Risky robotic exploration of the vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has revealed it to be far thicker in many places than previously measured. “The conventional picture of Antarctic sea ice being a thin veneer over the ocean is probably only true for some portion of it,” says Ted Maksym, an ice researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts (WHOI). “We need to do a better job of surveying the overall ice cover....
Key concepts Plants Fruits Seeds Flowers Biology Introduction Do you like your strawberry jelly with or without the seeds? Are you glad to have a seed-free watermelon, or do you enjoy spitting the seeds into the garden? You might not like finding seeds in your fruit, but fruit is a plant’s tool for dispersing seeds to create offspring. In this activity you will investigate how many seeds can be dispersed for each type of fruit....
By Janelle Weaver Babies as young as seven months old may be able to take into account the thoughts and beliefs of other people, according to a paper published December 23 in Science. Called “theory of mind,” this ability is central to human cooperation.The finding provides evidence for the earliest awareness in infants so far of others’ perspectives, says lead author Ágnes Kovács, a developmental psychologist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest....
In less than one billionth of a second, plants from algae to redwoods transform 95 percent of the sunlight that falls on them—1017 joules per second bathe the planet—into energy stored chemically as carbohydrates. The quantum key to doing that lies in a phenomenon known to physicists as quantum coherence, according to new research published in Nature on February 4. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Quantum coherence describes how more than one molecule interacts with the same energy from one incoming photon at the same time....
What is the difference between Joe Six-Pack, Joe the Plumber and Joe Biden? One is vice president; the other two are not. Why? The answer depends on a host of interactive variables that must be factored into any equation of success: genes, parents, siblings, peers, mentors, practice, drive, culture, timing, legacy and luck. The rub for the scientist is determining the percentage of influence of each variable and its interactions, which requires sophisticated statistical models....
In a 2006, season 2 episode of The Office entitled “Drug Testing,” Dwight Schrute interrogates his fellow employees about the partially smoked joint he found in the parking lot. Dwight is determined to identify the culprit, but Jim Halpert turns the tables: Jim: I’m just saying that you can’t be sure that it wasn’t you. Dwight: That’s ridiculous. Of course it wasn’t me. Jim: Marijuana is a memory-loss drug, so maybe you just don’t remember....
It was, of course, scientifically impossible for the legendary Curse of the Billy Goat—which dictated that the Chicago Cubs would never win the World Series—to have affected the outcome of games in the 2016 postseason. To give credence to the curse (laid on the team in October 1945 by an angry bar owner whose smelly mascot goat was evicted from Wrigley Field) is irrational and the very definition of magical thinking....
Traces of some of the nearly 80,000 chemical substances used by U.S. industry end up in the air, in consumer products and in drinking water. Yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has only evaluated the safety of a few hundred of them. Last year the EPA pledged to speed and streamline its evaluation process. But some scientists argue that the agency needs to do more, including update the science behind its assessment approaches and incorporate data from other agencies....
Update (1/24/14): The study reported in this article was retracted from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 2013 at the request of the authors. The reason for the retraction was the researchers’ discovery that the results could not be independently replicated by lab members due to inaccurate coding performed by one of the co-authors. For more information about the retraction, including an explanation by principal investigator Laurie Santos, please visit this link: http://retractionwatch....
April 1966 Technology and Employment “According to the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, the ‘vast majority’ of people recognize that technological change ‘has led to better working conditions by eliminating many, perhaps most, dirty, menial and servile jobs…. Perhaps the [concern] most responsible for the establishment of the Commission has arisen from the belief that technological change is a major source of unemployment…, that eventually it would eliminate all but a few jobs....
Of all the planets in the solar system other than Earth, Mars has arguably the greatest potential for life, either extinct or extant. It resembles Earth in so many ways: its formation process, its early climate history, its reservoirs of water, its volcanoes and other geologic processes. Microorganisms would fit right in. Another planetary body, Saturn’s largest moon Titan, also routinely comes up in discussions of extraterrestrial biology. In its primordial past, Titan possessed conditions conducive to the formation of molecular precursors of life, and some scientists believe it may have been alive then and might even be alive now....
Oxytocin is known as the “love hormone” because it encourages trust, cooperation and social bonding. But these effects may exist only for members of your own clan, according to a study published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Psychologists at the University of Amsterdam found that Dutch men who inhaled oxytocin were more likely to associate positive words, such as joy and laughter, and complex positive emotions, such as hope and admiration, with Dutch people than with Germans or Arabs....
Nuclear power will be a big part of the United States’ space exploration efforts going forward, a new policy document affirms. President Donald Trump on Wednesday (Dec. 16) issued Space Policy Directive-6 (SPD-6), which lays out a national strategy for the responsible and effective use of space nuclear power and propulsion (SNPP) systems. “Space nuclear power and propulsion is a fundamentally enabling technology for American deep-space missions to Mars and beyond,” Scott Pace, deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the National Space Council, said in an emailed statement Wednesday....
In the Vectors episode of NBC Learn’s “The Science of NFL Football” you see that quarterbacks must account for their own motion when throwing a pass, and that both the player’s movement and the path of the ball can be represented by arrows known as vectors. Vectors are used in science to describe anything that has both a direction and a magnitude. They are usually drawn as pointed arrows, the length of which represents the vector’s magnitude....
In my Scientific American column this month, I tried to figure out what’s holding up distance-charging technologies, which purport to recharge your phone, tablet, watch, fitness band, and so on through the air. Here’s a status snapshot of the companies leading the way. PowerCast. Shipping FCC-approved distance charging products since 2010—for industrial use. Sends only microwatts or milliwatts (not enough to charge a phone). Device must remain stationary, placed in a predefined spot; the transmitter can’t follow it in space....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time, enslaved the Hebrews for this purpose. In reality, ancient Egyptians loved life, no matter their social class, and the ancient Egyptian government used slave labor as every other ancient culture did without regard to any particular ethnicity....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The East India Company (EIC) was first England’s and then Britain’s tool of colonial expansion in India and beyond. Revenue from trade and land taxes from territories it controlled allowed the EIC to build up its own private armies, collectively the largest armed force in South and South East Asia....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404-323 BCE) was a Greek Cynic philosopher best known for holding a lantern to the faces of the citizens of Athens claiming he was searching for an honest man. He was most likely a student of the philosopher Antisthenes (445-365 BCE) and, in the words of Plato (allegedly), was “A Socrates gone mad....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In 313 CE, Constantine the Great (272 – 337 CE) ended the sporadic-yet-terrifying Christian persecutions under the Roman Empire with his “Edict of Milan,” and brought the Christian church under imperial protection. Not surprisingly, public social activities and normative culture changed, quite dramatically and favorably, for the early Christians....
Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Tyrannies existed across the Greek world from the city-states to the islands of Sicily and Samos. Most historians date the Great Age of Greek Tyranny from 750 to 500 BCE, ending with the ousting of Hippias; however, some authors extend the period into the 4th century BCE, embracing the despotic rule of Cassander in Macedonia as well as the tyrannies of Dionysius I and II in Syracuse....
