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Scientists often test auditory processing in artificial, silent settings, but real life usually comes with a background of sounds like clacking keyboards, chattering voices and car horns. Recently researchers set out to study such processing in the presence of ambient sound—specifically the even, staticlike hiss of white noise. Their result is counterintuitive, says Tania Rinaldi Barkat, a neuroscientist at the University of Basel: instead of impairing hearing, a background of white noise made it easier for mice to differentiate between similar tones....

Dear EarthTalk: Why was the Colorado River named the most endangered river of 2013?—Missy Perkins, Jenkintown, Pa. American Rivers, a leading non-profit dedicated to the conservation of rivers and riparian corridors across the U.S., recently unveiled its annual list of the nation’s most endangered rivers. The mighty Colorado earned the #1 spot, thanks mostly to outdated water management practices in the face of growing demand and persistent drought. “This year’s America’s Most Endangered Rivers report underscores the problems that arise for communities and the environment when we drain too much water out of rivers,” says American Rivers’ president Bob Irvin....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the “Bluesign” standard for textiles? Which, if any, well-known manufacturers are embracing it?— Karin Romano, Bristol, CT Bluesign is an emerging standard for environmental health and safety in the manufacturing of textiles. The Switzerland-based organization, officially known as Bluesign Technologies AG, provides independent auditing of textile mills, examining manufacturing processes from raw materials and energy inputs to water and air emissions outputs. Each component is assessed based on its ecotoxicological impact....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The legions of Spain, Roman Africa, and Egypt did not see the intensity of action that prevailed elsewhere in Europe. However, the presence of these four legions - VII Gemina, IX Hispana, XXII Deiotariana, and II Traiana Fortis - was still essential for the stability of the empire....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Turquoise was a highly-prized material in ancient Mesoamerica, perhaps the most valued of all materials for sacred and decorative art objects such as masks, jewellery, and the costumes of rulers and high priests. Turquoise was acquired through trade, the finest coming from the American southwest. The stone was also associated with deities like the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli, known as ‘Turquoise Lord’....

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin has given orders to increase the alert level of Russia’s nuclear forces and has made veiled nuclear threats. The blatant aggression against Ukraine has shocked Europe and the world. The war is a tragedy for Ukraine. It also exposes the limits of the West’s reliance on nuclear deterrence. Deterrence refers to the idea that possessing nuclear weapons protects a nation from attack, through the threat of overwhelming retaliation....

Reefer madness? Apparently not, according to a new Swiss survey of students that concludes teenagers who smoke pot function better than those who also use tobacco. In addition, researchers at the University of Lausanne report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, teens who only use marijuana are apparently more socially driven and have no more psychosocial problems than those who neither smoke nor toke. The scientists surveyed 5,263 Swiss students (2,439 females) aged 16 to 20 years, including 455 who said they smoked weed only; 1,703 who reported being tobacco and marijuana users; and 3,105 who said they did not imbibe at all....

The extreme bush fires that blazed across southeastern Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 released 715 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air—more than double the emissions previously estimated from satellite data, according to an analysis published today in Nature. “That is a stupendous amount,” says David Bowman, a fire ecologist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, who adds that scientists might have to rethink the impact on global climate of extreme blazes, which have now raged not just across Australia, but across the western United States and Siberia....

Plants make life as we know it possible. It all starts with the tiny organelles within a plant’s leaves, known as chloroplasts. These chloroplasts—diminished descendants of the first photosynthesizers, cyanobacteria—use incoming sunlight to split water molecules and then knit together the energy-rich carbon and hydrogen compounds found in everything from food to fossil fuels. The leftover “waste” is the oxygen that we and the rest of the animal kingdom depend on to survive and thrive....

By Miriam FrankelA type of brain cell thought to be responsible for supporting other cells may have a previously unsuspected role in controlling breathing.Star-shaped cells called astrocytes, found in the brain and spinal cord, can “sense” changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood and stimulate neurons to regulate respiration, according to a study published online July 15 in Science. The research may shed some light on the role of astrocytes in certain respiratory illnesses, such as cot death, which are not well understood....

Large swaths of Houston were underwater yesterday after more than 10 inches of rain fell on the city during a 24-hour window. The bulk of the rain came during intense Monday night thunderstorms, bringing America’s fourth-largest city to a standstill by yesterday morning. Major highways were flooded, schools and mass transit systems were shut down, rivers were swollen above flood stage, and the city’s Emergency Operations Center had declared a Level 1 emergency for the first time since Hurricane Ike struck in 2008....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the Domestic Fuels Protection Act of 2012, and why are environmental groups opposing it?—William Bledsoe, Methuen, Mass. The Domestic Fuels Protection Act of 2012 (H.R. 4345) is a bill that was introduced in the House of Representatives in April 2012 by a bi-partisan group of Congress members to protect domestic producers of ethanol, biodiesel and other green-friendly fuels from liability to end-users who put the wrong kind of fuel or fuel mix into their tanks and damage their engines and/or emit exaggerated amounts of pollution accordingly....

Biometric security systems identifying individuals by their irises are a centerpiece of the United Nations assistance strategy for Syrian refugees in Jordan. As the number of Syrian refugees fleeing conflict to bordering nations ticked upward to two million this month, U.N. officials were preparing an expansion of iris-identification technology in Jordan to help manage the deluge. The U.N. iris-ID program, unprecedented in its anticipated reach and scale, is expected to help thwart refugee fraud and ease Syrians’ access to monthly aid dollars....

By Ewen Callaway pf Nature magazineStored inside Craig Venter’s genome are clues to the history of humankind, including global migrations and population crashes. Researchers have mined the genomics pioneer’s publicly available DNA sequence, and those of 6 others, to reveal major milestones in human history.“You can take a single person’s genome and learn an entire population’s history from it,” says David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study....

Those are the conclusions of a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, showing that the shifting jet stream over the Pacific Ocean is increasing flight times between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, leading to more of the pollution that fuels climate change. Previous studies have shown that commercial airplanes will be affected by climate change primarily in terms of turbulence. But the U.S. government has recently made moves to look at how climate change is being exacerbated by commercial airplanes, which for account about 3 percent of total U....

The price of staple foods—wheat, rice, corn—more than doubled over the course of the last year. Food riots swept poorer nations from Bangladesh to Haiti, and some countries, such as India and Vietnam, imposed limits on crop exports. But staple prices have fallen in recent months, part of a general fall in commodity prices as part of the ongoing financial crunch. Does that mean the food crisis has passed? ScientificAmerican.com’s David Biello spoke about the crisis with Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) headquartered in Washington, D....

Hospitals in New York City are gearing up to use the blood of people who have recovered from COVID-19 as a possible antidote for the disease. Researchers hope that the century-old approach of infusing patients with the antibody-laden blood of those who have survived an infection will help the metropolis—now the US epicentre of the outbreak—to avoid the fate of Italy, where intensive-care units (ICUs) are so crowded that doctors have turned away patients who need ventilators to breathe....

What defines who we are? Our habits? Our aesthetic tastes? Our memories? If pressed, I would answer that if there is any part of me that sits at my core, that is an essential part of who I am, then surely it must be my moral center, my deep-seated sense of right and wrong. And yet, like many other people who speak more than one language, I often have the sense that I’m a slightly different person in each of my languages—more assertive in English, more relaxed in French, more sentimental in Czech....

With the exception of certain infectious diseases, few of humanity’s ailments have cures. More than 560,000 Americans will die of cancer this year, and despite the 250,000 coronary bypass surgeries doctors perform annually, heart disease is still the country’s number-one killer. The hardest diseases to cure are the ones that take the longest to develop. They are the end result of decades of complex molecular interactions inside your body. Yet this complexity also presents an opportunity....

NEW YORK—Science fiction met fact with a “Star Trek” twist here today (April 27) when the space shuttle Enterprise, named in honor of the starship from the beloved television show, came face-to-face with Spock—Leonard Nimoy, that is. The “Star Trek” actor was on hand at John F. Kennedy International Airport when the shuttle Enterprise flew in atop a jumbo jet Friday morning. Enterprise was delivered from Washington, D.C., to the Big Apple, where it will eventually go on display at Manhattan’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum....