Posts

I grew up on classic FM rock radio. (Yes, I’m a dinosaur from the ancient Boomer Age.) The late 1960s and 1970s encompassed a golden era of musical diversity on the airwaves; a multiplicity of bands, styles and vernaculars appeared on eclectic, free-form playlists that were leavened liberally with B sides, live versions, alternative recordings and obscure ditties. And then there was the mystery factor: you never really knew what was cued up next, not until the first bars sounded....

As a professor, a software developer and an author I’ve spent a career in software security. I decided to conduct an experiment to see how vulnerable people’s accounts are to mining the Web for information. I asked some of my acquaintances, people I know only casually, if with their permission and under their supervision I could break into their online banking accounts. After a few uncomfortable pauses, some agreed. The goal was simple: get into their online banking account by using information about them, their hobbies, their families and their lives freely available online....

Everybody’s amazed by touch-screen phones. They’re so thin, so powerful, so beautiful! But this revolution is just getting under way. Can you imagine what these phones will be like in 20 years? Today’s iPhones and Android phones will seem like the Commodore 64. “Why, when I was your age,” we’ll tell our grandchildren, “phones were a third of an inch thick!” Then there are the apps. Right now we’re all delighted to do simple things on our phones, like watch videos and play games....

Every month, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Key information from this month’s issue: • ENERGY Fracturing a deep shale layer to release natural gas one time might pose little risk to drinking-water supplies, but the industrypractice of multiple “fracks” raises deeper concerns....

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazineGetting into nanoscience pioneer Leo Kouwenhoven’s talk at the American Physical Society’s March meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, today was like trying to board a subway train at rush hour. The buzz in the corridor was that Kouwenhoven’s group, based at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, might have beaten several competing teams in solid-state physics – and the community of high-energy physicists – to a long-sought goal, the detection of Majorana fermions, mysterious quantum-mechanical particles that may have applications in quantum computing....

With a roof made of fabric similar to that used in trampolines, it’s not hard to envision why 43 centimeters of snow tore through Minneapolis’s Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome last month. What is perhaps harder to imagine is why anyone would consider keeping in place an inflatable domed stadium that most engineers agree is antiquated. Forensic investigators and engineers are still studying the December 12 accident, although it is unclear whether any federal agencies have been summoned to investigate....

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises … in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. –Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620...

June 30, 1908, 7:14 a.m., central Siberia—Semen Semenov, a local farmer, saw “the sky split in two. Fire appeared high and wide over the forest…. From … where the fire was, came strong heat…. Then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards…. After that such noise came, as if . . . cannons were firing, the earth shook …” Such is the harrowing testimony of one of the closest eyewitnesses to what scientists call the Tunguska event, the largest impact of a cosmic body to occur on the earth during modern human history....

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) agency charged with ensuring the humane treatment of large research animals, such as primates and goats, has quietly scrubbed all inspection reports and enforcement records from its website. The move has drawn criticism from animal welfare and transparency activists who say the public has the right to know how their tax dollars are being used. The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which also oversees animals in circuses, zoos and those sold commercially as pets, says that making the data publicly available posed a threat to individuals’ privacy....

For more than a century researchers have been trying and failing to link perception and intelligence—for instance, do intelligent people see more detail in a scene? Now scientists at the University of Rochester and at Vanderbilt University have demonstrated that high IQ may be best predicted by combining what we perceive and what we cannot. In two studies in the journal Current Biology, researchers asked 67 people to take IQ tests....

BUENOS AIRES—Sixty-eight million years ago in what is now Antarctica, there were no ice floes groaning or collapsing into an ice-covered sea. Instead the region had a moderate climate, temperate waters and a silence occasionally broken by the “hoink hoink” calls of prehistoric birds. That, at least, is the scenario suggested by Argentine and U.S. paleontologists who recently described in detail, in an article published in Nature, the oldest fossilized remains found so far of a syrinx—the sound-making structure of birds....

For 20 years, Christiaan Both and his colleagues have been studying multiple populations of flycatchers in the Netherlands. For even longer, the small migratory birds have undertaken the epic journey from their winter home in Africa to their breeding ground in Europe. The flitting flycatchers arrive, recoup their strength and lay their eggs–a rhythm timed to the seasonal abundance of caterpillars. Now climate change has moved up the period of caterpillar plenty and produced catastrophic declines among birds that undertake their migration too late....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. It was not only the Mughal emperors that left an indelible mark in the history of the Indian subcontinent but also the queens and princesses. The latter’s contributions to art, architecture, literature, cuisine, refinement, and administrative institutions were remarkable. The impact of these women is still being felt in the life of the people of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan today....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Women played a vital role in the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648) not only by supporting the major reformers as wives but also through their own literary and political influence. Their contributions were largely marginalized in the past, but modern-day scholarship has highlighted women’s roles and established their importance in spreading the reformed vision of Christianity....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Shield of Heracles (also known as The Shield of Herakles and, in the original, Aspis Herakleous) is a poem of 480 hexameter lines written by an unknown Greek poet in the style of Hesiod (lived 8th century BCE). It deals with the Greek hero Heracles (also known as Hercules) and his nephew Iolaus and their battle with Cycnus, son of the war-god Ares....

Looking for the perfect present for that techno geek in your life? This year’s guide has plenty to choose from, including a bunch for the socially conscious in search of green tech that helps curb energy usage, cut down on paper pollution and clean up—sans toxic chemicals. The guide also features innovative uses of technology to provide basic services such as water, sanitation and light to areas that lack them. First: Here’s a look at some of this year’s high-tech toys, including those that let you watch movies, play video games or pretend to fly an airplane in your own little (virtual) world, or just kick back on a floating chair....

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter best known for its influence on depression and sexual function. But it also plays less famous roles: serotonin-releasing neurons in the brain stem regulate our body temperature and how we breathe. Henry Krous, a professor of pathology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues have found that a failure of this system may be responsible for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS....

Was Jason Bourne’s amnesia neuroscientifically accurate? What does science have to say about morality or about basketball rebounds? If nothing else, the upcoming World Science Festival—running from May 28 through June 1 in New York City—breaks through the abstruseness barrier. Some three dozen panel discussions, science-inspired music and dance performances, and a street festival geared toward kids aim to reintegrate science into the broader culture. Organized by a group headed by the husband-and-wife team of Columbia University physicist and author Brian Greene and former ABC News television producer Tracy Day, the festival may become an annual event with yearlong activities around New York City....

How do batteries store and discharge electricity? —D. DODDS, DETROIT Kenneth Buckle, a visiting scientist at the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, provides this answer: When connected to a load like a lightbulb, a typical battery undergoes chemical reactions that release electrons, which travel through the bulb and are then reabsorbed by the battery. (Devices that store mechanical energy also exist, but the most common batteries, such as those used in flashlights and remotes, hold energy in chemical form....

In a spacious conference room at a Philadelphia hotel in early December more than 150 noncommissioned officers (NCOs), many of whom had passed through multiple tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, appeared to be responding surprisingly well to what many in attendance had thought derisively was going to be just a giant “group hug” mandated by the military bureaucracy. Drill sergeants and other NCOs carried on about “icebergs” (unconscious patterns of thinking or feeling) and “catastrophizing” (thinking the worst)—as they were schooled in how to remain psychically intact in the worst of circumstances....