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By Mo Costandi of Nature magazine New Orleans, Louisiana—A disturbed night’s sleep might signal a future diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, according to findings presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, Louisiana. Patients with Alzheimer’s often complain of changes in their sleep patterns during the early stages of the disease. In healthy people, for example, daytime naps usually last around 20 minutes, but they can be to 3 hours long in patients with Alzheimer’s disease....

Scientific American presents Savvy Psychologist by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. According to the Mayo Clinic, about 13% of Americans—more than 1 in 10—take an antidepressant. Of women between the ages of 50 and 64, nearly 1 in 4 take an antidepressant. Second only to antibiotics, antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed class of medication. To clarify, when I say antidepressant, I mean the most common of many classes of antidepressants—the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, like Prozac, Celexa, Lexapro, Paxil, or Zoloft....

The United Nations has put a significant dent in energy poverty, but not at a fast enough pace to meet its own goal of bringing electricity to the approximately 1.2 billion people still living in darkness by 2030, according to new figures released today. The report by the World Bank found that about 200 million people gained access to energy services between 2010 and 2012, the first two years after U....

When the Rubik’s Cube burst on the scene in the U.S. in 1980, it sparked a fascination with the puzzle that continues to this day, even among fans born decades after the Cube’s debut. Except that, instead of humans attempting to “speed cube” to a solution in less than 10 seconds, many Rubik’s Cube fans today build robots to do it for them. This A.I.-enthusiasm offers the added challenge of not only solving the puzzle but also of creating a robot that can physically manipulate the cube based on that solution....

Key concepts Ice and water Oceans and land Climate change From National Science Education Standards: Natural hazards Introduction Look outside. Can you see any ice? What about in the middle of summer? Believe it or not, about 10 percent of the planet’s land is actually covered in ice—year round! The ice in these places, such as Antarctica or on very high mountain ranges, is usually in big pieces called glaciers or ice sheets....

LILONGWE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The death toll from flooding in Malawi has risen to 176 and others are still missing, Vice President Saulos Chilima said on Friday after touring the worst-hit parts of the southern African country, one of the world’s poorest states. Flash floods caused by days of torrential rain have swept away roads and bridges, destroyed thousands of hectares of crops and raised fears of a cholera outbreak in the southern half of the country....

By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND Ore. (Reuters) - Millions of jellyfish-like creatures have washed up on beaches along the U.S. West Coast over the past month, giving the shoreline a purple gleam and, at times, an unpleasant odor, ocean experts said on Thursday. Though not poisonous to most people, beachgoers should avoid the animals because their venom can cause stinging in the eyes and mouth, said Steve Rumrill, an expert at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife....

More than 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and one of its harshest aspects is its unpredictability. Sufferers rarely know when a seizure will occur. But molecular biologist Marion Hogg of FutureNeuro, a research institute hosted at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and her colleagues have found molecules whose levels in the bloodstream differ before and after a seizure. This discovery could lead to a blood test that gauges when seizures are likely to strike, enabling patients to take fast-acting preventive drugs....

Although our bodies stay stubbornly stuck in real time, our minds can flit between the past and future and jump large stretches of time in just a moment. Such feats rely on the brain’s ability to continuously store information as it happens while also retrieving dramatically condensed versions of past events. Until now, scientists weren’t sure how the brain simultaneously handles these competing tasks. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin found evidence that in the brain’s spatial system this balancing act is accomplished via dueling electrical frequencies....

Hurricane Irma has a high-profile target in its potentially deadly path as it races toward the Florida coastline: President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Irma is the second-strongest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, and the National Hurricane Center is warning that its projected track toward a U.S. landfall on Sunday is “potentially catastrophic.” As of 5 a.m. today, the storm was bearing down on the Leeward Islands and is expected to engulf the northern Virgin Islands later today....

The Trump administration’s plan to roll back federal car standards promises to be a major fight with California and other liberal states. But it’s also opposed by at least one state that voted for President Trump. Arizona wants to maintain the aggressive standards established under former President Obama to avoid future regulations on air pollution, said Timothy Franquist, air quality director for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). His office opposes Trump’s plan to freeze the standards at 2020 levels....

Key concepts Physics Resonance Resonant frequency Vibration Introduction Have you ever been on a swing set and suddenly noticed that the person on the swing next to you seems to be swinging almost exactly in time with you? You go up and down at either the same time or exactly opposite each other. This might seem random—but it’s actually physics! Like many things in nature, swing sets have a resonant frequency, which means they have a “favorite” frequency (or speed) of movement....

Salmon spawn endangered trout; the story sounds fishy but it’s true. By injecting specialized trout sex cells into sterilized but otherwise healthy salmon embryos, Japanese scientists wound up with male salmon that ejected trout milt (semen) and female salmon bearing trout eggs. Further, trout offspring of these altered salmon were totally normal and able to reproduce as trout—some eliding their salmon ancestry even in their appearance—thus raising hopes for spawning endangered fish species within more common ones....

The idea sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel: Tiny medical machines zooming around the body delivering drugs, taking tissue samples, or performing small surgical repairs. But, now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated a simple micromotor that can propel itself inside the body (ACS Nano 2014, DOI: 10.1021/nn507097k). When introduced into a mouse’s stomach, the micromotor swims to the stomach lining and delivers cargo. The study is an important landmark, says Thomas E....

Lee Reeves always wanted to be a veterinarian. When he was in high school in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, he went to an animal hospital near his house on a busy Saturday morning to apply for a job. The receptionist said the doctor was too busy to talk. But Reeves was determined and waited. Three and a half hours later, after all the dogs and cats had been seen, the veterinarian emerged and asked Reeves what he could do for him....

A little more than 40 years ago Douglas Engelbart introduced his “X–Y position indicator for a display system”—more commonly known today as the computer mouse—during a 90-minute presentation on a “computer-based, interactive, multiconsole display system” at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, Calif. This event—attended by some 1,000 computer professionals—would later be called by many the “mother of all demos” and would introduce a number of computing capabilities largely taken for granted today: the mouse, hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking....

Nearly 10 years, $386 million and many grey hairs after it got the go-ahead, an enormous US ocean-observing network is finally up and running. On June 6, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that most data are now flowing in real time from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a collection of seven instrumented arrays. Oceanographers have the chance to test whether the technologically complex and scientifically unprecedented project will ultimately be worth it....

President Trump assured the American public that the onset of warmer weather could halt the spread of the coronavirus. But experts caution there’s no evidence to support that idea. His assertion raises new questions about the role temperatures have on infectious diseases as Earth gets warmer. The impacts of climate change on the coronavirus are unknown, but research related to other illnesses suggest that the risk of pandemics is growing as rising temperatures ignite animal migrations and other changes....

Yes, but what does Steve think? That is the question some in the Apple fraternities and sororities might have been asking after the new iPads were revealed. For once, the remaining Apple co-founder called Steve – Steve Wozniak – was on a plane to London and missed the keynote. However, when he arrived, he fully expressed his feelings to the audience at Apps World. As reported by Techradar, Woz expressed disappointment....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. In response to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, as well as his other works, Pope Leo X sent a papal bull threatening him with excommunication in June 1520. Luther publicly burned the bull at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520 and was officially excommunicated in January 1521. Reformation in GermanyEikon Film and NFP Teleart (Copyright)...