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Scientists are on a journey to uncover clues about hydrogen’s most elusive phase—solid metallic hydrogen. The prize for discovering it could be room temperature superconductivity—a world first. But research groups are taking different paths to the same goal, with some now questioning what they will even find if they ever get there. The concept of a hydrogen metal was first proposed in 1935 by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntingdon, who theorised that under immense pressures a molecular hydrogen lattice will break apart into atomic hydrogen with electrons flowing freely through the material....

It’s no surprise that soft materials are more pleasing to the touch than rough ones, but a recent study found that they can actually improve the cognitive and emotional skills of older adults. In the research, published in the October 2012 issue of Geriatrics and Gerontology International, participants were divided into three groups, each of which completed twice-weekly activities that involved working with either a piece of velvet, canvas or Velcro....

The global obesity epidemic is one of the greatest health challenges facing humanity. Some 600 million, or 13 percent, of the world’s adults were obese in 2014—a figure that had more than doubled around the globe since 1980. At present, 37 percent of American adults are obese, and an additional 34 percent are overweight. If current trends continue, health experts predict that half of all Americans will be obese by 2030....

Those who have endured the rigors of cancer therapy talk about “chemo brain,” the memory and concentration problems that accompany radiation and chemotherapy. Now researchers led by neurologist Michelle L. Monje of Harvard University have found the root of these cognitive difficulties: damaged stem cells. In the hippocampus, a brain region vital for laying down new memories, “stem cells continue to add new circuit elements,” says Stanford University neuroscientist Theo D....

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - In the early years of the Jurassic Period, when the world was recovering from one of the worst mass extinctions on record, a modest meat-eating dinosaur from Wales helped pave the way for some of the most fearsome predators ever to stalk the Earth. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of fossil remains of a two-legged dinosaur called Dracoraptor that lived 200 million years ago and was a forerunner of much later colossal carnivores like Tyrannosaurus rex, Allosaurus and Spinosaurus....

Working at Scientific American, known for its spiffy technical illustrations, I always look for material that can show what an article is trying to tell. I’ve never found a better example than this video(below) of a rat fed a drug that wipes out its long-term memory, and which bears a real-life resemblance to the scenario depicted in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The opening paragraphs of the article by Jerry Adler, called “Erasing Painful Memories....

Modern people have long wondered about ancient stories of great floods. Do they tell of real events in the distant past, or are they myths rooted in imagination? Most familiar to many of us in the West is the biblical story of Noah’s flood. But cultures around the world have passed down their own tales of devastating natural disasters. New research recently published in Science by a group of mostly Chinese researchers led by Qinglong Wu reports geological evidence for an event they propose may be behind China’s story of a great flood....

By Daniel CresseyA sticky species of beetle has inspired researchers to develop a device that uses switchable ’liquid bridges’ to attach to a variety of surfaces.Bioengineers Michael Vogel and Paul Steen, of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, based their device on a technique used by the leaf beetle, which sticks to leaves using the combined surface tension of many drops working in concert to generate an adhesion force of more than 100 times its own body weight....

The fiscal 2011 budget compromise crafted by the White House and congressional leaders would delay a key federal climate and weather satellite program, making a lengthy gap in critical environmental data a near certainty. Cuts contained in the 2011 budget plan would push back the launch of the first Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) orbiter by at least 18 months past the current 2016 target, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said yesterday....

For the first time in human civilization, more people now live in urban areas than in the countryside. This shift creates a number of dilemmas, not least of which is how to move people within the world’s rapidly growing metropolises. Pollution and traffic point away from car-based options, while light-rail systems are slow to construct and prohibitively expensive. One disarmingly simple—and cheap—possibility is Bus Rapid Transit, which is engineered to operate like a subway on wheels....

The immune system is the body’s first line of defense when it comes to fighting cancerous cells. It can identify and attack the smallest of threats before they become a danger, and distinguish tumor cells from the body’s normal cells, protecting our essential systems. But the immune system isn’t always successful. Tumor cells have mechanisms to evade or suppress immune response, allowing them to masquerade as normal cells and grow without restraint....

Antarctica’s monster Pine Island Glacier—one of the fastest melting glaciers on the continent—is giving climate scientists new reasons to worry. The trouble has to do with its ice shelf, a frozen ledge at the edge of the Pine Island Glacier. The ice shelf helps stabilize and contain the vast flow of ice behind it. But now it’s crumbling into pieces. In the last five years alone, more than a fifth of the ice shelf has broken away in the form of gigantic icebergs, which fall into the ocean and drift away....

When researchers at Google announced last fall that they had achieved “quantum superiority”—a point at which a quantum computer can perform a task beyond the reach of regular computers—some people wondered what the big deal was. The program, which checked the output of a random number generator, was of limited practical value and did not prove that the company’s machine could do anything useful, critics said. Now, however, Google’s quantum computer has achieved something that could have real-world applications: successfully simulating a simple chemical reaction....

Evidence buried in Greenland’s bedrock shows the island’s massive ice sheet melted nearly completely at least once in the last 2.6 million years. This suggests that Greenland’s ice may be less stable than previously believed. “Our study puts Greenland back on the endangered ice-sheet map,” says Joerg Schaefer, a palaeoclimatologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, and co-author of a paper published on December 7 in Nature. A second paper in the same issue paints a slightly different view of the ice sheet’s past stability....

When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues–so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded. And when Jeff Coleman looks at printed black numbers, he sees them in color, each a different hue. Blakeslee, Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal people who have synesthesia....

The human body is a tireless gardener, growing new cells throughout life in many organs—in the skin, blood, bones and intestines. Until the 1980s most scientists thought that brain cells were the exception: the neurons you are born with are the neurons you have for life. In the past three decades, however, researchers have discovered hints that the human brain produces new neurons after birth in two places: the hippocampus—a region important for memory—and the walls of fluid-filled cavities called ventricles, from which stem cells migrate to the olfactory bulb, a knob of brain tissue behind the eyes that processes smell....

Every month, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Available on iPad, print, and digital formats. CLIMATE SCIENCE • New York City and the entire U.S. East Coast could face frequent devastation from storm surges unless the region takes drastic action....

Nineteenth-century German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss used to joke that he could calculate before he could talk. Maybe it was no joke. Recent work casts doubt on the notion that language underlies mathematical ability and perhaps other forms of abstract thinking. Writing in the March 1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, scientists from the University of Sheffield in England describe impressive mathematical abilities in three middle-aged men who had suffered severe damage to the language centers of their brains....

Apple iPhone 5S in 2013?Apple’s product line could be getting a major makeover early next year, a new report claims.The company plans to launch a new iPhone, iPad, and “iTV” device by the middle of next year, China Times is reporting today, citing unidentified industry sources. The new smartphone will be called the “iPhone 5S,” according to the outlet’s sources.Apple has used the “S” at the end of a number of recent iPhone updates....

Detroit automakers were caught flat-footed last year as new car sales stalled, leaving dealer lots overcrowded and manufacturing plants idle. Now it appears Washington policymakers are at risk of falling victim to overly optimistic sales forecasts. The White House finalized new auto fuel economy standards late last month that assume annual new car sales will rebound to levels unseen in the past two years, and will do so in as little as 18 months....