Posts

Dutch celebrity daredevil Wim Hof has endured lengthy ice-water baths, hiked to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts and made his mark in Guinness World Records with his ability to withstand cold. Now he has made a mark on science as well. Researchers have used Hof’s methods of mental and physical conditioning to train 12 volunteers to fend off inflammation. The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that people can learn to modulate their immune responses — a finding that has raised hopes for patients who have chronic inflammatory disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease....

DEAL ISLAND, Md.—The ghost forest is creeping into Deal Island. Stands of tall pines stick out like pale arboreal skeletons throughout the marsh on this island lashed by the Chesapeake Bay. The trees are dying farther and farther inland as salt water poisons the soil, an ominous sign that the rising sea is reclaiming this land. Some on the island and the peninsula that connects it to eastern Maryland can trace their ancestry back 300 years or more....

From Nature magazine The past few years have not been the best of times for building observatories. But in a world of budget constraints and schedule delays, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is bucking the trend. The US-led project to build the world’s most powerful sky-mapping machine has nailed down inter­national partnerships to fund project operations, which are intended to start in 2022. The commitments could help it to secure a final blessing from a key group: the board of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which met this week in Washington DC....

The interactive USDA Plant Hardiness Map allows users to view the plants most likely to thrive in any U.S. region. Image by United States Department of Agriculture. Chihuahuan desert plants like autumn sage, hummingbird mints, and desert willow trees thrive in the gardens that David Salman, president of Santa Fe Greenhouses, oversees. This wouldn’t be unusual…in the Chihuahuan desert. But Salman’s display gardens are hundreds of miles north of the desert in Santa Fe....

Some 290 million years ago a four-legged, plant-eating creature the size of large dog roamed what is now central Germany. It did not carry itself like most other tetrapods known from that time, belly low to the ground and limbs splayed out to the sides; instead it walked taller, tucking its limbs under its body for a more erect posture. That is the portrait emerging from a new multidisciplinary study that has reconstructed the locomotion of this long-extinct animal, called Orobates pabsti—in part by developing a robot version of the beast to test the physics of various gaits....

Back in the 18th century, German physician Franz Mesmer peddled a concept called animal magnetism. Creatures contain a universal fluid, he asserted, that when blocked in flow, caused sickness. Mesmer used magnetized objects to redirect that flow in patients, initiating unusual body sensations, fainting, vomiting or violent convulsions that ended in profound salubrious effects. Skeptical, Benjamin Franklin and French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier simulated one of Mesmer’s typical sessions in 1784. They asked people suffering from ailments ranging from asthma to epilepsy to hug “magnetized” trees....

Researchers have altered the microbiomes of babies born through caesarean section by swabbing them with microbes from their mothers’ vaginas, they report in a first-of-its kind study published on February 1 in Nature Medicine. The procedure — tested on just four newborns — is an attempt to simulate the microbial exposures that babies born through caesarean section (C-section) surgeries lack. C-section babies have a slightly higher risk of developing obesity, asthma and other ailments than do children born vaginally....

By Janice Neumann (Reuters Health) - Teenaged boys who spend too many hours in front of the computer or television without participating in enough weight-bearing exercise could develop weaker bones as they age, a small Norwegian study suggests. Childhood and the teen years are critical periods for growing bones and establishing a bone density level that can affect osteoporosis risk much later in life. “We found a relationship between higher screen time and lower bone mineral density in boys,” said Anne Winther, a physiotherapist at University Hospital of North Norway in Tromso and the study’s first author....

Long ago in the Gambia, West Africa, a two-year-old boy named Ebrahim almost died of malaria. Decades later Dr. Ebrahim Samba is still reminded of the fact when he looks in a mirror. That is because his mother–;who had already buried several children by the time he got sick–;scored his face in a last-ditch effort to save his life. The boy not only survived but eventually became one of the most well-known leaders in Africa: Regional Director of the World Health Organization....

On August 25, 1989, in Pasadena, Calif., NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was bustling with activity. Scientists, reporters and even a bona fide rock star, Chuck Berry, had flocked to the facility’s mission control to commemorate the moment the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew shy of 5,000 kilometers above Neptune’s north pole the previous evening—marking its closest pass to the ice giant. “The level of excitement is the highest I’ve ever seen here,” Carl Sagan later said on a CNN television segment....

As if emerging from a coma, the US government slowly came back to life today after politicians agreed on a deal to fund federal operations, thereby ending the 16-day shutdown that had halted most government research. Workers returning to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Washington DC headquarters were greeted this morning by US vice-president Joseph Biden — bearing a few symbolic breakfast muffins — and a less-sweet memo that explained, among other things, that scheduled travel will not restart until 20 October....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Forty years ago, NASA launched Voyager I and II to explore the outer solar system. The twin spacecraft both visited Jupiter and Saturn; from there Voyager I explored the hazy moon Titan, while Voyager II became the first (and, to date, only) probe to explore Uranus and Neptune. Since they move too quickly and have too little propellant to stop themselves, both spacecraft are now on what NASA calls their Interstellar Mission, exploring the space between the stars as they head out into the galaxy....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Sub-Saharan Africa was explored by Roman expeditions between 19 BCE - 90 CE, most likely in an effort to locate the sources of valuable trade goods and establish routes to bring them to the seaports on the coast of North Africa, thereby minimizing disruption in trade caused by conflicts among indigenous tribes and kingdoms....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Persian literature derives from a long oral tradition of poetic storytelling. The first recorded example of this tradition is the Behistun Inscription of Darius I (the Great, r. 522-486 BCE), carved on a cliff-face c. 522 BCE during the period of the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550-330 BCE)....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period (3150-2613 BCE) lay the foundation of what would become one of the most impressive civilizations of the ancient world. The kings of this era, except for Narmer and Djoser, are often overlooked but were responsible for some of the most defining aspects of Egyptian culture....

December 1961 Protein Structure “We looked at something no one before us had seen: a three-dimensional picture of a protein molecule in all its complexity. This first picture was a crude one, and two years later we had an almost equally exciting experience, extending over many days that were spent feeding data to a fast computing machine, of building up by degrees a far sharper picture of this same molecule. The protein was myoglobin, and our new picture was sharp enough to enable us to deduce the actual arrangement in space of nearly all of its 2,600 atoms....

There are a million ways to procrastinate. Instead of doing our work, we might find ourselves practicing our favorite Fortnite dance, shopping online for the perfect mullet wig, or scrolling through baby back rib recipes before remembering we’re vegetarian. Procrastination might even disguise itself as productivity, like cleaning our desk or making a healthy (yet perhaps unnecessarily elaborate) snack. Procrastination is tricky to overcome because it involves a certain amount of self-deception....

It’s a moment football fans relish: A running back breaks through the line and heads up the field for a big play. A defender streaks toward the ball carrier, intent on stopping his forward progress as quickly as possible. The spectacularly violent collision that follows brings the cheering crowd to its feet. That hit—and the dozens more like it in any given game—have helped make American football enormously popular worldwide. Such electrifying plays have also placed the sport in a great quandary because the concussive forces at work, particularly when helmets collide, put players at risk for traumatic brain injury....

A fundamental goal of neuroscience has always been to deduce the brain systems that underlie such basic drives as hunger, thirst and sex. In 1956 the well-known physiologist James Olds wrote an article for Scientific American, called “Pleasure Centers in the Brain,” that described how a rat kept without food for a day was lured down a platform by a tasty meal. En route to dinner, it received a pleasurable electric shock....

The earliest trigger of Alzheimer’s disease may be traffic jams occurring on the brain’s cellular highways. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego who led a multi-institutional study have found that prior to the formation of the destructive plaques that cause Alzheimer’s, cellular debris accumulates along axons, whose long, thin fibers shuttle chemicals from neuron to neuron and from one brain neighborhood to the next. Clogging these transportation routes promotes the generation of plaque....