Key concepts Earth Science Maps Cartography Introduction Have you ever spent time looking at a world map and imagined traveling to distant locations? Maybe you see yourself drawing your own map of your new discoveries and your journeys along the way. But Earth itself is round, so how do you create an accurate flat map? Throughout history cartographers around the world have found different methods for creating flat maps of Earth....
Evidence collected along the New Jersey coastline suggests that the collision of a comet or other extraterrestrial body 55 million years ago coincided with an intense warming period that is the closest comparison to today’s climate change. The period of warmth, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), was preceded by a rapid release of carbon into the atmosphere, with effects lasting for about 200,000 years. The increase in carbon raised the Earth’s temperature by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit....
Since I last sat down to write From the Editor a few short weeks ago, the toll of the coronavirus pandemic has been staggering: at press time, more than 180,000 deaths globally and countless lives upended. Most of the planet is still on lockdown. At times it seems unreal, although it shouldn’t. Many public health experts warned for a long time that something like this would happen without our taking precautionary measures....
The convenience and relatively low cost of cell phones in the U.S. has made them an indispensable part of life. Unless, of course, you are one of the 37 million or so hearing-impaired adults living in this country. But University of Washington (U.W.) in Seattle researchers are hoping to change that by developing software that lets callers communicate on their mobile phones using sign language via real-time video instead of being limited to text messaging....
An Intel wafer. Chipmakers may find it more difficult to justify the huge costs of developing the next generations of chip technology. (Credit: Intel) The end of Moore’s Law may ultimately be as much about economics as physics, says a DARPA director. “My thesis here is that it’s time to start planning for the end of Moore’s Law, and that it’s worth pondering how it will end, not just when,” Robert Colwell, director of the Microsystems Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, told CNET....
Since the dawn of the Web and ubiquitous free e-mail services over the past two decades, the need to secure personal information online has been evident but often ignored. Last month’s exposure of the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program for collecting data on individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, spying or other forms of malfeasance (pdf) has helped bring privacy issues back into the spotlight. In fact, the news about PRISM even encouraged some prominent Internet pioneers to condemn the practice and call for renewed efforts among Internet users and their service providers to encrypt more data, to protect it from prying eyes....
University of Oxford zoologist Cait Newport suspected the archerfish she was studying could recognize her. The tropical fish—known to spit jets of water at insect prey—would take aim at her when she walked into the laboratory. Newport and her colleagues showed in 2016 that her fish could indeed remember human visages. She trained them to spew water at a head-on view of a specific computer-rendered face, which they picked out 77 to 89 percent of the time....
Elliott Vichinsky estimates that at least 30% of his adult patients with sicklecell disease die from preventable causes. Red blood cells are supposed to be shaped like concave discs, but in people with sickle-cell disease, a mutation in a single gene collapses them into a crescent shape. The pointy sickles catch on each other and clog blood vessels. They cut off oxygen to limbs. They cause kidney failure, hypertension, lung problems and strokes — along with bouts of excruciating pain....
The size and complexity of the human brain sets us apart from other creatures. Now results published in the current issue of the journal Science suggest that the evolution of our gray matter is ongoing. The research, led by Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago, focused on two genes called microcephalin and ASPM. When these genes malfunction, the result is a condition called primary microcephaly, in which brain size is severely diminished....
Most animals and plants follow an internal clock timed to the rising and setting of the sun–the so-called circadian rhythm. But above the arctic circle, the sun never rises in winter and never sets in summer. For the reindeer living there, it might be tempting to sleep away half the year and remain awake throughout the long summer days. Instead, Norwegian researchers have determined that the creatures set their own schedule, grazing and resting in cycles of less than 24 hours for most of the year....
Japan is betting big on hydrogen and wants the rest of the world to join in. In March, the country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry set a target of 40,000 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on its roads by 2020 and 160 fueling stations, up from the 80 hydrogen stations operating right now. The agency also set an 800,000 yen ($8,000) price target for household polymer electrolyte fuel cells by 2019. The private sector is chipping in, as well....
IN THE MAY ISSUE, commentary in “Human Inventory Control” [SA Perspectives] about a California school that made students wear radio identity tags piqued the strongest opinions. Perhaps reflecting the dilemma of freedom versus security we face as a nation, the piece brought out, in roughly equal numbers, readers’ authoritarian and libertarian predilections, as well a novel observation on the convenience offered by a surveillance society. As Richard Brunt of Redondo Beach, Calif....
By Emiliano FeresinAn Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour – the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science.Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian citizen who has lived in Italy since 1993, admitted in 2007 to stabbing and killing Walter Felipe Novoa Perez on 10 March....
NASA chief Charlie Bolden went to bat for the agency’s imperiled next-generation space telescope Tuesday (July 12), telling members of Congress that the instrument has greater potential for discovery than the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. A proposed congressional budget bill announced last week would terminate NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an ambitious instrument with a history of delays and cost overruns. But NASA can deliver JWST to space for about the same price as Hubble, Bolden said — and the science returns would be even greater....
Ethylene is the world’s most popular industrial chemical. Consumers and industry demand 150 million tons every year, and most of it goes into countless plastic products, from electronics to textiles. To get ethylene, energy companies crack hydrocarbons from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of heat and energy, contributing to climate change–causing emissions. Scientists recently made ethylene by combining carbon dioxide gas, water and organic molecules on the surface of a copper catalyst inside an electrolyzer—a device that uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction....
Improvements in medical imaging technology have made computerized tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and other tools of radiology a routine part of any trip to the emergency room in the Western world. This is not the case, however, in many developing countries, which often lack the equipment, expertise and/or infrastructure to diagnose and treat health care problems with the help of radiology. A team of radiologists and humanitarians who returned last week from a 14-day fact-finding mission in western China and northern India are hoping to change this through the Radiology-Readiness program, an effort launched in October 2008 by a global nonprofit network of radiologists known as RAD-AID to evaluate the need for imaging technology in developing countries and determine how to deliver imaging equipment as well as training and maintenance expertise where it is needed....
By Dave Sherwood BRUNSWICK Maine (Reuters) - A rare early season snowstorm brought 50-miles-per-hour (80-kph) winds and record-breaking snowfall to parts of Maine overnight, leaving more than 140,000 homes and businesses without power on Monday. Governor Paul LePage declared a limited state of emergency as slippery driving conditions, downed trees and white-out conditions led to a spike in accidents and shut down many local roads. The massive, “nor’easter” storm dropped snow as far south as South Carolina, with snowflakes flying in coastal Charleston following a string of days over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27C)....
Davenport, Iowa, was prepared for a big flood. Then it got the flood it hadn’t prepared for. The city of 102,000 on the Iowa-Illinois border this week watched a fast-rising Mississippi River sweep over its postcard-view waterfront and inundate parks, pavilions and even a minor league baseball stadium that were all designed to absorb floodwater. But no one anticipated the water would get past River Drive, the four-lane thoroughfare that marks the boundary between the Mississippi floodplain and downtown....
The human eye is a biological marvel. Charles Darwin considered it one of the biggest challenges to his theory of evolution, famously writing: that “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree....
Ask an entomologist what makes a bee a bee, and you’ll likely get some version of “bees are just wasps that went vegetarian.” New research shows that isn’t true. Bees are actually omnivores, and their meat is microbes. This finding may open a new window on why bees are in trouble: Anything that disrupts the microbial community in a bee’s food, whether it is high heat linked to climate change, fungicides or another stressor, could be causing developing bees to starve....
