Posts

No geoengineering methods are ready for use to combat climate change, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released late last month, citing concerns about cost, effectiveness and adverse consequences. “Climate engineering technologies do not now offer a viable response to global climate change,” GAO said in the report commissioned by former House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.). Interest in the technologies has grown amid the difficulty of enacting national and international policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions....

Though the official numbers aren’t in for December, it’s likely that 2014 will go down as the planet’s hottest year on record, at least since scientists started keeping tabs on global temperature. Data from three major climate-tracking groups agree: The combined land and ocean surface temperatures hit new highs this year, according to the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom’s Met Office and the World Meteorological Association....

This past April 2, on World Autism Awareness Day, Apple released a heartstrings-tugging commercial depicting an autistic boy typing, in part with the assistance of a facilitator, a message on an iPad that voiced: “So many people can’t understand that I have a mind. All they see is a person who is not in control. But now you can hear me. The iPad helps me to see not only my words, but to hold onto my thoughts....

Editor’s Note: This story, originally printed in the July 2007 issue of Scientific American, is being posted in light of two new studies showing that angiogenesis inhibitors, discussed in this article, may actually make tumors bigger, not smaller. More than 500 million years ago a set of specialized enzymes and proteins evolved to defend our primitive ancestors against assaults from the outside world. If a microbe breached the shell of some Cambrian-era fauna, the members of this early vintage immune system would stage a savage but coordinated attack on these interlopers—punching holes in cell walls, spitting out chemical toxins or simply swallowing and digesting the enemy whole....

From A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth, by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink. Copyright © 2015, Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Press. Perhaps it is terrestrial chauvinism, or perhaps it is true that only life such as our own is possible in the universe. But the search for exoplanets has, at its core, the central goal of finding other “Earths....

An isolated population of Arctic foxes that dines only on marine animals seems to be slowly succumbing to mercury poisoning. The foxes on Mednyi Island — one of Russia’s Commander Islands in the Bering Sea — are a subspecies of Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) that may have remained isolated for thousands of years. They were once numerous enough to support a small yet thriving group of fur hunters. After humans abandoned the settlement in the 1970s, the fox population began to crash, falling from more than 1,000 animals to fewer than 100 individuals today....

Pioneering ecologist Joseph Grinnell in 1914 began a seven year survey of the animals living in Yosemite National Park in California. Even then, human impacts such as the transformation of the Central Valley into an agricultural oasis were changing the landscape and the animals who lived there. Nearly a century later, one cause for the transformation of California wildlife has come to overshadow all others: global warming. Now scientists have found that a rise of 6....

The debut of the Segway Human Transporter in 2001 surely set the bar for anticipatory hype. Remember “Ginger”? Or was the code name “IT”? But sales of the “revolutionary,” self-balancing two-wheeler never approached those of a truly paradigm-changing innovation, such as Apple’s iPod. Even five years after the Segway’s much ballyhooed introduction, fewer than 24,000 of them cruise the world’s sidewalks, pathways, pedestrian malls, and (local laws permitting) bicycle lanes and streets....

Celebrating Einstein The opportunities for groundbreaking new discoveries as profound as those of Albert Einstein, whose achievements were documented in your September issue, have diminished. The review and approval processes for obtaining research funding from the federal government are not friendly to new ideas and approaches. Those who have demonstrated high levels of skill and creativity should be given more freedom to explore innovative approaches approved by a review system that does not eat up half their careers in chasing funding....

With billions of pounds of salt spread on U.S. roads every year, waterways in the nation’s wintry cities are getting saltier. And, according to new research, the salt, or sodium chloride, in rivers remains toxic not just in winter, but throughout two-thirds of the year. In icy Wisconsin, where salt is liberally dumped on roads, the Menomonee and the Kinnickinnic have chloride levels in late winter and early spring 10 to 15 times higher than a federal level set to protect fish, amphibians and tiny crustaceans....

BOGOTÁ – Nearly a mile above this city of almost eight million is a rugged, fog-shrouded world, silent except for the trickle of water and whispering wind pushing through the treeless tundra. This is Chingaza, a national park 40 miles from Bogotá in the eastern range of the Colombian Andes. Known as páramos, these ecosystems at more than 11,000 feet above sea level exist only in Central and South America, the majority in Colombia....

Exercise has been shown to help the heart, whereas a lazy lifestyle can be a major risk factor for heart disease. But few studies have examined how exercise impacts health at different ages. Now researchers have shown in a small study that even those who take up exercise after age 40 derive significant health effects. Epidemiologist Dietrich Rothenbacher of the University of Heidelberg and his colleagues surveyed 312 patients–mostly men–between the ages of 40 and 68 who suffered from coronary heart disease and 479 volunteers matching the patients in age and sex....

My three sons are nearly all teenagers, and some of the details of their earliest years have begun to blur. Which boy was it who said that funny thing about the dog? Who lost a tooth while crossing the street? But I remember the minutes immediately after each child’s birth as sharply as if the boys had entered the world this morning. Given my new baby to hold, I hugged him to my chest, caressed his back and kissed the top of his tiny head....

Like other young researchers in graduate school, Evelyn Valdez-Ward has a lot on her plate. An ecology student at the University of California, Irvine, she has been running field experiments and scrounging for research funding. But, above all, she is worried about whether she can stay in the United States. “My first year has been a real whirlwind,” she says. “On top of how difficult grad school is, Trump got elected....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. It is rare when a new find creates renewed interest in an old subject. Here, the new find is a leontocephaline (lion-headed) figure of unknown provenance, weighing 5.8 kg and 37 cm in height with a width of 14 cm. Its base is partially broken, so it is unclear if the figure was standing on a globe, an expected position, or not....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Located in modern Turkey, Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. The discovery of this stunning 10,000 year old site in the 1990s CE sent shock waves through the archaeological world and beyond, with some researchers even claiming it was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Library of Hadrian (aka Hadrian’s Library) in Athens was constructed circa 132-134 CE as part of Roman Emperor Hadrian’s grand re-building plan for the city. The library was the largest in Athens and with its columned façade and high surrounding walls, built to impress. The building was used to store important literary works and legal and administrative documents as well as offer a place to hear lectures and host various philosophical schools....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Howard Carter’s 1922 CE discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun was world-wide news but, following fast upon it, the story of the mummy’s curse (also known as The Curse of the Pharaoh) became even more popular and continues to be in the present day. Tombs, pharaohs, and mummies attracted significant attention before Carter’s find but that was nowhere near the level of interest the public showed afterwards....

Leslie Rosenberg’s attempt to understand the universe resembles a makeshift home hot-water heater tank, capped with some wires and shoved into a large, underground refrigerator. The experiment, housed in a laboratory adjacent to his office at the University of Washington, is a supercooled, magnetized vacuum chamber equipped with a sensitive detector that listens for the microwave “ping” of passing particles called axions. These particles are invisible and, so far, entirely hypothetical....

By Lawrence HurleyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday partially upheld U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations issued by former President George W. Bush’s administration that set standards for ozone pollution.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sent a portion of the regulations back to the agency for further consideration but left the entirety of the rule in place while the revisions are carried out.Ozone pollution forms when air pollutants react with sunlight and has been linked to health problems that include decreased lung function....