Posts

Whether you fight like a girl or like a boy is hardwired into your nervous system—at least if you are a fruit fly. A research team at Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna discovered that a fruit fly gene named fruitless, known to be involved in courtship behavior, also plays an important role in the biology of aggression, directing sex-specific fighting patterns. Male and female fruit flies fight with distinctly different styles....

Scientific advances can be smart, tantalizing, bizarre— and still never make it out of the lab. To change the world, a new idea must have a path from drawing board to practical products and manufacturing processes: in the parlance of Silicon Valley, it must “scale.” Nobody can predict the future, but each of the 10 breakthroughs on the following pages has the potential to make it big. We begin with a full-length article on a new way to design materials atom by atom, using supercomputers and the equations of quantum mechanics, which could take much of the perspiration out of innovation....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Greek Larnax from the Royal Tomb in VerginaDimboukas (Public Domain) Discovery It is now 42 years since Professor Manolis Andronikos, the head of excavations at Vergina in northern Greece, discovered an unlooted Macedonian tomb, the burial site of the family of Alexander the Great. By November 1977 CE, 60,000 cubic metres of soil had been carefully removed from the 100-metre-high and 12-metre-wide earthen hill known as the “Great Tumulus” in order to reveal the tomb’s façade....

GENEVA (Reuters) - Costa Rica wants information from Nicaragua about the potential environmental impact of a planned $50 billion canal project that would rival the Panama Canal, Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera said on Tuesday. The canal construction plan entails dredging Lake Nicaragua to almost twice its current depth. This could cause sedimentation in San Juan river, whose southern bank is Costa Rican territory. “This is why we asked Nicaragua to tell us how they were planning to prevent the sedimentation of the San Juan river....

As a nutrition professor, I am constantly asked why nutrition advice seems to change so much and why experts so often disagree. Whose information, people ask, can we trust? I’m tempted to say, “Mine, of course,” but I understand the problem. Yes, nutrition advice seems endlessly mired in scientific argument, the self-interest of food companies and compromises by government regulators. Nevertheless, basic dietary principles are not in dispute: eat less; move more; eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and avoid too much junk food....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the so-called “smart grid” I’ve been hearing about, and how can it save energy and money? – Larry Burger, Litchfield, CT America’s electricity grid is built upon what many consider to be an antiquated principle: Make large amounts of electricity and have it always available to end users whether they need it or not. It’s much like the way most home water heaters work in keeping water constantly hot even when it is not being used....

Through thousands of years of selective breeding, people all over the world have transformed dinky wild plants into mighty marvels of modern agriculture. Corn was once a scraggly grass with tiny cobs. The broccoli we grow today develops its green flowering heads much faster than older varieties. And supermarket tomatoes are far larger than their wild ancestors. But at some point the demands of industrial agriculture started to compromise texture, nutrition and, in particular, flavor....

DRUG ADVERTISING Your criticism of televised ads for prescription drugs in “This Drug Ad Is Not Right for You” [Science Agenda] is right on. These ads lead patients to push prescriptions on their doctors by saying that they will find another physician if their request is not met, and together with the extraordinary pricing in the drug industry, they are huge burdens on the American public. I was in active practice for 40 years....

Rivers may carry as much as 1,000 tons of mercury to the world’s coastlines every year, researchers report in Nature Geoscience. This would make rivers the main way this potent neurotoxin reaches coastal oceans, where it most threatens public health. Human mercury exposure is largely linked to coastal fisheries, where the heavy metal accumulates in marine life that we eat. But relatively little of this pollution originates along coastlines; much comes from inland sources such as wildfires, mines and coal-burning power plants....

In Southern California, scientists knew the missing methane had to be coming from somewhere. Was it dairies? Landfills? Natural seeps? Oil and gas operations? Emissions of methane from the Los Angeles basin had been estimated in the mid-2000s as part of the state’s landmark cap-and-trade bill, known as A.B. 32, which regulates emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas. But later measurements of the air in the region showed there was a lot more methane being emitted than was accounted for, more than a third as much....

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Random House, 2012) by Charles Duhigg In 2010, a cognitive neuroscientist named Reza Habib asked twenty-two people to lie inside an MRI and watch a slot machine spin around and around. I spoke to Reza Habib when I was reporting my book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, because I was researching the case of a woman named Angie Bachmann who had lost of $1 million gambling, and then had claimed in court that she shouldn’t be held accountable for her losses, because the casinos had taken advantage of gambling habits over which she had no control....

It’s best to treat the good with the bad, new medical insights into brain attacks suggest. Doctors are beginning to think the side of the brain opposite to a clot in stroke patients is just as important a target for treatment as the damaged tissue when it comes to a faster recovery. Only in the past few years have researchers discovered that the uninjured side of the brain becomes more active after a stroke to help its fallen neighbor....

By Matt KaplanScientists have elucidated the mechanism by which female ducks thwart forced copulations.Unwanted sex is an unpleasant fact of life for many female ducks. After carefully selecting a mate, developing a relationship and breeding, a female must face groups of males that did not find mates and want nothing more than a quick fling.Now a team led by Patricia Brennan, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn....

Alzheimer’s disease and its associated dementia can be a scary prospect for individuals and families faced with it. Between 2.4 million and 4.5 million Americans suffer from this debilitating, incurable disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. That figure is expected to rise as the baby boomers age. Community memory screening events are becoming increasingly popular as individuals and their families seek to detect dementia in its earliest stages—before it destroys patients’ memories and thinking skills....

By Jeff Tollefson of Nature magazineReady or not, the era of big data is coming to ecology. After years of discussion and debate, the United States is moving forward with an environmental moni­toring network that promises to help transform a traditionally small-scale, local science into a continental-scale group enterprise.The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will consist of 20 ‘core’ observatories representing distinct eco-regions throughout the United States (see map). These will be bolstered by temporary stations that can be relocated wherever data need to be collected....

You may have heard that the appendix is a relic of our past, like the hind leg bones of a whale. Bill Parker, a professor of surgery at the Duke University School of Medicine, heard that, too; he just disagrees. Parker thinks the appendix serves as a “nature reserve” for beneficial bacteria in our gut. When we get a severe gut infection such as cholera (which happened often during much of our history and is common in many regions even today), the bene­ficial bacteria in our gut are depleted....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Female gladiators in ancient Rome – referred to by modern-day scholars as gladiatrix – may have been uncommon but they did exist. Evidence suggests that a number of women participated in the public games of Rome even though this practice was often criticized by Roman writers and attempts were made to regulate it through legislation....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The death of the philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (l. c. 370-415 CE) has long been considered the “passage of philosophy to religion”, exemplifying the transition from the pagan values of antiquity to those of the new religion of Christianity. Symbols of older beliefs were destroyed to make room for the new and among these was Hypatia....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Until Sir Arthur Evans unearthed the palace of Knossos, the half-man-half bull killed by Theseus was considered just a popular legend; archaeology changed that perception. King Minos, of Crete, fought hard with his brother to ascend the throne and, having won the kingship and exiled his brother, prayed to the god of the sea, Poseidon, for a snow white bull as a sign of the god’s approval....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) transformed every aspect of the cultures the Norse came in contact with. The Vikings usually struck without warning and, in the early years, left with their plunder and slaves to be sold as quickly as they had come. In time, they began to colonize the regions they attacked but, whether it was a quick raid for profit or a long-term campaign for land and power, every military operation was organized and led by a skilled warrior....