Posts

It isn’t possible to pinpoint exactly who is most responsible for humankind’s best invention of all time. I am, of course, talking about science—the process that lets us test our assumptions, gather evidence and analyze the results. That process has propelled advances in basic research and practical applications for everything from extending our lives to expanding our physical and mental horizons. Around the third century b.c. Aristotle and other ancient Greek philosophers put us on the right track, employing measurement to help learn about the world....

Since first appearing in India in late 2020, the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has become the predominant strain in much of the world. Researchers might now know why Delta has been so successful: people infected with it produce far more virus than do those infected with the original version of SARS-CoV-2, making it very easy to spread. According to current estimates, the Delta variant could be more than twice as transmissible as the original strain of SARS-CoV-2....

A number of animals employ existing objects to carry out certain tasks. Seagulls drop mollusks onto rocks to crack open a snack, for example. Corvids wield twigs to create insect-gathering hooks. Apes probe termite mounds with sticks. But humans have taken tool use to a level no other creature has ever matched. Technology innovation is so extensive that Michael Haslam of the University of Oxford has said, “It’s like an addition to our bodies....

UNITED NATIONS—The biggest land grab since colonial times is accelerating as nations scramble to claim writ over hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean floor, much of it believed to be rich in natural resources. Yesterday marked the 10-year deadline for most countries filing claims over extended seabeds with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a panel created under the U.N. Law of the Sea treaty to review and certify the legitimacy of claims....

More than one in five physicists from sexual and gender minorities in the United States report having been excluded, intimidated or harassed at work in the past year because of their gender or sexual identity or expression, a survey has found. According to the American Physical Society (APS) report LGBT Climate in Physics, published on March 15, transgender physicists and physics students faced the most hostile working environment, with almost half of the 37 surveyed reporting having experienced exclusionary and harassing treatment in the past year....

Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate economist, noted that the destruction of the medieval guilds was indispensable to the creation of the modern world. In his 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, he explained that “there has been a retrogression, an increasing tendency for particular occupations to be restricted to individuals licensed to practice them by the state.” Friedman’s warning came at a time when only 5 percent of jobs required licenses. Today the proportion has grown past 20 percent....

Trains are better than planes, if you have the time and dry land. I was reminded how much I prefer trains as I waited for one on a frigid December day in Waterbury, Vt.–a window of the tiny station featured a quaint and charming photo exhibit of great local train crashes. I haven’t checked every square foot of LaGuardia Airport, but I bet there isn’t a single display of entertaining and nostalgic photos of great aviation disasters....

Cholesterol may conjure up associations of cardiovascular disease, but growing evidence shows that the lipid has great importance in the health of the brain, where one quarter of the body’s cholesterol resides. A new study has found that a common alteration to a gene that controls the size of cholesterol particles slows a person’s rate of dementia and protects against Alzheimer’s disease. Individuals with the mutation—a swap of one amino acid (isoleucine) for another (valine) in the gene for cholesterol ester transfer protein (CETP)—had “significantly slower memory decline,” report researchers in a paper published online January 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association....

For planet-hunting astronomers seeking twins or even cousins of Earth around other stars, the universe has just become much less lonely. To qualify as close planetary kin, another world must be rocky and reside in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold “habitable zone” of its star, bathed in approximately as much starlight as Earth. There—if it possesses an atmosphere neither crushingly thick nor vanishingly thin—such a world could harbor a temperate climate where life-giving liquid water might pool in lakes, seas and oceans....

The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex was first described by scientists more than a century ago. After that, however, additional tyrannosaur relatives were slow to surface, leaving important details about the group unknown. But in the past year half a dozen new tyrannosaur species have been described, and during the past decade the known diversity of tyrannosaurs has more than doubled. These finds have fleshed out details about the emergence of their kind over evolutionary time, including the quintessential carnivore....

With less than a year before he leaves office, US President Barack Obama is making a strong push to increase spending on scientific research. His fiscal year 2017 budget plan, released on February 9, calls for a 4% bump in research and development funding across the federal government. But science advocates and lawmakers alike say that they’re unhappy with Obama’s decision to boost science by relying on ‘mandatory’ spending. Normally, research funding is ‘discretionary’, meaning that Congress decides how much money each agency will receive....

It likely comes as no surprise that many common household chemicals and medical products as well as industrial and agricultural chemicals, may irritate human skin temporarily or, worse, cause permanent, corrosive burns. In order to prevent undue harm regulators in the U.S. and beyond require safety testing of many substances to identify their potential hazards and to ensure that the appropriate warning label appears on a product. Traditionally, such skin tests have been done on live animals—although in recent decades efforts to develop humane approaches, along with ones that are more relevant to people have resulted in new models based on laboratory-grown human skin....

Millions of photoreceptor cells residing in the human retina gather light and transmit signals to the brain. When these light-collecting cells die, they take the person’s sight with them. Medical researchers hoping to reverse blindness have turned their gaze toward stem cells, and recent experiments have shown that these cells could replace photoreceptors lost in macular degeneration. As the most common form of blindness, macular degeneration affects 10 percent of Americans older than 65 years....

Key concepts Soil Water Moisture Colors Introduction Have you ever taken a step onto what appeared to be dry ground, only to find yourself ankle deep in mud? Yikes! When you walk through damp soil, it can be a very messy experience. How can you tell if soil is wet or dry before you step on it? In this science activity you will investigate whether the color of soil can help you determine how dry or wet it is....

A month spent on a barren island perched off the western coast of Africa allowed NASA scientists to fly a sensor-laden airplane into storms blowing off the continent. Because such storms can gather strength from warm ocean waters and spin up into hurricanes, this was not simply a daredevil mission but a scientific expedition to track such storms from birth to death. With most of the team back in the U....

When a clot blocks off circulation to the brain during an ischemic stroke, the loss of oxygen and nutrients can cause tissue to become damaged and die. Physicians have effective methods of clearing these occlusions: clot-busting proteins called tissue plasminogen activators and thrombectomy, a surgical technique. Removing the blockage is critical, but even after blood flow is restored, complications brought on by inflammation can lead to more cell death. Despite a decades-long search, scientists have yet to pinpoint effective ways of protecting the brain from poststroke damage....

The first microbe to live entirely by artificial genetic instructions began proliferating in a test tube in late March at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md. Venter and his colleagues built a synthetic genome for a strain of the Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium. The feat made headlines because it marked a major step in the creation of life in the laboratory. But it also demonstrated a refinement of the tools of genetic engineering that, the researchers hope, will eventually offer new insight into basic genetic processes and revolutionize biotechnology and drug development....

A proposal to create a “research bank” that would be administered by a public–private partnership is being floated as a way to bolster U.S. research agencies funding in times of austerity. The idea is the brainchild of Michael Lubell, the director of public affairs at the American Physical Society, and Tom Culligan, the former legislative director for Representative Frank Wolf, the recently retired chair of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds the US National Science Foundation....

I was a young African-American woman in 1996, determined to do my best at Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s foremost technology companies, when I was named to lead an integrated-product team for a mission-critical U.S. Navy program. I was confident in my abilities as a software engineer, and I had been intimately involved in writing the program requirements. But the scope of the program was much broader than software development....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Aggressors: Ancient Rome is a turn-based 4X strategy game in which you control the fate of an ancient Mediterranean state around the time of the Punic Wars. You build cities, raise and control armies, engage in diplomacy, conquer territories, research new technologies and expand your empire. Campaign Map in Aggressors: Ancient RomeJan van der Crabben (CC BY-NC-SA)...