Posts

The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting brings a wealth of scientific minds to the shores of Germany’s Lake Constance. Every summer at Lindau, dozens of Nobel Prize winners exchange ideas with hundreds of young researchers from around the world. Whereas the Nobelists are the marquee names, the younger contingent is an accomplished group in its own right. In advance of this year’s meeting, which focuses on physics, we are profiling several promising attendees under the age of 30....

The transition of the Widows Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson, Ala., into Google’s 14th global data center marks the end of an era for what was one of the nation’s largest coal-fired power plants and one of the Tennessee Valley’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide and other air pollution. In its new iteration, Widows Creek, with its extensive network of transmission and distribution lines, will become an importer of clean energy from outside the state, according to Patrick Gammons, Google’s senior manager for data center energy and location strategy, who made the data center announcement yesterday in a blog post....

The traditional story of the peopling of the New World holds that ancient migrants out of northeast Asia slipped into the Americas bearing finely shaped stone projectiles, so-called “Clovis points,” after the town in New Mexico where they were first uncovered. This Clovis culture rapidly spread throughout the empty continents and by 1,000 years after their arrival had reached the southernmost tip of what is now South America, making them the original ancestors of indigenous Americans....

Why is it that once you learn something incorrectly (say, 7 9 = 65), it seems you never can correct your recall? —J. Kruger, Cherry Hill, N.J. Cognitive psychologist Gordon H. Bower of Stanford University answers: IDENTIFYING, CORRECTING and averting our memory errors are part of a cognitive process called memory monitoring. Incorrect associations can be tough to change, but we can use techniques to retrain our brain. When strong habits impede our ability to acquire a desired new habit or association, we experience a common phenomenon known as proactive interference....

Beautiful Geometry by Eli Maor and Eugen Jost Princeton University Press, 2014 Mathematicians sometimes compare well-constructed equations to works of art. To them, patterns in numbers hold a beauty at least equal to that found in any sonnet or sculpture. In this book, Maor, a math historian, teams with Jost, an artist, to reveal some of that mathematical majesty using jewel-like visualizations of classic geometric theorems. Often the pictures are actually puzzles to be solved, containing clues for perceptive readers to follow....

By Alyssa Joyce of Nature magazine Languages as diverse as English, Russian and Hindi can trace their roots back more than 8,000 years to Anatolia — now in modern-day Turkey. That’s the conclusion of a study that assessed 103 ancient and contemporary languages using a technique normally used to study the evolution and spread of disease. The researchers hope that their findings can settle a long-running debate about the origins of the Indo-European language group....

Climate scientists and marine advocates are calling on governments worldwide to look beyond green policymaking when it comes to climate change. They say a critical shade is missing in the fight against global warming. Blue. Countries must recognize the important role that oceans have in limiting climate change and enact policies to protect marine ecosystems, the U.K.-based Environmental Justice Foundation said yesterday in a report endorsed by environmental experts and advocates....

By Joseph Ax NEW YORK, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Rarely is a major scientific breakthrough so darn cute. Researchers at Cornell University in New York State and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., announced on Wednesday the first litter of puppies born through in vitro fertilization. The seven puppies were born on July 10 and include five beagles and two beagle-cocker spaniel mixes. The results were published on Wednesday in the science journal PLOS ONE....

I heard this tale in India. A hat seller, on waking from a nap under a tree, found that a group of monkeys had taken all his hats to the top of the tree. In exasperation he took off his own hat and flung it to the ground. The monkeys, known for their imitative urge, hurled down the hats, which the hat seller promptly collected. Half a century later his grandson, also a hat seller, set down his wares under the same tree for a nap....

The man who tried to explain some of the enigmas behind quantum mechanics has earned a Google Doogle. Born on August 12, 1887, physicist Erwin Schrödinger won the 1933 Nobel prize in physics for his contributions to the often bewildering area of wave mechanics. But Schrödinger is probably best known for his weaving a tale about a theoretical cat in an attempt to describe the paradox of quantum physics. The subject of a hypothetical experiment, Schrödinger’s Cat finds itself cooped up in a box along with a small bit of radioactive material, a Geiger counter, and a flask of acid....

Life expectancy in the U.S. has fallen for the second year in a row, the first time it’s dropped for two consecutive years in more than half a century. People born in the U.S. in 2016 could expect to live 78.6 years on average, down from 78.7 the year before, according to a new report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most common cause of death: heart disease....

From the COVID vaccine to pulsars to computer programming, women are at the source of many scientific discoveries, inventions and innovations that shape our lives. But in the stories we’ve come to accept about those breakthroughs, women are too often left out. Each season at Lost Women of Science, we’ll look at one woman and her scientific accomplishment: who she was, how she lived and what she found out. Katie Hafner, a longtime reporter for the New York Times, explains the science behind each woman’s work and explores the historical context in which she lived....

By Joseph Milton The elusive great white sharks of the Mediterranean Sea may be descended from a single small Australian population that lost its bearings while visiting South Africa 450,000 years ago. The great whites (Carcharodon carcharias) were probably returning to the Antipodes but became trapped after passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, according to a team led by marine biologist Leslie Noble of the University of Aberdeen, UK. The sharks have since made the Mediterranean their home because they reproduced there and, like salmon, the young always return to their birthplace....

Scientists have known for more than a century that some bacteria can breathe anaerobically, or without oxygen, but only in recent decades have researchers started exploiting this property to fabricate useful materials. Now electrical engineers have found a way to use such bacteria to manufacture an up-and-coming two-dimensional material called molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which can form a sheet just a few atoms thick and holds promise for future electronics. The new finding, published in Biointerphases, could help avoid a daunting synthesis process that requires a harsh environment....

Editor’s note: Who needs to type a message with two thumbs when you can use one finger? We celebrate Scientific American’s 165th anniversary with the reproduction of this story, which appeared as text only on page 2 of the inaugural issue. The image is a 21st-century add-on. This wonder of the age, which has for several months past been in operation between Washington and Baltimore, appears likely to come into general use through the length and breadth of our land....

More than 26 percent of American adults were obese as of 2009—compared with less than 20 percent in 2000, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the number of U.S. states with more than 30 percent of their population topping a body mass index (BMI) of 30 tripled between 2007 and 2009. With this accelerating epidemic, researchers are looking for clues beyond daily diet and exercise to explain our propensity for extra poundage—and many are finding evidence in the very first stages of life....

Lest we forget, getting to Mars is hard. Two thirds of the missions launched to the Red Planet never made it, and only the U.S., European Space Agency (ESA) and the Soviet Union have succeeded thus far. India is vying to join their ranks with the recently launched Mars Orbiter Mission, and NASA hopes to continue its winning streak next week, when it lofts the Maven spacecraft on a journey to trace the mystery of Mars’s missing atmosphere....

Canada’s highest court yesterday upheld the constitutionality of a carbon tax, handing a victory to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has made carbon pricing the central plank of his plan to combat climate change. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the federal government was on solid legal ground when it implemented the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, a 2018 law that imposed a carbon tax on individual provinces....

An historic event or an historic trend? No real surprises here. Through a series of leaks and pre-announcements, we all knew before this morning that President Obama would be proposing a new rule [pdf] today for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. The specifics of the rule involve a flexible approach with state-specific carbon goals that take into account each state’s current fuel mix.All the reductions will not have to come from the power plants themselves....

A century ago an iconic, keystone species—the gray wolf—all but vanished from the continental U.S. Its loss was no accident. Rather it was the result of an eradication campaign mounted by ranchers and the government to protect livestock. Hunters shot, trapped or poisoned the wolves and received a bounty for each kill. Not even the national parks, such as Yellowstone, offered safe haven. Within decades the apex predator was nearly gone, a decline that triggered a cascade of changes down the food chain....