Posts

A world without color appears to be missing crucial elements. And indeed it is. Colors not only enable us to see the world more precisely, they also create emergent qualities that would not exist without them. The color photograph on the opposite page, for example, reveals autumnal leaves in the placid water of a fountain, along with the reflections of trees and of a dark-blue afternoon sky behind them. In a black-and-white picture of the same scene, the leaves are less distinct, the dark-blue sky is absent, the reflections of the light are weak, the water itself is hardly visible, and the difference in apparent depth among the sky, trees and floating leaves is all but gone....

From the 1940s through the 1970s there was no major warming trend in the average surface temperature of Earth. At the same time, the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is responsible for the weather patterns known as El Niño and La Niña that can swing global average temperatures by as much as 0.3 degree Celsius, was anomalously cold. For the past decade or so the tropical Pacific has again gone cold—more Niña than Niño—and a new study suggests that the phenomenon may explain the recent “pause” in global warming of average temperatures....

One morning in my fourth year of medical school, a vascular surgeon at the University Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, invited me to visit the orthopedics inpatient ward. “Today we will talk to a ghost,” the doctor said. “Do not get frightened. Try to stay calm. The patient has not accepted what has happened yet, and he is very shaken.” A boy around 12 years old with hazy blue eyes and blond curly hair sat before me....

Llamas are not just for transportation anymore. It turns out that the animals’ blood could be useful for detecting all sorts of maladies in the surrounding environment–from deadly pathogens to industrial emissions. A research effort has done just that, manipulating a rare type of antibody found in llamas to make an inexpensive and diverse biosensor. Normal mammalian antibodies are Y-shaped compounds made up of two different protein chains: one heavy and one light....

Mysterious flashes of light that show up on satellite images of Earth’s landmasses have puzzled researchers for a couple of years. Now, scientists have finally pinpointed the culprit: ice crystals floating high above the planet’s surface. The finding could help refine ideas of how clouds regulate the Earth’s temperature. And it could aid scientists looking for Earth-like exoplanets orbiting other stars. Glinting exoplanets may contain water and be “potential Earth twins”, says Tyler Robinson, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study....

Researchers have been trolling Twitter for insights into the human condition since shortly after the site launched in 2006. In aggregate, the service provides a vast database of what people are doing, thinking and feeling. But the research tools at scientists’ disposal are highly imperfect. Keyword searches, for example, return many hits but offer a poor sense of overall trends. When computer scientist James H. Martin of the University of Colorado at Boulder searched for tweets about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, he found 14 million....

In the 230-acre forest beyond steve kelling’s wall-to-wall office windows, 50 species of migratory birds—warbling vireos, rose-breasted grosbeaks, cedar waxwings—have arrived overnight. On this early May afternoon their calls ring through the forest in a giant songbird mash-up. How Kelling, or anyone here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., can concentrate on work is a mystery. Of course, the scene beyond the window is the work. Kelling pulls up an animated map on his laptop....

1.Hunt SA, Abraham WT, Chin MH, et al. 2005. ACC/AHA 2005 guideline update for the diagnosis and management of chronic heart failure in the adult: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Writing Committee to Update the 2001 Guidelines for the Evaluation and Management of Heart Failure): developed in collaboration with the American College of Chest Physicians and the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation: endorsed by the Heart Rhythm Society....

From Nature magazine Science-publishing ventures continually battle for market space, yet most operate on one of only two basic business models. Either subscribers pay for access, or authors pay for each publication—often thousands of dollars—with access being free. But in what publishing experts say is a radical experiment, an open-access venture called PeerJ, which formally announced its launch on 12 June, is carving out a fresh niche. It is asking its authors for only a one-off fee to secure a lifetime membership that will allow them to publish free, peer-reviewed research papers....

Instants after the big bang, the universe underwent a burst of rapid expansion known as inflation. In this period, according to standard cosmology, tiny ripples of energy seeded galaxies and the other large-scale structures we see today. But no one can explain how the ripples formed in the first place. Three physicists now say the key to this riddle lies in quantum gravity, a still tentative theory in which gravity would display the same fuzzy “uncertainty” typical of subatomic physics....

Accurately predicting the on-the-ground impacts of climate change remains one of the thorniest challenges facing scientists, regulators, planners and insurers. But as climate disasters occur with alarming frequency, experts are relying more heavily on predictive technologies that leverage supercomputing and artificial intelligence to identify the where, how and why of climate impacts. Known as “climate risk analytics,” the delivery of data-based predictive information about risks associated with wind, floods, fires, droughts and other climate disasters is rapidly proliferating, according to experts....

Imagine this situation: A woman misses her period and worries she might be pregnant. She doesn’t want to be, so she schedules an appointment with a health care provider and tells them she wishes to get her period back. The provider prescribes her a course of “period pills.” She gets her period again, and that’s the end of it. Such a scenario is not purely hypothetical. Period pills are the same ones used in medication abortion—misoprostol alone or in combination with mifepristone—which could imply that menstrual regulation is just another name for early abortion....

Quantum physicists are about to get their own playground in space. NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory, scheduled to launch to the International Space Station on 20 May, is set to be the coldest place in the known Universe. Researchers will use the lab to probe quantum phenomena that would be impossible to observe on Earth. The US$83-million mission will be used to study quantum mechanics on the macroscopic scale by making a state of matter known as a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC)....

A team proposing the use of a flying rover to explore Saturn’s moon Titan, and another that wants to send a sample-collecting mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, are the finalists in NASA’s search for its next interplanetary destination, officials announced Wednesday. The competition began in earnest in late April, when 12 teams submitted proposals to fly spacecraft to a wide variety of targets in our solar system. Each finalist team will receive $4 million to firm up its concept by mid-2019, when NASA will choose one to fully develop as the fourth member of the space agency’s “New Frontiers” program....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. For over three centuries, the ancient Maya flourished in Mesoamerica. They built giant stone pyramids surrounded by dense jungle, used a calendrical system that made many believe that 2012 would be the end of the world, and created a writing system that is as beautiful as it is complex....

The skeletons of six cats, including four kittens, found in an Egyptian cemetery may push back the date of cat domestication in Egypt by nearly 2,000 years. The bones come from a cemetery for the wealthy in Hierakonpolis, which served as the capital of Upper Egypt in the era before the pharaohs. The cemetery was the resting place not just for human bones, but also for animals, which perhaps were buried as part of religious rituals or sacrifices....

What would happen to Earth if the moon were only half as massive? Neil F. Comins, author of What If the Moon Didn’t Exist? and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Maine, cuts this mystery down to size: A less massive moon would be closer to Earth, for starters: the tidal forces that slowly widen the moon’s orbit around Earth would be curtailed. There would be profound effects on our planet and its denizens as well....

Find a breast cancer tumor when it is tiny, and a woman will probably beat the disease. Find that same malignancy when it is larger or has spread to other organs, and she is far more likely to die, even after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Finding breast tumors before they turn deadly is a challenge and one that medical technology has so far failed to master. “We desperately need better breast cancer screening tools,” says Otis Webb Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society....

Some of us sing, and some of us just mouth the lyrics, but we all rely on our brain to coordinate even the simplest motor behaviors. Scientists interested in the brain activity behind motion often use birdsong as a model because certain songs are sung the same way every time, providing a naturally controlled setting for investigation. Now researchers have solved a long-standing mystery about the hierarchy of brain regions essential for birdsong using a chilly technique that could tease out the interconnected processes behind many complex actions....

Keeping people healthy in space has been a major challenge since the first days of spaceflight. That is partly why NASA has always favored the crème de la healthy crème of human specimens for its missions. Now, however, the burgeoning business of commercial spaceflight is poised to open the galaxy’s doors to a much larger—and unhealthier—pool of passengers. If private spaceflight companies keep their promise to allow people of average health to fly, space tourism could become a $1....