Dear parents, You wouldn’t trust your kids with your money, so why do you trust them with your iPad? It can amount to the same thing. I merely wonder this somewhat aloud after the peculiar tale of Lily Neale. Lily’s dad, Lee, gave her his iPad to play with. So Lily played with it. The only problem is that Lily is 8, so when she played with it, she started buying lots of in-game goodies....
By Emma MarrisMidway through a birding expedition last May off the Louisiana coast, Donna Dittmann lost her footing and broke her leg. Unaware of this, she kept the weight off her swollen ankle while surveying birds the next day at an unnamed islet that was packed with nesting pelicans, egrets and terns. After she returned home, a visit to the emergency room revealed the extent of her injury. Her husband, Steven Cardiff, who, like Dittman, is a collections manager at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science in Baton Rouge, dubbed the islet “Fractured Fibula Island” in her honor....
Every year mathematicians and artists converge for the conference Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music and Science, a festival celebrating the links between mathematics and the arts. The Bridges Organization was founded in 1998 under the leadership of Towson University mathematician Reza Sarhangi with the goal of promoting interdisciplinary work in mathematics and art. “Mathematics in general is the study of patterns, structures, relationships,” says George Hart, a mathematician, sculptor and founding board member of the Bridges Organization....
Today’s cancer chemotherapy consists of little more than a dismal array of toxic drugs that kill healthy cells along with cancerous ones. Physicians must often play a deadly game of trial and error, hoping to find the right dose of the right medicine before time runs out. But a pipeline of new molecular drugs targeting so-called epigenetic phenomena could change that. These treatments could mark a path to a new array of cancer prevention strategies less toxic to the body....
As many as 400,000 Americans are partially or totally paralyzed from spinal cord injuries, which interrupt the nerve cell signals relaying information between the brain and the body. Others lose the ability to move and communicate because of neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, which causes the neurons controlling muscles to die. Still half a million more Americans suffer profound sensory deficits such as blindness or deafness....
Chocolate was a favorite drink of the Maya, the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples long before the Spaniards “discovered” it and brought it back to Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests that chocolate has been consumed for at least 3,100 years and not just as food: the Maya and other pre-Columbian cultures offered cacao pods to the gods in a variety of rituals, including some that involved human sacrifice. But it was an Irish Protestant man who had what might be the most pivotal idea in chocolate history....
The breadth of innovation spans many disciplines in Singapore. Meet three millennials—each under 35 years old—who are combining technology with artistic creativity, and loving it. ROSHNI MAHTANI, 33, founder and CEO of Tickled Media With a bachelor’s degree in mass communications and marketing from Upper Iowa University in the United States, Mahtani could have stuck to magazine publishing or advertising sales. But in 2009, she became a technopreneur, setting up TheAsianParent to “express my creativity,” she says....
Science ministers in Europe have resurrected plans to explore the Moon’s surface—and the only strategy currently on the table is to join two uncrewed Russian missions. The developments, which follow the shelving of a proposed European Space Agency (ESA) Moon lander two years ago, come amid growing political tensions between Russia and Western nations. On December 2, at a meeting in Luxembourg to determine ESA’s policy, the space agency got the go-ahead and funding to investigate “participation in robotic missions for the exploration of the Moon....
Darren Woods entered 2018 with big plans for Exxon Mobil Corp. In a presentation to investors early that year, the CEO of America’s most prominent oil company outlined a strategy to double Exxon’s earnings by 2025. It called for a massive increase in drilling: 25 new projects capable of boosting production by about 1 million barrels a day. The drilling binge promised to be lucrative. Exxon’s financial presentations estimated earnings would jump 35% with a modest oil price of $40 a barrel....
Key concepts Physics Convection Temperature Density Introduction You probably know the ocean never really stays still. But did you know there is something called the global “ocean conveyor belt” that moves massive amounts of water from one ocean to another? These water currents are essential for mixing and transporting nutrients and oxygen and play a critical role in our climate. This is because they move warm and cold water over very long distances, which affects the temperature of the landmasses that border the ocean....
William N. Hait (B.H.) is the global head of Johnson & Johnson External Innovation. He spoke to Scientific American Custom Media (SACM) about how humans might one day maintain their bodies as they do their cars today—and why we should look forward to that future. SACM: You once said, “Imagine the human of the future will be more like our cars today.” What did you mean? B.H.: When a car rolls off the assembly line, it comes equipped with numerous sensors that constantly monitor its health....
Empathy Heals: Patients whose doctors show concern recover from colds faster It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too. Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts....
The genome sequence of a contagious cancer suggests that it emerged in an ancient breed of dog some 11,000 years ago and spread around the globe around the time of Christopher Columbus. Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is typically transferred during sex and appears as an ulcerous, rose-colored protrusion on the genitals of dogs (see picture at reader’s discretion, due to its graphic nature). “It’s the oldest continuously surviving cancer we know of in nature,” says Elizabeth Murchison, a cancer biologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who describes its sequence in a paper published today in Science....
Local police execute a search warrant and confiscate a suspected drug dealer’s phone—only to find that he’s called his mom, the local pizza delivery and nobody else. Or after a reporting trip a journalist’s phone is confiscated by airport security. But when they look to see what’s on it, they find only calls to her home and editor’s office. They let her go—but minutes later, after she is safely on her way, the real data reappears with all her sources’ names and numbers....
It was an architectural icon, a forebear to hurricane readiness and a cautionary tale about building too close to the shore. The Cape Romano dome home, completed in 1982 on a sand spit of Marco Island, Fla., has succumbed to the sea. Hurricane Ian knocked down what remained of the 40-year-old string of six concrete-reinforced geodesic domes that were adjoining rooms in the 2,400-square-foot modular house. Its spherical walls were built to deflect 150-mph winds that would level most conventionally designed homes....
There are more than 6,000 active gas wells in Pennsylvania. And every week, those drilling sites generate scores of complaints from the state’s residents, including many about terrible odors and contaminated water. How the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection handles those complaints has worsened the already raw and angry divide between fearful residents and the state regulators charged with overseeing the burgeoning gas drilling industry. For instance, the agency’s own manual for dealing with complaints is explicit about what to do if someone reports concerns about a noxious odor, but is not at that very moment experiencing the smell: “DO NOT REGISTER THE COMPLAINT....
Parents are in a much more powerful position than they realize. A new study of over 1300 3rd to 5th graders found that parental monitoring of children’s media has ripple effects that extend across several different areas of children’s lives out into the future. For this study, my colleagues and I talked to children, their parents, their teachers, and even their school nurses, once at the beginning and once at the end of a school year....
MIRROR MIMICRY I am trying to comprehend the existence of mirror neurons in “A Revealing Reflection,” by David Dobbs. More specifically, how can one differentiate between a normal neuron and a mirror neuron? What would the ratio be between the two? Would the ability to recall and replay memories be greater in those who have more mirror neurons versus those who have fewer? John Spaine via e-mail DOBBS REPLIES: Mirror neurons are all premotor neurons—that is, specialized neurons in the cortex that fire to activate motor neurons, which in turn send signals to muscles to contract, relax or whatnot....
Humans have not set foot on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, but those missions are still producing surprises. An analysis of a collected rock has produced the first solid evidence for graphite, the form of carbon commonly used as pencil lead, in a lunar sample. Andrew Steele, an astrobiologist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and his colleagues reported in the July 2 Science that they found dozens of graphite particles in a small, dark patch on the sample—a region just 0....
From Nature magazine One of the largest suppliers of dogs for drug research in Europe may be shut down permanently after an Italian court ordered that it be temporarily closed. On 18 July the court temporarily closed the facility in response to allegations of maltreatment of the dogs by two animal rights groups, LAV and Legambiente. Inspectors accompanied by police immediately entered the Green Hill facility, which belongs to the US-based Marshall Bioresources, and confiscated computers and other items for analysis....
