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Dear EarthTalk: What are the big delivery companies like FedEx and UPS doing to green their truck fleets and operations in general?—Mitchell Glaser, Overland Park, Kans. Package delivery companies like FedEx and UPS have come a long way in a relatively short time regarding sustainability, but they still have considerable room for improvement. While there is only so much these companies can do to reduce their huge carbon footprints—given their reliance on emissions-heavy air transport—they’ve made great strides in greening their ground fleets, optimizing their choices of modes and otherwise streamlining energy use....

One of the reasons why robots and artificial intelligence programs — even very sophisticated ones — do not qualify as living things is because they lack the capacity for self-repair. Fry a machine’s circuits, and it can do nothing except wait for a human to repair it. A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has taken some of the first steps toward making a self-healing machine by creating a computer chip that can learn to heal its own information pathways....

After months of being cooped up at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus, people have taken to the streets by the thousands over the past few weeks to protest against police killings of Black people and decades of systemic racism. The gatherings have some people worried about a spike in coronavirus infections—but they have also been defended by some public health experts, who argue that racial injustice is itself a major public health threat....

Heavy rains and chest-deep floodwaters inundated much of the Atlantic Seaboard yesterday, swamping coastal Georgia and parts of New Jersey and setting historic records in the Carolinas, which received the worst flooding. By 2 a.m. today, Hurricane Joaquin, the force behind the destructive storm surge and rainfall, was about 100 miles northwest of Bermuda, moving at 13 mph. Its winds had slowed to 85 mph, down from speeds well above 100 mph....

From Quanta (Find original story here). Every few months, Sarah Kocher makes a pilgrimage to France. Butterfly net in tow, the Harvard biologist travels the countryside — from the fields of Provence to the mountainous regions near Switzerland and Germany — in search of bees. Her target is Lasioglossum albipes, an unusual species of the so-called sweat bee that is capable of two very different lifestyles. Depending on where and to whom they’re born, these bees live either largely alone, raising their own young, or as part of a commune, where tasks such as caring for the young and foraging for food are divvied up and all members reap the rewards....

Software can transform a computer from a word processor to a number cruncher to a video telephone. But the underlying hardware is unchanged. Now, a type of transistor that can be switched with magnetism instead of electricity could make circuitry malleable too, leading to more efficient and reliable gadgets, from smart phones to satellites. Transistors, the simple switches at the heart of all modern electronics, generally use a tiny voltage to toggle between ‘on’ and ‘off’....

Anyone who watched Ethiopia’s Derartu Tulu win the 2009 New York City Marathon would agree: She was running. But what about high-speed elephants? Their five-ton frames preclude them from breaking into a bouncy jog, yet charging elephants can reach speeds on par with Tulu’s. But are they running? That question drove Belgium-based physiologist Norman Heglund to build an eight-meter-long platform equipped with 16 force-reading plates—each containing a complete computer system linked to a massive server—weighing a total of six tons....

The International Space Station’s final nine years are going to be busy. NASA just released a report outlining the big-picture goals for the rest of the orbiting lab’s operational life, which is expected to end with a controlled deorbit in January 2031. These goals are: enabling deep-space exploration, conducting research to benefit humanity, inspiring our species to greater heights, leading and encouraging international cooperation and helping the U.S. private spaceflight industry gain more momentum....

Researchers may not be able to spot the universe’s first stars in their telescopes yet, but that hasn’t stopped them from taking a close look at how those fireballs emerged from the cold, dark days when the universe was young. New three-dimensional simulations published in Science show the series of steps by which the uneven fog of hydrogen atoms present before stars took shape would have clumped into protostars—dense balls of hydrogen just 1 percent the mass of the sun....

Pity the pandalid shrimp. Fisheries not only harvest this cold-water crustacean in ever growing numbers but also ignore critical details of its life cycle. Pandalid shrimp are protandric hermaphrodites: all juveniles develop testicular tissues and spawn by releasing sperm into the water for external fertilization. Each shrimp can live for up to five years, and during breeding seasons hormonal changes can transform the animal into an egg-bearing female. An individual usually becomes a female once it has reached a threshold body size....

SALENTO, Italy—There is only one certainty in what has fast become a Dantesque drama to save world-renowned olive groves in Puglia from the deadly Xylella fastidiosa bacterium: olive trees, the very symbol of this southern Italian region, are dying en masse. Hundreds of acres of once-vibrant, postcard-perfect groves that have prospered for centuries are now cemeteries where twisted, dead tree trunks protrude like arboreal zombies from fertile soil in which grass and flowers easily grow....

Asian elephants, the largest land mammals on the continent, can weigh as much as a forklift. This suggests they shouldn’t be too hard to find. Yet somehow, the team from the Andhra Pradesh forest service couldn’t seem to locate the elephants that had lately been causing havoc—lumbering through villagers’ rice paddies, sugarcane fields, and banana crops. We sped down a road—first paved, then dirt. One man chattered on his cell phone while another panned the beam of his flashlight over the fields....

Key concepts Chemistry Acids Bases Ions Reactions Introduction Did you know that the juices in your stomach are nearly as acidic as lemon juice? Fortunately, your stomach has special cells that act as a barrier to the acid, preventing it from breaking down your stomach tissue. These cells produce a basic mucus that neutralizes the acid in your stomach. It turns out that your stomach is a pretty sophisticated chemistry laboratory!...

HIV is devastating because it attacks and destroys the body’s defense system against pathogens, leaving patients fatally exposed. So what would possess scientists to treat HIV-positive patients with drugs that suppress the immune system? Such therapy may in fact offer a new approach in the battle against AIDS. An unexpected feature of HIV infection is that in the first few weeks after invasion, the virus hijacks the immune system and sends it into overdrive....

The hot cup of tea. Its powers to soothe are as legendary as the supposed antiviral properties of chicken soup. Examples abound in literature. For instance, after Mrs. Inglethorp quarrels with her husband in Agatha Christie’s 1920 novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the maid is quick to suggest, “You will feel better after a nice hot cup of tea, m’m.” In real life, too, many of us turn to a piping-hot panacea—be it chamomile or cocoa—when we feel in need of comfort....

This story is a supplement to the feature “Using Causality to Solve the Puzzle of Quantum Spacetime” which was printed in the July 2008 issue of Scientific American. String theory The approach favored by most theoretical physicists, it is a theory not just of quantum gravity but of all matter and forces. It is based on the idea that particles (including the hypothetical ones that transmit gravity) are vibrating strings. Loop Quantum Gravity The main alternative to string theory, it invokes a new technique for applying quantum rules to Einstein’s general theory of relativity....

Scientific evidence that trees and green spaces are crucial to the well-being of people in urban areas has multiplied in recent decades. Conveniently, these findings have emerged just as Americans, already among the most urbanized people in the world, are increasingly choosing to live in cities. The problem—partly as a result of that choice—is that urban tree cover is now steadily declining across the U.S. A study in the May issue of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening reports metropolitan areas are experiencing a net loss of about 36 million trees nationwide every year....

By Meredith WadmanThe historic health-care bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on March 21 includes several lesser-known provisions that will significantly affect biomedical researchers, teaching hospitals and the biotechnology industry.The final legislation, which is expected to become law, would establish a new competitive grant program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Called the Cures Acceleration Network (CAN), this provision was written into the law by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The first text in Greek devoted entirely to India was written by Ctesias in the fourth century BCE. Only fragments of it survive. Yet he was probably the most widely quoted author on India, although Aristotle treated him with contempt. However, soon after Aristotle drew upon Ctesias’ writings, as did Plato, Xenophon and Plutarch....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The ancient Mediterranean diet revolved around four staples, which, even today, continue to dominate restaurant menus and kitchen tables: cereals, vegetables, olive oil and wine. Seafood, cheese, eggs, meat and many types of fruit were also available to those who could afford it. The Romans were also adept at processing and conserving their food using techniques from pickling to storage in honey....