Posts

DOHA, Qatar—A grueling U.N. climate conference closed Saturday with countries pumping eight last years of life into an anemic Kyoto Protocol while making way for a new system that will force all nations to take responsibility for global warming. After a midnight dispute between the United States and vulnerable countries over compensation for extreme weather events that left one hardened island diplomat in tears and an hours-long standoff between Russia and Europe over a loophole that allows governments to trade their way out of cutting carbon, conference President Abdullah Bin Hamad al-Attiyah speed-gaveled in the “Doha Climate Gateway” deal....

One little solar cooker aims to take a big bite out of climate change. The Kyoto Box, designed by Norwegian entrepreneur Jon Bøhmer, is intended as an alternative for millions of people who burn wood to cook food and boil water. Using energy from the sun can reduce carbon emissions as well as deforestation in countries such as Kenya, where Bøhmer lives and runs his company, Kyoto Energy. Bøhmer experimented with the concept for a decade, inspired by the simplicity of a solar device invented in 1767 by Swiss physicist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure....

The circumstances surrounding the death of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, who was killed in a 1968 jet crash, have long been clouded in theories and rumors. Now, the first man to walk in space says he can reveal what really happened to his friend and fellow Russian cosmonaut. Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 became the first man to leave a spacecraft and float in the open vacuum of space, has worked for years to learn what led to Gagarin’s death....

The President’s Cancer Panel on Thursday reported that “the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated” and strongly urged action to reduce people’s widespread exposure to carcinogens. The panel advised President Obama “to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.” The 240-page report by the President’s Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer....

Graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon, is stronger than steel and as stiff as diamond. Yet, this tough, thin material can also be induced to peel itself to pieces. Puncturing a hole in graphene with a diamond tip and repeatedly moving that tip back and forth—rather like rucking up a carpet—causes narrow strips of carbon to curl spontaneously upwards, tearing out of the graphene layer and even folding back on themselves, scientists from Trinity College Dublin report in an article in Nature on July 13....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Seafood is an essential staple in the diets of people around the world. Global consumption of fish and shellfish has more than doubled over the last 50 years, and is expected to keep rising with global population growth. Many people assume that most seafood is something that we catch in the wild with lines, trawls and traps....

In the heat of battle, troops may not have time to think about making the most energy-efficient moves. That’s where Sharon Burke comes in. From her office wedged within one of the innermost rings of the Pentagon, the soft-spoken 44-year-old security analyst is tasked with weaving energy considerations into the Defense Department’s war-fighting strategy. DOD officials say the push is about improving capability and saving lives lost accompanying fuel through war zones, not making environmental strides....

Researchers this week announced a new, faster way of imaging inside the body that could detect tumors more quickly and lead to earlier treatment. Scientists from the University of Tübingen in Germany report in this week’s Nature Medicine that they were able to locate and monitor tumor growth in mice with a scanner they developed that combines positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—and said they were optimistic it could be ready to use in humans within three years....

By Zeeya MeraliObjects large enough to be seen with the naked eye have been swept under an ‘invisibility carpet’ for the first time.Invisibility cloaks were proposed in 2006, and prototypes that can shield objects for certain wavelengths of light have since been built. However, until now, physicists have been unable to fabricate a cloak that could hide macroscopic items at visible wavelengths. Two independent groups have now achieved this feat, by building transparent ‘carpet cloaks’, made from calcite crystals, that lie over the object to be hidden....

A giant helium balloon is slowly drifting above Antarctica, about 22 miles (36 kilometers) up. Launched on Tuesday (Dec. 25) from the National Science Foundation’s Long Duration Balloon (LDB) facility on Earth’s southernmost continent, it carries a sensitive telescope that measures submillimeter light waves from stellar nurseries in our Milky Way. “Christmas launch!” wrote officials with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which oversees the agency’s balloon research program, in a Twitter post yesterday....

DREAM STATES Deirdre Barrett’s article, “Answers in Your Dreams,” brought back memories. In 1960 I was the first woman pioneer in the EEG study of sleep and dreams. Barrett mentions William Dement’s 1972 study. I took part in an earlier effort by Dement while working on my dissertation at Mount Sinai Hospital. Dement called with a problem-solving experiment he wanted to try: “Tell your subject, ‘The letters ‘O T T F F’ are the first letters in a well-known series....

The Trump administration is proposing a budget of $19.9 billion for NASA in its request for fiscal year 2019—slightly more than its request for fiscal year 2018. The additional funds would support the administration’s directive to reinvigorate human and robotic exploration of Earth’s moon and other planets in the solar system but would also come at the expense of several other big-ticket items in NASA’s portfolio—namely the International Space Station (ISS) as well as the Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST), a “flagship”-class mission next in line for launch after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)....

NASA’s Curiosity rover is in the prime of its life, exploring the rocks, soil and air of Mars. But the agency is already planning its successor — and this time, the scientific stakes are higher. On 14 May, planetary geologists will gather in a hotel near Arlington, Virginia, to begin hammering out where NASA might send its next Mars rover, set to launch in 2020. The plan is to build a machine that is nearly identical to Curiosity, and equip it with fresh instruments to probe the Martian surface....

By Mark Shrope of Nature magazineU.S. oceanographers this week received a welcome boost when the U.S. Navy announced it had finalized contracts for the construction of two 73-meter research vessels. Set to launch in 2014 and 2015, the two vessels, costing around $145 million, will replace members of the existing fleet. But despite the good news, many researchers are concerned that other aging vessels in the fleet won’t get replaced.Owned by the Navy, the two new ships will be run by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California....

North Korea conducted its latest nuclear test at Punggye-ri on Sept. 3, and it was the most massive one yet, registering on sensors as a 6.3-magnitude earthquake. Around 8 minutes later, geologists detected a smaller rumbling of 4.1 magnitude that got scientists speculating: Could the nuclear test site, hidden inside a mountain, have collapsed? A massive collapse could render the test site useless for future nuclear tests and may even increase the risk of radioactive gases escaping from the rock and into the air, scientists said....

Device for avoiding a collision in a lane-change maneuver of a vehicle: It’s not quite KITT, the artificially intelligent Trans Am that starred alongside David Hasselhoff in the 1980s television show Knight Rider, but a newly patented computerized driving system takes a step toward the car as driving companion. Not only will it upbraid you when you are about to make a boneheaded lane change, it will actually take control of the steering wheel and prevent a collision....

Human sexual activity affects cognitive function, health, happiness and overall quality of life—and, yes, there is also the matter of reproduction. The huge range of benefits is one reason researchers have become alarmed at declines in sexual activity around the world, from Japan to Europe to Australia. A recent study evaluating what is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence, showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex and partnered masturbation....

When Joseph Dwyer’s aeroplane took a wrong turn into a thundercloud, the mistake paid off: the atmospheric physicist flew not only through a frightening storm but also into an unexpected—and mysterious—haze of antimatter. Although powerful storms have been known to produce positrons—the antimatter versions of electrons—the antimatter observed by Dwyer and his team cannot be explained by any known processes, they say. “This was so strange that we sat on this observation for several years,” says Dwyer, who is at the University of New Hampshire in Durham....

In the future individual egg cells may serve as the source for stem cells that doctors can transplant back into people if necessary to treat nerve damage and debilitating diseases, if researchers can extend a new procedure used on mice for making transplantable stem cells. “This is just a small step along the way, but it’s an important one,” says stem cell researcher Paul Lerou of Children’s Hospital Boston and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital....

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to decide by Friday whether to green-light the use of the malaria drug Coartem as part of an expedited review reserved for life-saving treatments that the agency believes are more effective than existing therapies. An FDA advisory panel earlier this month overwhelmingly determined the drug to be safe and effective; the agency is not bound by recommendations but typically follows them. Coartem, derived from the Chinese herb artemisinin, wipes out malaria in more than 96 percent of patients in regions where malaria has become resistant to older drugs, according to drug-maker Novartis....