Posts

Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic....

Seventy years ago this month U.S. atomic bombs destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing a total of roughly 200,000 Japanese people in the world’s first, and so far only, use of nuclear weapons in war. Many of those who survived the initial blast died soon after from injuries, burns and radiation sickness. The scale of the devastation sparked an enduring debate over whether the use of such weapons is ever justifiable and the extent to which scientists are morally responsible for the consequences of their discoveries....

House and Senate conferees on the appropriations bill funding U.S. EPA for fiscal 2010 approved an amendment yesterday to block agency efforts to require Clean Air Act permits for greenhouse gases emitted by livestock. The amendment was agreed to last night as part of the $32.2-billion House–Senate conference package to fund EPA, the Interior Department and the Forest Service for fiscal 2010. Both chambers had already adopted amendments to their versions of the bill that would have prevented EPA from using funds to implement rules requiring livestock producers to obtain Clean Air Act operating permits for the biological emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases....

If the 20th century was an expansive era seemingly without boundaries—a time of jet planes, space travel and the Internet—the early years of the 21st have showed us the limits of our small world. Regional blackouts remind us that the flow of energy we used to take for granted may be in tight supply. The once mighty Colorado River, tapped by thirsty metropolises of the desert West, no longer reaches the ocean....

“Clow-dia,” I say once. Twice. A third time. Defeated, I say the Americanized version of my name: “Claw-dee-ah.” Finally, Siri recognizes it. Having to adapt our way of speaking to interact with speech-recognition technologies is a familiar experience for people whose first language is not English or who do not have conventionally American-sounding names. I have now stopped using Siri, Apple’s voice-based virtual assistant, because of it. The growth of this tech in the past decade—not just Siri but Alexa and Cortana and others—has unveiled a problem in it: racial bias....

Humans have become a dominant force on the planet, driving species extinctions, transforming the landscape and changing the climate. And this influence will likely outlast Homo sapiens by millions of years: we also look set to dominate paleontology in the distant future, according to research published in March in Anthropocene. The new study finds that mammalian fossils from the current people-centric geologic age will consist almost entirely of humans, livestock and pets....

Most cities might be too hot to host the summer Olympic Games after 2085 because of climate change, according to an analysis in The Lancet. Using climate modelling and a measure of heat stress to the human body, researchers led by Kirk Smith, an environmental-health researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, judged whether cities would be suitable for hosting the Games. The authors used a measure known as the wet-bulb globe temperature, which takes into account how factors including temperature, humidity and wind speed affect people, especially during exercise....

Last year a new sleep drug called Belsomra came on the market, featuring a mechanism unlike any other pill: it mimics narcolepsy. That might sound odd, but the potential users are many. More than 8.5 million Americans take prescription sleep aids, and many others use snooze-inducing over-the-counter medications. All these pills, including Belsomra, do one of two things: they enhance the effects of the neurotransmitter GABA, known for quieting brain activity, or they arrest the actions of neurotransmitters that keep the brain aroused....

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is expected to add more urgency to Europe’s efforts to break its dependence on Russian oil and gas, as well as compel Europe to accelerate its transition to cleaner energy, say experts and E.U. officials. But those efforts won’t come quickly or easily. And they’ll involve some difficult compromises. Discussions about moving faster toward alternative sources of energy began months ago as oil and gas prices started to rise....

As early-career scientists and engineers working at the intersection of science and society, we represent the next generation of leaders in science policy. Over the past four years, we have helped reshape how the scientific community engages in the political process: we marched for science and developed new organizations like the National Science Policy Network. As the 100th day of President Biden’s presidency nears, we recognize that our work has only begun....

Chances are that you have a smartphone, Twitter and Instagram accounts, and a Facebook page and that you have found yourself ignoring a friend or family member who is in the same room as you because you are totally engrossed in your social technology. That technology means never having to feel alone or bored. Yet ironically, it can make us less attentive to the people closest to us and even make it hard for us to simply be with ourselves....

Since 1987 annual emissions of carbon dioxide—the leading greenhouse gas warming the globe—have risen by a third, global fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons and the amount of land required to sustain humanity has swelled to more than 54 acres (22 hectares) per person. Yet, Earth can provide only roughly 39 acres (15 hectares) for every person living today, according to the United Nation’s Environmental Program’s (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook, released this week....

By Letitia Stein The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines on Friday recommending how long men and women exposed to the Zika virus should wait before trying to conceive babies. Zika has been linked to a spike in microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil. Women diagnosed with Zika should wait at least eight weeks after symptoms began before trying to conceive, while men should hold off for at least six months, health officials recommended....

Nitrogen is a vital nutrient for crops, but soils rarely produce enough of it to sustain the relentless farming needed to feed a world population that has more than doubled in the past 50 years. For almost a century synthetic fertilizer has made up the difference, driving up crop yields. Yet we have overindulged, creating vast quantities of waste. Globally, more than 90 percent of the nitrogen used to produce meat and dairy products, along with 80 percent used to grow plant-based foods, is lost to the environment....

For farmers, protecting fields from pests and plagues is a constant battle fought on multiple fronts. Many insects have a taste for the same plants humans do, and pathogenic microbes infect leaves, shoots and roots. Then there are the weeds that compete with crops for soil and sun. Although academics and companies are looking for technical alternatives such as sprays made from biological compounds, a recent review by researchers at North Carolina State University cautions that society may not be able to science its way out of this thorny problem....

Scientists often complain that people are irrational in their opposition to technologies such as nuclear power and genetically modified (GM) crops. From a statistical perspective, these are very safe, and so (it is argued) people’s fear can be explained only by emotion, undergirded by ignorance. Electricity from nuclear power has led to far fewer direct deaths than has coal-fired power, yet many people are afraid of it, and hardly anyone is afraid of coal plants....

The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting brings a wealth of scientific minds to the shores of Germany’s Lake Constance. Every summer at Lindau, dozens of Nobel Prize winners exchange ideas with hundreds of young researchers from around the world. Whereas the Nobelists are the marquee names, the younger contingent is an accomplished group in its own right. In advance of this year’s meeting, which focuses on physics, we are profiling several promising attendees under the age of 30....

Ever since the emperor Chin, tyrants been caught in a dilemma: they know they need physical protection, but know also that their bodyguards might betray them. Tyrant T has a corps of 7 bodyguards. He knows that if there are ever as many or more traitors than loyal guards in the room, he will be attacked. One day, mustering his courage, he brings all 7 into a room. He is not attacked so he knows the majority of his guards are loyal....

Everything that makes us human is located within 1.4 kilograms of yellowish tissue composing the human brain. It is here that our thoughts develop, here that we feel love or hate, and where the most creative and most evil ideas of humankind arise. This walnut-shaped structure is also the most complex organ nature has generated. The brain harbors about 86 billion neurons, or nerve cells, that have to be born at the right time, migrate to the right place, and wire up in the right way if we are to survive and thrive....

We hear about mindfulness everywhere these days—in news articles and wellness magazines, at the doctor’s office, and on social media. We’re bombarded with images of attractive, calm people bathed in sunlight, smiling as they sit cross-legged with their eyes serenely closed. Doesn’t it look nice? If only it were so easy for those of us who aren’t stock photography models to find bamboo forests—at just the right temperature, with nobody else around—in which to quietly practice daily meditation....