked to beak length in domestic pigeons
 
Charles Darwin was obsessed with domestic pigeons. He thought they held the secrets of selection in their beaks. Free from the bonds of natural selection, the 350-plus breeds of domestic pigeons have beaks of all shapes and sizes within a single species (Columba livia). The most striking are beaks so short that they sometimes prevent parents from feeding their own young. Centuries of interbreeding
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Science | The Guardian
Trials begin on Covid booster jab hoped to protect against new variants
COVID Manchester Gritstone
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Self-amplifying mRNA jab aims to trigger immune response towards virus's spike and non-spike proteins Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage The first trials have begun of a Covid booster jab that it is hoped will offer good protection against a wide range of variants, researchers have revealed. Covid jabs currently used in the UK trigger an immune response towards the coro
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The Atlantic
Hard Work Isn't the Point of the Office
 
As the Age of Delta scrambles back-to-office timelines, I find myself wondering what offices are good for in the first place. I am pro-office. I miss a good eavesdropping, the promise of midday gossip, the "quick random question" that blooms into a half-hour conversation, and, theoretically, the magical combustion of creativity forged by these connections. These things aren't what I'm directly pa
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Phys.org
Palomar 6 globular cluster investigated in detail
 
An international team of astronomers has conducted a detailed study of a globular cluster known as Palomar 6 (or Pal 6 for short). Results of the research could help us better understand the nature of this cluster. The study was detailed in a paper published September 9 on arXiv.org.
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The Atlantic
Is It Time to Rethink Hyper-Minority Districts?
 
M ost members of Congress crave political security, and Terri Sewell has it. For more than a decade, she's represented Alabama's Seventh District, a 61 percent Black hodgepodge that awkwardly links the bustling cities of Birmingham and Montgomery via the sprawling, agriculturally rich Black Belt (named for the region's dark topsoil), where more than a quarter of residents still live below the fed
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Science | The Guardian
Seven simple steps to sounder sleep
 
How I overcome my chronic insomnia with science Everything about our day impacts our sleep. How many minutes we spend outside, what and when we eat, what's happening with our hormones, our habits, emotions, stress and thoughts – all this feeds into the sleep we end up with at night. All of which I was completely oblivious to when battling chronic insomnia for years on end. Sleep anxiety can creat
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Futurism
In Newly Released Text, Elizabeth Holmes Called Herself "Best Business Person of the Year"
 
New private text messages have surfaced between Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her then-boyfriend Sunny Balwani. The nearly 600 pages of private text and Skype messages, sent between June 2011 and July 2016, were obtained by CNBC earlier this week. The texts demonstrate how Holmes professed full confidence in her blood-testing company — despite the venture imploding spectacularly in 2015.
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Phys.org
Decoding human history with ancient DNA
 
This year is the 20th anniversary of sequencing the human genome. In honor of this event, a research team led by Prof. FU Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reviewed the most recent progress in the field of ancient DNA (aDNA), i.e., DNA obtained from the remains of past organisms.
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Phys.org
White dwarfs become magnetic as they get older
 
At least one out of four white dwarfs (WDs) will end its life as a magnetic star, and therefore magnetic fields are an essential component of WD physics. New insights into the magnetism of degenerate stars from a recent analysis of a volume-limited sample of WDs have provided the best evidence obtained so far of how the frequency of magnetism in WDs correlates with age. This could help to explain
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Science | The Guardian
'We haven't finished the job': JVT reflects on 18 months of Covid
 
Exclusive: Listen to the experts, says deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam, not the celebrities They didn't ask for the spotlight, and sometimes they didn't always seem comfortable under the media glare. But the scientists who came into our lives at the start of the coronavirus pandemic became household names. None more so than Prof Jonathan Van-Tam. Continue reading…
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Futurism
Bitcoin.org, Which Taught Users Not to Get Scammed, Gets Hacked and Replaced With Scam
Bitcoin Org Double Scam
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Giveaway Scam Bitcoin scams are getting more brazen than ever. Bitcoin.org, which is the first Google search result for "bitcoin," got hacked and led visitors to an apparent giveaway scam, CoinDesk reports . The website was originally owned and operated by the pseudonymous bitcoin developers Satoshi Nakamoto, alongside others. Ironically, the website aims to "inform users to protect them from com
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Phys.org
Bat guts become less healthy through diet of 'fast food' from banana plantations
 
Nectar-feeding bats foraging in intensively managed banana plantations in Costa Rica have a less diverse set of gut microbes in comparison to bats feeding in their natural forest habitat or organic plantations, reveals new research published today in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. This the first study to show an association between habitat alteration, sustainable agriculture and the gut micro
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Science-Based Medicine
Dr. Joseph Ladapo of "America's Frontline Doctors" is now in charge of public health in Florida
 
Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a member of the fringe medical group "American's Frontline Doctors" and signer of the widely criticized Great Barrington Declaration, is Florida's new Surgeon General, appointed because he agrees with the dubious COVID-19 policies of Gov. DeSantis and, like the Governor, allows ideology to trump science. The post Dr. Joseph Ladapo of "America's Frontline Doctors" is now in char
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Science | The Guardian
Scientists use AI to create drug regime for rare form of brain cancer in children
AI DIPG Brain Cancer
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Hopes that breakthrough marks new era where artificial intelligence can develop treatments for all types of cancer Scientists have successfully used artificial intelligence to create a new drug regime for children with a deadly form of brain cancer that has not seen survival rates improve for more than half a century. The breakthrough, revealed in the journal Cancer Discovery, is set to usher in
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Futurism
Member Nations Alarmed by Bleak Future During "Dire" UN Meeting
 
The tone at the first in-person United Nations meeting since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which kicked off on Tuesday at the General Assembly in New York, was "dire," the Associated Press reports . The topics of conversation were familiar. Climate change is rearing its ugly head , while the availability of COVID-19 vaccines is driving wealthy and poor nations even further apart. The co
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Futurism
Tesla Driver Caught at Charging Station After Intentionally Running Over Pedestrian
 
Hit and Run The Moses Lake Police Department in Washington were practically handed a hit and run suspect this week. A red Tesla intentionally hit a male pedestrian on Sunday afternoon after a verbal altercation, the cops say, and tried to flee the scene afterward. But officers caught up with him while illegally parked at a nearby charging station — a hilariously convenient and somehow obvious pla
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TED Talks Daily (SD video)
The genetic rescue of Earth's endangered species | Ryan Phelan
 
From a special black-footed ferret to coral that can withstand warming waters, genetic rescue efforts that use genomics and synthetic biology are helping nature thrive. But despite the huge successes of this kind of intervention, conservation innovator Ryan Phelan points out that fear of unintended consequences often stifles innovation — risking further extinction. She makes the case for embracin
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Singularity Hub
Alphabet's Project Taara Is Using Lasers to Beam Internet Across the World's Deepest River
 
A little over a year ago, Google's Project Loon launched in Kenya, 35 giant balloons with solar-powered electronics inside beaming a 4G signal to the central and western parts of the country. The project was ambitious; each balloon, when fully extended, was the size of a tennis court, and the plan was for them to hover in the stratosphere (20 kilometers above Earth), forming a mesh network to pro
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Phys.org
Vampire fish could be hitching rides from larger hosts
 
A team of researchers with Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande and Washington and Lee University has found evidence of candiru (aka vampire fish) attaching themselves to hosts but not feeding off of them. The team has published findings in Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria.
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Phys.org
RNA-targeting enzyme expands the CRISPR toolkit
 
Researchers at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research have discovered a bacterial enzyme that they say could expand scientists' CRISPR toolkit, making it easy to cut and edit RNA with the kind of precision that, until now, has only been available for DNA editing. The enzyme, called Cas7-11, modifies RNA targets without harming cells, suggesting that in addition to being a valuable research to
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The Atlantic
Photos: A Destructive Eruption on the Canary Islands
Canary Islands La Palma
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A recent burst of seismic activity on the volcanic island of La Palma, part of Spain's Canary Islands, prompted authorities to evacuate about 5,000 residents. On Sunday, the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted near the town of El Paso, spewing ash and jets of lava into the air and triggering lava flows that have destroyed more than 100 homes so far. Lava continued to flow slowly on Monday, with no injur
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Futurism
Empty Liquor Bottles Found Inside In-Development Air Force One
Boeing Air Force One
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Getting Sauced It's not unusual to head to happy hour after work to kick back with a few drinks — but your boss probably wouldn't like it if you were kicking back during work hours. Your boss especially wouldn't like it if your work involved building one of the most highly-classified jets in the world. That's the situation Boeing has found itself in after two empty miniature bottles of tequila we
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Science | The Guardian
Use of 10p statins in organ donation 'could save thousands of lives'
 
Exclusive: NHS launching large trial of approach that could boost number of transplants and their success rate Thousands of lives could be saved globally by giving patients a 10p statin before transplants, doctors have said, as the NHS launches the world's largest clinical trial in organ donors. The medical breakthrough is predicted to dramatically increase the supply of organs for transplant. Cu
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Futurism
Okay, These Jokes About Elon Musk and Grimes Breaking Up Are Pretty Funny
Elon Musk Grimes Years
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When news of Elon Musk and Claire "Grimes" Boucher's split broke, the Internet responded with an outpouring of sadness at the deterioration of a once beautiful, promising relationship, causing many to ruminate on the nature of love and its ultimate brevity in the grand scheme of human existence. Just kidding. People responded with jokes and memes, of course. A lot of folks on Twitter in particula
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The Atlantic
Math Is Personal
 
The mathematician Federico Ardila-Mantilla grew up in Colombia, an indifferent student but gifted in math. He was failing most of his classes at his high school in Bogotá when someone suggested he apply to MIT. He had not heard of the school. To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Mathematically, he did well. One of his professors—an acid-tongued theoretician known to compare hi
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Vetenskap | SVT Nyheter
Se de 23000-år gamla mänskliga fotspåren i Nordamerika
 
Fotspår ingjutna i naturligt gips avslöjar att det fanns människor i Nordamerika redan för 23 000 år sedan. Människan kom invandrande över det som idag är Berings sund mellan Ryssland och Alaska, och fortsatte sedan söderut. Spela videon för att se fotspår av barn och ungdomar som levde för 23 000 år sedan.
17h
Phys.org
Quasi-particles with tunable interactions
 
The laws of quantum mechanics allow for the existence of 'quasi-particles': excitations in materials that behave exactly like ordinary particles. A major advantage of quasi-particles over ordinary particles is that their properties can be engineered. In a Nature Materials News & Views article this week, IoP physicist Erik van Heumen describes recent experiments where even the interactions between
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Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology
Guiding microbes along their path
 
The interdisciplinary field of active matter physics investigates the principles behind the behavior and self-organization of living organisms. The goal is to reveal general principles that allow to describe and predict the performance of living matter and thereby support the development of novel technologies. Recently, the groups of Oliver Bäumchen and Marco Mazza from the MPIDS, the University o
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The Atlantic
Where's the Cheap Beef?
 
Grocery prices are rising. Meat prices are rising more than most other grocery prices. Beef prices are rising more than most other meat prices. But on the ranch, these are not prosperous times. Even as ground chuck costs more than $5 a pound at Walmart , ranchers complain that they are receiving less for their animals than it costs to feed them. Rising food prices are likely depressing President
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Science-Based Medicine
Lions Led by Donkeys, 1917
 
Those who sent unprotected children into classrooms filled with COVID-19 must be remembered for more than their unparalleled capacity for self-pity, inglorious oppression fantasies, and juvenile trolling of public officials. The post first appeared on Science-Based Medicine .
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The Atlantic
What It Was Like for Me to Watch Christine Blasey Ford's Testimony
 
C hristine Blasey Ford's testimony during Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings was the first thing on my mind when I woke up on September 27, 2018. From my own experience in 1991, I knew that from the minute Ford began her testimony, her life would never be the same. Some parts of my heart, stomach, and head were with Ford as she testified in the Hart Senate Office Building, thou
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Science | The Guardian
Two-legged dinosaurs may have swung tails to run faster, say scientists
 
A computer simulation could help us better understand the evolution of movement in animals Two-legged dinosaurs may have swung their tails as they crashed through the undergrowth – just like humans swing their arms – according to scientists who have modelled their movements in 3D at Harvard University. Until now, it was widely believed that bipedal (two-legged) dinosaurs grew long tails to counte
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The Atlantic
A Question Only Elon Musk Can Answer
 
Updated at 11:51 a.m. ET on September 22, 2021. On the day that SpaceX's first space tourists launched, Elon Musk was there at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, to see them off, cheering as the private astronauts walked to the Teslas that would take them to suit up. And after they landed safely, having orbited Earth about 45 times, Musk was there again to congratulate them in person. The Inspirat
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ExtremeTechExtreme – ExtremeTech
AI Is Penalizing Amazon Delivery Drivers for Errors They Aren't Making
 
Concerns about artificial intelligence and its impact on work are not new, but as more companies deploy these solutions we're seeing decided snags in the process. One point many of these conversations take for granted is that AI-powered tools work. What happens if they don't? The pandemic has fueled an explosion in semiconductor sales and a significant rise in the number of employees who are kept
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Futurism
New York Times Compares Astronauts to Dung-Eating Fungus
 
Seems Rude! Last week, the first-ever space mission made up of an entirely-civilian crew launched, spent some time in orbit, and successfully splashed back down to Earth. It's a remarkable achievement for the growing private spaceflight industry and, if you're feeling optimistic, a significant moment in human history that's prompted praise and congratulations from all sorts of prominent figures i
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The Atlantic
A Sea of Flags: Commemorating More Than 675,000 Americans Lost to COVID-19
 
The number of deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 has now passed 675,000—more than the number of Americans who died during the 1918 influenza pandemic. In Washington, D.C., a new temporary art installation named "In America: Remember," commemorates the many Americans who have died of COVID-19 over the past year and a half. Hundreds of thousands of small white flags were planted on 20 acre
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Futurism
NASA Is Trying to Rent a Private Space Station
 
Time to Downsize When it finally comes time for the International Space Station to be retired, at which point it will most likely be incinerated into nothingness by the Earth's atmosphere, NASA has no intention of replacing it. Instead, the space agency says it wants to save money by leaving space station — and orbital destination — development to private companies, CNBC reports , and it's offeri
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Phys.org
'Black widow' pulsar detected in globular cluster NGC 6712
 
Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), astronomers have discovered a new pulsar in the globular cluster NGC 6712. The newly found object is a so-called "black widow," and the first radio pulsar identified so far in this cluster. The finding is detailed in a paper published September 14 on arXiv.org.
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The Atlantic
Not Every Question Has a Scientific Answer
 
When President Joe Biden announced last month that the U.S. would offer a third vaccine dose to Americans who had already received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, he exposed a divide between an administration that has pledged to "follow the science" and many prominent health experts who disagreed with the decision. I am a physician and public-health professional specializing in infec
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The Atlantic
Another Truth About Remote Work
 
About six months ago, a colleague asked me to guess what percentage of Americans were still working from home. I was still spending eight hours a day making calls just a few feet from my fridge. So were most of my friends. Maybe 40 percent? I guessed. I was off by half. Twenty-one percent of Americans were still teleworking as of March 2021; the other 79 percent were leaving their home like the o
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The Atlantic
The Liberal Attack on Government
 
"Let the public service be a proud and lively career," President John F. Kennedy proclaimed in his January 1961 message to Congress. "Let every man and woman who works in any area of our national government," he continued, "say with pride and with honor in future years: 'I served the United States government in that hour of our nation's need.'" Kennedy's message succeeded: Young Democrats, heedin
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Science | The Guardian
Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites
Nike Amazon Baker Covid
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Household names may have unwittingly helped spread fake news, investigation reveals Dozens of the world's biggest brands, including Nike, Amazon, Ted Baker and Asos, have been advertising on websites that spread Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, it has emerged. The companies, as well as an NHS service, are among a string of household names whose ads appear to have helped fund websi
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The Atlantic
Evacuations Are Admissions of Failure
 
Because the United States has no real plan to handle climate change, average citizens end up in situations like this: At 6 a.m. the day before Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana late last month, my wife and I joined half of New Orleans's population in evacuating. The drive to our daughter's home in Houston, usually a six-hour trip, took 18 grueling hours. Stuck in stop-and-go traffic, we inched along at
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The Atlantic
LuLaRich Reveals a Hole in the American Economy
 
People who have heard of LuLaRoe have usually come across it for one of two reasons. Either someone they know has tried to sell them the company's stretchy leggings and fit-and-flare dresses over Facebook, or they've seen some of the gleeful coverage of LuLaRoe's very public disintegration as a brand: the lawsuits , the bankruptcies filed by its sellers, the boxes of apparently moldy clothing shi
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Science | The Guardian
William Shatner will boldly go into space with Bezos's Blue Origin – report
 
Neither actor nor Blue Origin has commented on mission as some point out report appears same day as promotion for his new album He was once Starfleet's youngest captain, a fearless explorer leading the USS Enterprise on an intergalactic odyssey. Now the actor who famously portrayed Captain James Tiberius Kirk on Star Trek for four decades is reportedly set to boldly go on a real-life space advent
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The Atlantic
Tucker Carlson Makes a Play for the Barbz
 
Nicki Minaj appears to be taking a break from Twitter. The rapper, who has more than 22 million followers on the platform and is known for spending nearly every day joking and bickering with them, has been uncharacteristically silent for the past week. The last entry in her feed is from September 15— a retweet of a fan 's post reading, in part, "When will people learn NICKI MINAJ is NOT going to
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Futurism
New Tech Cooks and 3D Prints Chicken Simultaneously
3D Printed Chicken
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Prototype Replicator A team of Columbia University scientists built a sort of robot "chef" that 3D prints chicken breast cutlets — and cooks them with powerful lasers at the same time. The lasers allowed for incredible cooking and heating precision, according to research published in the journal npj Science of Food earlier this month. The researchers behind the system told Ars Technica that they
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Phys.org
Earth and Venus grew up as rambunctious planets
 
What doesn't stick comes around: Using machine learning and simulations of giant impacts, researchers at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory found that the planets residing in the inner solar systems were likely born from repeated hit-and-run collisions, challenging conventional models of planet formation.
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The Atlantic
Micro-betting Could Destroy Sports
 
Updated at 8:45 a.m. on September 24, 2021. In every Major League Baseball clubhouse, a sign with Major League Rule 21(d) is prominently posted. The rule deals with gambling. It says that any player, umpire, or employee of a team or the league who bets on a game they're not involved in will be banned from MLB for a year; if they are involved in the game, the ban is for life. Elsewhere in these ba
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The Atlantic
It May Soon Be Time to Leave Britney Spears Alone Again
Britney Spears Jamie
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A legal arrangement called a conservatorship has isolated Britney Spears from the world and constricted her decisions for 13 years. But it hasn't, apparently, shielded her from what people say about her. On her legendary Instagram feed, selfies and ice-cream pics have sometimes come with captions aimed at rude commenters. One time, she shared a rebuke — KISS MY ASS EAT SHIT AND STEP ON LEGOS —for
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The Atlantic
Why Britain and France Hate Each Other
European France French
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W atching the fallout from the great Anglo-American heist of France's submarine contract with Australia, you could be forgiven for concluding that London and Paris are polar opposites in every way: whether in their leaders' personalities, grand strategies, economic models, or social mores. The irony is that the row over the new Australia-U.K.-U.S. defense pact, or AUKUS, reveals how fundamentally
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Science | The Guardian
A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century review – self-help laced with pseudoscience
 
Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein attempt to show how human nature is at odds with modern society, but their science, and style, grates Imagine discovering a fence in the middle of a desert. Not immediately seeing its purpose, you might think: "Let's get rid of this useless fence!" But are you sure about that? Maybe you're at the edge of a field of angry wildebeest, and by removing the fence you'
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The Atlantic
Photos of the Week: Merkel Diamond, Windy Fire, Pedal Cars
 
Container ships anchored off the Port of Los Angeles, gunfire on the front line in Ukraine, citizen astronauts' splashdown near Florida, a slackliner's walk from the Eiffel Tower, giant stone heads in Turkey, a nudist grape harvest in Portugal, lava flows on the Canary Islands, the Earth in an English forest, and much more
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Futurism
As Spacecraft Toilet Rumors Swirl, Bidet Company Pitches Elon Musk
 
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk admitted this week that the space tourists on board the Inspiration4 mission had a bit of trouble with the toilet. "Definitely upgraded toilets," Musk promised to another Twitter account suggesting heated toilet seats for the next mission. "We had some challenges with it this flight." The news clearly has not gone unnoticed by Tushy, a popular bidet attachment company. "Elon
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Phys.org
A 15-user quantum secure direct communication network
 
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) based on entanglement can directly transmit confidential information. Scientist in China explored a QSDC network based on time-energy entanglement and sum-frequency generation. The results show that when any two users are performing QSDC over 40 kilometers of optical fiber, and the rate of information transmission can be maintained at 1Kbp/s. Our result l
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The Atlantic
The Al Capone Approach to Anti-vaxxers
 
At the end of August, Reddit users told the company's leadership they had blood on their hands. As part of an organized protest, the moderators of dozens of large subreddits, or forums on the site, shared a letter condemning Reddit for failing to act on the "rampant" spread of COVID-19 misinformation and allowing conspiracy-minded anti-vaccine subreddits to proliferate. The letter emphasized that
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Singularity Hub
A Ferocious Asteroid Strike Demolished an Ancient Middle Eastern City 3,600 Years Ago
 
As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times m
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The Atlantic
We Need a New Economic Category
 
Care work has long been indispensable and invaluable. Indispensable: It is the work that makes all other work possible. Invaluable, quite literally: Our society is incapable of valuing it properly. The sector of the American economy devoted to care—of children and the elderly and people with disabilities— is valued at $648 billion. That's larger than the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. And yet most
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Phys.org
Metals supercharge a promising method to bury harmful carbon dioxide under the sea
 
There's a global race to reduce the amount of harmful gases in our atmosphere to slow down the pace of climate change, and one way to do that is through carbon capture and sequestration—sucking carbon out of the air and burying it. At this point, however, we're capturing only a fraction of the carbon needed to make any kind of dent in climate change.
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Phys.org
Recording Roman resource exploitation and urban collapse
 
For hundreds of years, Carthage—the Phoenician city-state in North Africa—flourished, establishing itself as a robust trade empire with widespread colonies. As the Carthaginian and Roman empires expanded their reach across Mediterranean Europe and North Africa, escalating tensions over political dominance and trade culminated in the Three Punic Wars.
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Phys.org
A new way to control qubits
 
A research team that includes two UO physicists have outlined new techniques for controlling the building blocks of quantum computing, a potentially significant step toward making such computers more accurate and useful.
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Phys.org
Uncovering the mystery of early massive galaxies running on empty
 
Early massive galaxies—those that formed in the 3 billion years following the Big Bang—should have contained large amounts of cold hydrogen gas, the fuel required to make stars. But scientists observing the early universe with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted something strange: a half-dozen early massive galaxies that ran out of fu
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Phys.org
Researchers 'watch' molten salts carve tiny nooks and tunnels into metal alloys in 3D
 
A multidisciplinary team of scientists has used the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User facility located at the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, to investigate how high-temperature molten salts corrode metal alloys. The group found a novel approach for using molten salts to create porous metallic materials with microscopic n
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Phys.org
Astronomers detect a chromospherically active eclipsing binary system
 
Astronomers from the Ohio State University (OSU) and elsewhere report the discovery of a new peculiar binary as part of the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN). The newfound system, which received designation ASASSN-V J192114.84+624950.8, turns out to be a chromospherically active eclipsing binary system with a highly eccentric orbit. The finding is detailed in a paper published Sept
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Phys.org
Children's dislike of cauliflower, broccoli could be written in their microbiome
 
Many children, as well as adults, dislike Brassica vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. In the mouth, enzymes from these vegetables and from bacteria in saliva can produce unpleasant, sulfurous odors. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have found that levels of these volatile compounds are similar in parent-child pairs,
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The Atlantic
Why America Scrapped Its Pandemic Travel Bans
 
When the United States announced this week that it would relax its ban on travelers from Europe and other countries after 18 long months, the goal was not to aid the suffering travel sector, nor was it to appease frustrated European travelers who spent much of the summer watching Americans travel freely to their respective countries while being unable to make the same trip in reverse. It didn't e
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The Atlantic
What the Rest of America Can Learn From Colorado
Brown Chicago Racine
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On the afternoon of July 23, an Army veteran named Kyle Vinson is sitting on a curb in Aurora, Colorado, when two police officers confront him. "Stay down! Roll over on your face," one of the officers yells. He has his gun drawn. The officer shoves Vinson to the ground and holds him there. "Whoa. What the hell did I do, dude?" Vinson asks. He puts his hands up. The police are responding to a tres
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Science | The Guardian
How green is your food? Eco-labels can change the way we eat, study shows
 
While food labels are nothing new, a different type that calculates the environmental cost has had a surprising effect on consumers It's lunchtime at a workplace cafeteria in Birmingham, and employees returning to work after months away during the coronavirus pandemic are noticing something has changed. Next to the sandwiches and hot and cold dishes is a small globe symbol, coloured green, orange
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Science | The Guardian
My sci-fi novel about recreating an extinct species is becoming a reality – but even if we can, should we? | James Bradley
 
The idea of reintroducing mammoths to the Arctic to slow climate change isn't entirely fanciful, but it does raise deeper ethical concerns Last week I woke up to a string of notifications alerting me to the news a biotech company had secured US$15m (A$20.6m) to underwrite a scheme to recreate mammoths with a view to reintroducing them onto the Arctic tundra. The reason for the flurry of emails an
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Phys.org
A new understanding of galaxy evolution with NASA's Roman Space Telescope
 
When NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches in the mid-2020s, it will revolutionize astronomy by providing a panoramic field of view at least 100 times greater than Hubble's at similar image sharpness, or resolution. The Roman Space Telescope will survey the sky up to thousands of times faster than can be done with Hubble. This combination of wide field, high resolution, and an efficien
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MIT Technology Review
How these US schools reopened without sparking a covid outbreak
Houston COVID Testing
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A version of this story was originally published at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch . It's impossible to overstate how controversial school reopening has become in the US this past year. After a spring of universal Zoom school, opinions diverged: some administrators, parents, and scientists pushed to get kids back in classrooms, while others lobbied for covid safety above all else. Images of maskless
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Phys.org
Moon's Tycho crater revealed in intricate detail
 
The National Science Foundation's Green Bank Observatory (GBO) and National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S) have released a new high-resolution image of the moon, the highest-ever taken from the ground using new radar technology on the Green Bank Telescope (GBT).
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ExtremeTechExtreme – ExtremeTech
Amateur Astronomers Detect Massive Impact Flash on Jupiter
 
An image from Juno showing the clouds of Jupiter in astounding detail. On the evening of Sept. 13, something hit Jupiter, producing an explosion and a flash of light visible even to amateur astronomers with off-the-shelf telescopes. Now, the hunt is on to figure out what the impactor could have been. The collision was first reported by Brazilian amateur astronomer José Luis Pereira, and confirmed
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Science | The Guardian
Future pandemic modelling in Australia to factor in increased severity of Covid Delta variant
 
Current modelling informing national reopening plan was conducted before all aspects of deadlier variant were known Roadmaps out of lockdown: why NSW and Victoria are taking different paths to Covid normal NSW and Vic restrictions ; Vic hotspots Vaccine rollout and rates tracker ; Cases and data tracker 5km and 10km from home map: check your travel radius Get our free news app ; get our morning e
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The Atlantic
What a New Defense Pact Reveals About America
US Australia China
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After the fall of Kabul last month, many observers of U.S. foreign policy concluded that America had lost interest in its allies, and that its allies had lost faith in America. An important development in Asia, however, serves as a powerful rebuttal of both arguments. The conventional wisdom in August was that Washington was no longer a reliable partner and that allies' trust had been destroyed b
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Biology News – Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology
Early long-distance trade links shaped Siberian dogs, study finds
 
Archeological finds show that people in the Arctic regions of Northwestern Siberia had already established long-range trading links with Eurasian populations some 2000 years ago. The initiation of trading relationships was one of a series of significant social changes that took place during this period. Moreover, these changes even had an impact on the genomes of Siberian dogs, as an international
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Science | The Guardian
Did you solve it? Russia's Prime Minister sets a geometry puzzle
 
The answer to today's teaser Earlier today I set you the following puzzle, which was a challenge Russia's Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, gave to a class of Russian sixth formers earlier this month. Construct a perpendicular from the (red) point on the circle to the diameter, without using any measuring devices. Continue reading…
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Science | The Guardian
Too much of a good home is bad for panda mating, say scientists
 
Success of species tails off if more than 80% of an area is ideal habitat, in line with Goldilocks principle When it comes to creating the ideal habitat for giant pandas to settle down, it seems experts could do worse than heed the tale of the three bears. Researchers have found there is a sweet spot when it comes to aiding gene flow of the animals: it is greatest when 80% of an area is considere
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Singularity Hub
The Race for Fusion Power Heats Up as Multiple Projects Hit New Milestones
Safar Partners Fusion CFS
•
 
Fusion power could be a silver bullet for the world's energy and environmental woes, but it's famously always 30 years away. A recent flurry of announcements is raising hopes that maybe the timeline has started to tighten. The technology has huge potential because it promises to generate enormous amounts of energy from abundant fuel that can be cheaply extracted from seawater. On top of that, the
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MIT Technology Review
This AI could predict 10 years of scientific priorities—if we let it
 
Every 10 years, US astronomers have to make some tough decisions. Outlined in a plan called the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics , a set of studies produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, these decisions determine the next decade's scientific priorities for the field. The Decadal Survey has set the stage for big leaps in space exploration since the e
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Phys.org
Missing wind variability means future impacts of climate change may be underestimated in Europe and North America
 
Extratropical winds have a strong influence on climate in extratropical regions, and are known to vary from decade to decade. However, their variability is currently not factored into climate models making predictions for future climates in these regions. Researchers inserted these into predictions for how extratropical climates will change by the middle of the century, and found uncertainty incre
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Science | The Guardian
Can you solve it? Russia's Prime Minister sets a geometry puzzle
 
The ruler with a ruler Update: The solution can now be read here Earlier this month, Russia's Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, marked the first day of the school year by visiting a sixth form maths class at one of his country's top science-oriented schools. The class was studying a problem about business. "Why do you guys need to do business projects in [school]?" he asked. "Fundamental knowled
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The Atlantic
The Danger of Treating Everything as an Emergency
 
COVID-19, one of the most formidable viral foes that the world has faced in a century, has caused more than 4.5 million deaths. The United States and nearly every other country besides were correct to declare it a public-health emergency. But now federal, state, and local officials are grappling with when to end the temporary emergencies declared in early 2020, in many cases with the expectation
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Science | The Guardian
Could whistling shed light on the origins of speech?
 
Whistled languages exist on every inhabited continent – now some scientists think similar dialects could have preceded the spoken word For centuries, shepherds from the small village of Aas in the French Pyrenees led their sheep and cattle up to mountain pastures for the summer months. To ease the solitude, they would communicate with each other or with the village below in a whistled form of the
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Science-Based Medicine
The dumpster diving VAERS preprint debacle: How did we get here?
 
Last week, SBM devoted a lot of digital ink to a poorly done study analyzing the VAERS database for myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination that was widely publicized to imply that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease. Three out of the four authors should have known better, leading me to ask: How did we get here? The post first appeared on Science-Based Medicine .
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Phys.org
Researchers simulate compact fusion power plant concept
Safar Partners Fusion CFS
•
 
Fusion power plants use magnetic fields to hold a ball of current-carrying gas (called a plasma). This creates a miniature sun that generates energy through nuclear fusion. The Compact Advanced Tokamak (CAT) concept uses state-of-the-art physics models to potentially improve fusion energy production. The models show that by carefully shaping the plasma and the distribution of current in the plasma
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Phys.org
New optical 'transistor' speeds up computation up to 1,000 times, at lowest switching energy possible
 
An international research team led by Skoltech and IBM has created an extremely energy-efficient optical switch that could replace electronic transistors in a new generation of computers manipulating photons rather than electrons. In addition to direct power saving, the switch requires no cooling and is really fast: At 1 trillion operations per second, it is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than
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Futurism
German Researchers Converted a Tesla Model Y Into a Hydrogen Car
OBRIST Germany the Tesla
•
 
Hesla Motors On Wednesday, German Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek revealed an automotive Frankenstein creation: A Tesla Model Y that had been converted into a hydrogen vehicle that she called a "hyper hybrid." The goal was to demonstrate the future of clean transportation. But as Teslarati notes , the decision to modify a Tesla — perhaps the most well-known electric vehicle out there — r
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Science | The Guardian
Country diary: fungi like ripe peach flesh magnifies the veteran oaks
 
Moccas Park, Herefordshire: One of Britain's finest woods illustrates that nature cannot be easily measured by net gain I'm wary of the way that the new government formula of net gain is being bandied to justify all manner of pet projects. It's intended to ensure developers leave more nature than they subtract, but the value of landscape isn't easily measured in simple metrics. Oliver Rackham bes
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Phys.org
South American musical instruments reflect population relationships
 
Music is an intrinsic expression of cultural diversity and a fundamental element of identity, ritual symbolism, and daily social interaction. The study of material culture, and musical instruments in particular, represents a relevant and innovative tool to characterize societies and reconstruct their historical trajectories and relationships in time and space.
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The Atlantic
When a Happy Marriage Is Just an Act
 
Apologies to Morticia and Gomez Addams , but a kiss to the upper arm wasn't sexy until Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac did it on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival. A slow-motion clip of the moment , amplified by Isaac's singular smolder, went viral earlier this month. More than 11 million Twitter users basked in the pair's, let's face it, pure hotness—and then presumably had to fan them
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The Atlantic
What Germany Says About Far-Right Politics
Germany Right AfD Afghans
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When Germany heads to the polls this weekend, the far-right Alternative for Germany will again be on the ballot, once a fringe presence that has become the largest—and most loathed—opposition party in the Bundestag. It has stood at the center of scandal after scandal , yet unlike other far-right parties across Europe, its experience in mainstream politics hasn't had a moderating effect on its out
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MIT Technology Review
Securing the energy revolution and IoT future
 
In early 2021, Americans living on the East Coast got a sharp lesson on the growing importance of cybersecurity in the energy industry. A ransomware attack hit the company that operates the Colonial Pipeline—the major infrastructure artery that carries almost half of all liquid fuels from the Gulf Coast to the eastern United States. Knowing that at least some of their computer systems had been co
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Phys.org
All-nitride superconducting qubit made on a silicon substrate
 
Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: Tokuda Hideyuki, Ph.D.), in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, President: Dr. Ishimura Kazuhiko) and the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System Nagoya University (President: Dr. Matsuo Seiichi) have succeeded in
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Science | The Guardian
Readers reply: why do humans cry when they are sad?
 
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts I understand that tears flush away foreign objects from the eye. But what advantage does crying have when one is feeling sad (or happy)? Perhaps it is to signal an extreme of emotion, but then why would a solitary sad person c
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Vetenskap | SVT Nyheter
Skogsekolog: Det är pajkastning idag
 
–Vi måste ha ett nyanserat samtal om skogen men jag kan med sorg konstatera att det är en sorts pajkastning idag, säger skogsekologen Ola Engelmark. Spela videon ovan och se Victoria Dyring ta en skogspromenad med forskaren som både vill läka skogen och få ett bättre diskussionsklimat.
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Phys.org
Something big just hit Jupiter
 
In 1994, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) impacted Jupiter, which had captured the comet shortly before (and broken apart by its gravity). The event became a media circus as it was the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. The impact was so powerful that it left scars that endured for months and were more discernible than Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
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Science | The Guardian
Australia Covid live news update: Victoria records 507 new cases and one death ahead of reopening roadmap release; pools to open across Sydney
 
Premier Dan Andrews is to release Victoria's roadmap out of lockdown a day after protests in Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay and Brisbane. Follow updates live Covid vaccine rollout and rates tracker ; Cases, trends and data tracker Get our free news app ; Get our morning email briefing 12.33am BST On Insiders, the finance minister Simon Birmingham is being asked about the new submarine deal. Host Da
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Science | The Guardian
Gaia review – attack of the killer mushrooms
 
A terrifying contagion spreads in this chilling South African eco-horror that takes the fun out of fungi The mushroom is having a moment. Its magical qualities and deep connection with the Earth have been explored in numerous recent releases, including Louie Schwarzberg's Fantastic Fungi . Also journeying into the curious kingdom of the fungus, this psychedelic eco-horror directed by Jaco Bouwer
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The Atlantic
Therapy Voyeurism Really Might Be Doing Some Good
 
I watched the entirety of Couples Therapy from my childhood bedroom while visiting my parents in July. It was as apt a time and place as any for entertaining some heavy psychoanalytic ideas that would, no doubt, cause me to reflect on my life. The Showtime docuseries follows Orna Guralnik, a real-life psychologist in New York, as she works with couples over the course of several months. Deep into
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The Atlantic
Resimercial: The Terrible Word for Today's Trendy Office Aesthetic
 
Look at the style of an office in any given era and you'll get a glimpse of the defining themes in white-collar workers' lives at the time. In booming postwar America, for example, the profusion of GI Bill–educated office workers wore suits, and many workplaces were sleek, serious, and formal. The goal was to signal prestige, according to Louise Mozingo, a professor of landscape architecture and
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Phys.org
Dashcam detective work leads to recovery of space rocks from fireball over Slovenia
 
On 28 February 2020, at 10:30 CET, hundreds of people across Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Austria and Hungary observed a bright ball of light hurtling across the morning sky. This delivery of rocks from a distant asteroid to the fields and villages of southern Slovenia was captured by cars' dashcams, security cameras, and even a cyclist's helmet. It is one of only around 40 fallen space rocks that ha
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MIT Technology Review
Companies hoping to grow carbon-sucking kelp may be rushing ahead of the science
 
In late January, Elon Musk tweeted that he planned to give $100 million to promising carbon removal technologies, stirring the hopes of researchers and entrepreneurs. A few weeks later, Arin Crumley, a filmmaker who went on to develop electric skateboards, announced that a team was forming on Clubhouse, the audio app popular in Silicon Valley, to compete for a share of the Musk-funded XPrize . A
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Livescience.com
Who was Herodotus?
 
Herodotus was the first true historian and has been called the "father of history," but his reliability has often been questioned.
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Phys.org
Geological cold case may reveal critical minerals
 
Researchers on the hunt for why cold eclogites mysteriously disappeared from geological records during the early stages of the Earth's development may have found the answer, and with it clues that could help locate critical minerals today.
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Retraction Watch
Study comparing hydroxychloroquine and antiviral drug for COVID-19 retracted
 
The authors of a study comparing hydroxychloroquine and the antiviral agent favipiravir as treatments for COVID-19 have lost the paper after post-publication peer review determined that the data did not support the conclusions. "Safety and efficacy of favipiravir versus hydroxychloroquine in management of COVID-19: A randomised controlled trial" appeared in March in Scientific Reports, a … Continu
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Phys.org
Earthly lava tubes may offer insights into extraterrestrial life
 
Since 1997, NASA has successfully landed five rovers on Mars. The rovers have beamed back data that indicate life cannot survive on the Martian surface; we do not know whether life persists below the ground, however. For subterranean life to endure on Mars or elsewhere, microbes would have to convert—or fix—elements from their inorganic form to a usable, organic form. This skill, known as lithoaut
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Phys.org
After the flood disaster in Western Germany: Science searches for answers
 
On 14 July 2021, between 60 and 180 mm of rain fell in the Eifel region in just 22 hours—an amount that would otherwise have fallen in several months and which led to catastrophic flooding. The events were far more destructive than existing models had predicted. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam—GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences point at a number of effects that have occurred on
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MIT Technology Review
The US is unfairly targeting Chinese scientists over industrial spying, says report
 
For years, civil rights groups have accused the US Department of Justice of racial profiling against scientists of Chinese descent. Today, a new report provides data that may quantify some of their claims. The study , published by the Committee of 100, an association of prominent Chinese-American civic leaders, found that individuals of Chinese heritage were more likely than others to be charged
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MIT Technology Review
How Amazon Ring uses domestic violence to market doorbell cameras
 
This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations , where Eileen Guo is an Ida B. Wells Fellow, and is being co-published by MIT Technology Review and Consumer Reports . A few hours before dawn in early May of last year , four police officers were dispatched to an address that they had come to know: the home of Gemma Smith in Cape Coral, Florida. (Her name has been changed because
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Science | The Guardian
A friend leans in for a hug. Do I dive for cover, muttering 'Covid', or hug back? | Hephzibah Anderson
 
As we engage again in social situations, the new etiquette rules are bewildering The other day, flogging tickets to the school summer fair – now the autumn fair due to last term's endless self-isolation – another parent leaned across the trestle table and squeezed my arm. The sheer unexpectedness of it threw me. It felt as surprising as a slap. When did I last make physical contact with someone ou
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Science | The Guardian
How standup comedy helped me conquer anxiety, depression – and fear of public speaking
 
Finding a humorous angle to some of my darkest episodes – and sharing them with strangers – was strangely cathartic "Have you gone mad?" asked one friend. "You're so brave. I could never do that. Wouldn't meditation be wiser?" said another. For someone with a long history of depression and anxiety, plus a morbid fear of public speaking, taking up standup comedy might seem like a masochistic decisi
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MIT Technology Review
The US is about to kick-start its controversial covid booster campaign
Biden Americans Pfizer
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The news: The White House is set to kick off its booster shot campaign today, after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky overruled her own agency's advisors in favor of recommending third doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for frontline workers. Who gets it: There are three groups of Americans now eligible for a booster shot: those 65 and older, some adults with
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Phys.org
Low-cost, energy-efficient approach to treating water contaminated with heavy metals
 
Engineers at MIT have developed a new approach to removing lead or other heavy-metal contaminants from water, in a process that they say is far more energy-efficient than any other currently used system, though there are others under development that come close. Ultimately, it might be used to treat lead-contaminated water supplies at the home level, or to treat contaminated water from some chemic
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Phys.org
Mimicking how water and wind create complex shapes in nature
 
Intricate natural formations like star-shaped sand dunes or arc-shaped rocks can appear so purposeful in form that it's easy to wonder whether someone has designed them. Scientists have long recognized that a particular combination of random and chaotic energy fields can, over a long period of time, give rise to these kinds of unique formations that dot our globe. Few, however, have succeeded in r
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Science | The Guardian
Can we talk to aliens? And should we colonise space? We ask the expert
 
Astrophysicist Jacco van Loon on the hunt for alien life, why logic can solve the climate crisis and what happens when the sun becomes a red giant For years, astrophysicists have been saying that alien life must exist, but finding out where and in what form has proved elusive. We may be edging closer: a team from the University of Cambridge has discovered a new class of habitable planets they cla
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Undark Magazine
Book Review: A Scientist's Life in the Treetops
 
In "The Arbornaut," field biologist Meg Lowman documents her pioneering research atop the forests of the world and her invention of forest canopy walkways. Now in her 60s, "Canopy Meg" promotes such studies worldwide, including helping to get scientists who use wheelchairs into the canopy.
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Phys.org
Scientists use seasons to find water for future Mars astronauts
 
An international team of researchers has used seasonal variations to identify likely sub-surface deposits of water ice in the temperate regions of Mars where it would be easiest for future human explorers to survive. The results are being presented this week by Dr. Germán Martínez at the European Planetary Science Conference (EPSC) 2021.
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The Atlantic
The Atlantic Daily: What to Make of the Latest Booster-Shot Recommendation
Biden FDA Covid Booster
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Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox. Boosters-for-all is looking more like boosters-for-some, for now. Per the plan set out by the White House last month, next week was supposed to mark the rollout of booster shots for all Americans
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RealClimate
The definitive CO2/CH4 comparison post
 
There is a new push to reduce CH 4 emissions as a possible quick 'win-win' for climate and air quality. To be clear this is an eminently sensible idea – as it has been for decades (remember the ' Methane-to-markets' initiative from the early 2000s?), but it inevitably brings forth a mish-mash of half-remembered, inappropriate or out-of-date comparisons between the impacts of carbon dioxide and me
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Phys.org
Telescope in Chile captures a doomed galaxy falling into the heart of the Fornax Cluster
 
The Fornax Cluster—which, as the name suggests, lies primarily in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace)—is a relatively nearby galaxy cluster, only about 60 million light-years from Earth. This means that it looms large in the night sky, stretching across an area more than 100 times larger than the full moon. With over 600 member galaxies, the Fornax Cluster is the second "richest" (most populous
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Undark Magazine
Early Data Revives Attention to Covid Shots for Small Kids
 
Six months after Pfizer and BioNTech began large trials of their Covid-19 vaccine in kids aged 5 to 11, the companies announced that the shot had a "favorable safety profile" and provoked a strong immune response. Experts are still debating whether the shots are necessary for young kids.
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Phys.org
Records from Lake Magadi, Kenya, suggest environmental variability driven by changes in Earth's orbit
 
Rift Valley lakes within eastern Africa range from freshwater to highly alkaline systems and are homes to diverse ecosystems. These Rift Valley lakes are also sedimentary repositories, yielding a high-resolution environmental record that can be targeted to better understand the environmental and climatic context of human evolution over the past few million years in eastern Africa.
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Phys.org
Volcano erupts on Spain's Canary Islands
 
The Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted on Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday spewing out lava, ash and a huge column of smoke after days of increased seismic activity, sparking the evacuation of around 1,300 people living nearby, authorities said.
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ExtremeTechExtreme – ExtremeTech
Smallest Flying Structure Ever Made Inspired By Storybooks and Seeds
Microchip Smallest Flying
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Sometimes, in the pursuit of efficiency, we can make big gains by taking cues from nature. Wing design is one place where nature excels, and we've been cribbing its notes for everything from wind turbines to boat propellers to control surfaces on planes. Now a team of scientists, led by John A. Rogers from Northwestern, have put biomimetic wings on a microchip, creating the smallest flying struct
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Phys.org
A glimpse into the ocean's biological carbon pump
 
Oceans play a key role in the global carbon dioxide balance. This is because billions of tiny algae live there, absorbing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and incorporating it into their biomass. When these algae die, they trickle down—along with the excretions of microscopic creatures that feed on them—as "marine snow" into deeper zones. About one percent of their carbon dioxide then lies bu
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Phys.org
Maya rulers put their personal stamp on monumental complexes
 
Early Maya cities featured monumental complexes, which centered on a shared form of religion but these complexes transformed radically once kingship emerged in 400 B.C. To solidify their power, rulers throughout the Maya lowlands would change these complexes, installing their mark on the landscape and reshaping how people remember it, according to a Dartmouth study published in Ancient Mesoamerica
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Retraction Watch
"[T]hese shit comments": Author of a nonsense paper responds on PubPeer
 
A conference proceedings for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) has retracted a 2021 paper which appears to have been produced in part by the fake article generator SCIGen — an allegation the corresponding author denies. "Estimate The Efficiency Of Multiprocessor's Cash Memory Work Algorithms" appeared earlier this year in the 2021 IEEE … Continue reading
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Undark Magazine
Number of Environmental Advocates Killed in 2020 Hits New Record
 
A new report by Global Witness found that the documented killings of 227 environmental activists in 2020 was a record high. Most were Indigenous people or small-scale farmers, who were defending forests against extractive industries, with numbers especially high throughout Latin American and the Amazon.
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