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Do we really use only 10 percent of our brains? Barry L. Beyerstein, a psychologist in the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., offers this answer: PERHAPS IT IS UNWELCOME news, but neuroscience has found no vast, unused cerebral reservoir for us to tap. In addition, a study of self-improvement products by a National Research Council panel found that no “brain booster” is a reliable substitute for practice and hard work when it comes to getting ahead in life....

BRINGING NEW RIGOR TO SCIENCE EDUCATION To make K–12 education in U.S. schools more scientific, researchers are conducting experiments using emerging technologies and embracing new data analysis methods. The effort started with former president George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and has continued under President Barack Obama. The research challenges widely held beliefs, including that teachers should be judged primarily on the basis of their academic credentials, classroom size is paramount, and students need detailed instructions to learn....

When a male fallow deer wants to mate, he isn’t shy about letting everyone around him know. The males, also called fallow bucks, can produce their mating calls as many as 3,000 times each hour during the mating season. Those calls serve two functions: to attract females and to deter rival males. Yet there is more hidden in the groans of fallow bucks than first meets the ear, according to a new study in Behavioral Ecology....

It’s a strong contender for the geekiest video ever made: a close-up of a smartphone with line upon line of numbers and symbols scrolling down the screen. But when visitors stop by Nicola Marzari’s office, which overlooks Lake Geneva, he can hardly wait to show it off. “It’s from 2010,” he says, “and this is my cellphone calculating the electronic structure of silicon in real time!” Even back then, explains Marzari, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, his now-ancient handset took just 40 seconds to carry out quantum-mechanical calculations that once took many hours on a supercomputer—a feat that not only shows how far such computational methods have come in the past decade or so, but also demonstrates their potential for transforming the way materials science is done in the future....

Like humans, Drosophila fruitflies become forgetful with age. But at least their memory deficits can be reversed by eating a diet rich in polyamines, according to a study published online today in Nature Neuroscience. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) “There’s a great need for cognitive enhancers to keep us healthy into old age — now polyamines are offering a new approach,” says learning and memory specialist Ronald Davis at the Scripps Research Institute Florida in Jupiter, who was not involved in the study....

In the U,.S., “…community outbreaks of the coronavirus this summer have centered on restaurants and bars, often the largest settings to infect Americans,” writes Jennifer Steinhauer at The New York Times (8/12/20). Data show that about a quarter of Louisiana’s coronavirus cases since March, other than those in nursing homes, prisons, and the like, trace back to bars and restaurants, the story reports. In Maryland, “12 percent of new cases last month were traced to restaurants…and in Colorado, 9 percent of outbreaks overall have been traced to bars and restaurants,” Steinhauer reports....

Key concepts Chemistry Solutions Miscibility Density Introduction Summertime often brings beautiful fireworks displays. Whereas you normally look up into the sky to see fireworks, in this activity we will take the bursts of color underwater—with chemistry. Although it is not exactly the same as real fireworks, you will be amazed by the color explosions you’ll see. Curious about what that looks like? See for yourself in this activity! Background You probably already know oil and water do not mix....

We are constantly warned to protect our passwords, Social Security numbers and other “personal identifying information” to thwart thieves who may steal laptops or perpetrate online fraud. Although such breaches have soared since 2005 (right) as criminals try to commit identity theft, the truly enormous breaches (bottom) have increasingly been carried out by “hacktivists”—individuals or groups who are angry about an organization’s actions. Hackers, for example, exposed data about 77 million Sony customers after the company pursued legal action against other hackers....

By Doina Chiacu and Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday he is not convinced that carbon dioxide from human activity is the main driver of climate change and said he wants Congress to weigh in on whether CO2 is a harmful pollutant that should be regulated. In an interview with CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the Trump administration will make an announcement on fuel efficiency standards for cars “very soon,” stressing that he and President Donald Trump believe current standards were rushed through....

Moshe Rozali, a physicist at the University of British Columbia, explains. These numbers seem to be singled out in the search for a fundamental theory of matter. The more you probe the fundamental structure of matter, the simpler things seem to become. In developing new theories that can encompass the current ones, scientists look for more simplicity in the form of symmetry. In addition to being elegant, symmetry is useful in constraining the number of competing models....

The old adage “feed a cold, starve a fever” may need be updated to feed a cold, starve a fever—and kill a tumor. Scientists at the University of Southern California (along with Italian researchers) report today that fasting for 48 hours before receiving chemotherapy could help limit the treatment’s toxic effects to cancer cells—and spare healthy ones. The new finding may pave the way for higher and more frequent chemo doses that better shrink tumors without harming normal cells....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. In times of financial uncertainty and crisis, high stress reactions lead to traders becoming more risk averse, which drives pessimism and further falls in finance, according to a new study. This is because of high levels of the “stress hormone”, cortisol, in bankers. We all take risks, but in the financial sector the stakes are even higher – decisions and actions can influence market stability, economic growth and the fortune and woes of nations....

The water in brooks, streams and creeks from Michigan to Puerto Rico carries a heavy load of pollutants, particularly nitrates from fertilizers. These nitrogen and oxygen molecules that crops need to grow eventually make their way into rivers, lakes and oceans, fertilizing blooms of algae that deplete oxygen and leave vast “dead zones” in their wake. There, no fish or typical sea life can survive. And scientists warn that a federal mandate to produce more biofuel may make the situation even worse....

As oil and related energy pricessoared to record highs over the past two years, interest in alternative fuels soared, too. Hybrid cars have appeared seemingly overnight, and proposals for solar, wind and other renewable technologies are being made everywhere. We need to remember, however, that all this action has one cause—high oil prices—and progress could grind to a halt if those prices fall again. It might seem ridiculous to worry about such a thing; don’t we all want to spend less on oil?...

Kathryn Sullivan once walked in space as a pioneering female astronaut. These days, the oceanographer is sticking closer to Earth, as President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Sullivan has been NOAA’s acting administrator since Jane Lubchenco left the post in February. On 1 August, Obama nominated her to be the permanent chief of the $5-billion agency. “I think it’s a great move,” says James Baker, who served as NOAA administrator from 1993 to 2001, and Sullivan was the agency’s chief scientist during part of that time....

In the week since President Donald Trump took the oath of office, scientists have taken to social media en masse, decrying the new administration’s plan to dismantle climate regulations, reports that the administration has censored government scientists’ speech and the coining of the term “alternative facts.” But Michael Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks that the situation requires more drastic action. So on January 25, he announced on Twitter that he will run for US Senate in 2018....

ARE YOU IMPRESSED with meals that look like one food but are actually made of something else? Tofu burgers and artificial crabmeat, for example, are not what they appear to be, yet the masquerade half-convinces our taste buds all the same. Such ruses have a venerable history. In medieval times fish was cooked to imitate venison during Lent, when it was customary to abstain from meat and other indulgences. At all times of the year, celebratory banquets included extravagant (and sometimes disturbing) delicacies such as meatballs made to resemble oranges and shellfish made into mock viscera....

Clinton didn’t inhale, Obama did—and maybe Reagan should have. New research suggests that THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its mind-bending properties, kills developing neurons, yet oddly, the same chemical saves neurons in adults with Alzheimer’s disease. “Marijuana is not the ‘soft drug’ people like to think it is,” says neuro­pharmacologist Veronica Campbell of Trinity College in Dublin, whose latest study uncovered the harmful effects of THC on young neurons. When Campbell and her co-workers treated brain cells from newborn or adolescent rats with THC, the neurons died, but THC did not have such deadly effects on neurons taken from adult rats....

Rohan Naidu was at home with his girlfriend when he found the galaxy that nearly broke cosmology. As his algorithm dug through early images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) late one night this past July, Naidu shot to attention. It had sifted out an object that Naidu recognized was inexplicably massive and dated back to just 300 million years after the big bang, making it older than any galaxy ever seen before....

What if controlling the appetite were as easy as flipping a switch? It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but Jeffrey Friedman of Rockefeller University and his colleagues did exactly this in genetically engineered mice to try to shed light on how the brain influences appetite. Friedman and his colleagues used magnetic stimulation to switch on neurons in a region of the brain called the ventromedial hypothalamus and found that doing so increased the rodents’ blood sugar levels and decreased levels of the hormone insulin....