Posts

Join an exciting panel of scientists and leaders for a conversation on the future of the nation and the world in our changing climate. The Origins Project at Arizona State University is hosting the “Great Debate: Climate Change, Surviving the Future.” The panel consists of: Jim Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Susan Solomon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NOAA Wallace Broecker, The Earth Institute, Columbia University John Ashton, Founding Director, E3G...

Most people think of height as a personal trait that has little to do with their health, much less the society around them. But when scientists collect height data for entire populations, intriguing patterns appear. According to a new study, American men were the third-tallest people on the planet a century ago but now rank 37th in the league table of tall—and some researchers think height would be a better tool for measuring sustainable human development levels than the standard economic indicators....

Despite its importance for health and well-being, many American adults find it difficult to consistently get enough sleep. Approximately 50 million to 70 million Americans suffer from a sleep disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleep disturbances are particularly common in older adults and involve a variety of problems including difficulties falling or staying asleep, interrupted breathing and restless leg syndrome. A person’s racial background can influence his or her likelihood of developing a sleep disorder, with a greater number of black Americans reporting sleep disturbances compared to white Americans....

Solar cells are picky. If an incoming photon has too little energy, the cell won’t absorb it. If a photon has too much, the excess is wasted as heat. No matter what, a silicon solar cell can never generate more than one electron from a single photon. Such harsh quantum realities severely limit the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells, and scientists have spent decades looking for work-arounds. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Excitonics have published a compelling case that the key to greater solar efficiency might be an organic dye called pentacene....

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized its plan to relax limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, eviscerating one of former president Barack Obama’s flagship climate policies. The new policy, announced on 19 June, sparked exasperation and dismay among climate scientists and environmentalists. The EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule allows states to set their own emissions-reduction goals. It focuses on the use of energy-efficiency technologies at individual power plants rather than requiring the use of more aggressive greenhouse-gas reduction methods such as capturing and storing carbon emissions....

On 29 April, a person in Nigeria developed an unusual rash and then travelled to the United Kingdom—carrying monkeypox with them. Since then, the virus has reached more than 70,000 people in over 100 countries. That has surprised health-care specialists around the world, because the sustained spread doesn’t resemble the sporadic pattern of previous monkeypox outbreaks in people, caused by a virus that lives in animals in Africa. Almost six months after the virus started to spread, however, vaccination efforts and behavioural changes seem to be containing the current strain—at least in the United States and Europe....

Science advances by the free exchange of ideas. New ones are put forward and pitted against existing ones, and fights are fought with rational arguments. Scientists tend to take this freedom for granted, and carry it over to other fields, such as politics, where challenging prevailing opinion goes under the name of dissent, and may be much less welcome. Scientists make tough dissenters for the powers that be. They cannot be dismissed offhand as incompetent, and they bring to the discussion professional standards that are hard to match....

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Earth’s orbit in 1990 over 25 years ago. The Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble’s infrared sister, just celebrated its 15th anniversary in space. Multiple X-ray observatories, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (or NuSTAR) are also surveying the sky from their perches in space, high above the ground here on Earth. In the next decade, NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the next generation Hubble and Spitzer, which will orbit the Sun....

New York City’s climate week is here and we (a climate change scientist and a climate policy expert, respectively) are excited to do the carbon math, develop research roadmaps, identify knowledge gaps, and cross the t’s and dot the i’s. This feels like a fairytale, a week tailor-made for us! But in this fairytale, the “heroes” have the luck of being born with the right skin tone, being cisgender, having credentials from the right kind of academic institutions, and presenting themselves with the right disposition (read: not “too angry” or “too emotional,” always measured)....

Public and scientific interest in psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA is expanding. Once off-limits because of federal prohibition, a trickle of research from the 1990s has grown into a stream. But despite increasing acceptance by the public, and commercial investment in psychedelic therapies, aging federal laws stem the flow of vital research. Psilocybin, a compound produced by many species of fungi, is one of the most well-studied psychedelics. To acknowledge its impressive safety record and potential for treating depression more effectively than existing therapies, the Food and Drug Administration designated psilocybin a breakthrough therapy in 2018 and 2019 for treating drug-resistant depression and major depressive disorder....

Every year March 31 marks Transgender Day of Visibility, a day when we should be celebrating the accomplishments of people who are trans, honoring their resilience and advocating loudly for their rights. Yet the growing onslaught of anti-trans legislation targeting the health-care decisions that families make with their doctors threatens to cast a shadow over this day. In 2021 I lost a family member to the mental trauma of transgender discrimination, so I speak from a place of watching someone I love suffer from lack of support....

Many have speculated that it exists to keep surgeons in business. Leonardo da Vinci thought it might be an outlet for “excessive wind” to prevent the intestines from bursting. The great artist and anatomist was not entirely off base in that the human appendix does appear to have originated at a time when primates ate plants exclusively, and all that fiber was tougher to digest. The intestinal offshoot formally known as the vermiform appendix is a long, slender cavity, closed at its tip....

Americans have been visiting national parks and other natural reserves less and less since 1987, new research confirms. Outdoor pursuits, ranging from camping to hunting, have entered a persistent and growing decline. “Folks are going out into nature much less and decreasingly every year,” says conservation ecologist Patricia Zaradic of the Environmental Leadership Program and co-author of the report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “It would take 80 million more visits this year to get the per capita number back up to the level it was in 1987....

Pertussis, better known as whooping cough, once sickened more than 100,000 Americans a year. The bacterial illness, which is particularly dangerous to infants, was brought under control in the 1940s with the introduction of pertussis vaccines. But in the past two decades pertussis has made an alarming comeback. In 2012 the number of U.S. cases rose to 48,277—the most since 1955. The resurgence has led researchers to reexamine the workings of the current vaccine, which uses bits and pieces of the Bordetella pertussis bacterium to stimulate the production of antibodies....

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve seen a lot of warm and fuzzy TV ads, some sponsored by BP Oil, urging me to vacation in the Gulf of Mexico. But are things really “back to normal?”—Paul Shea, Dublin, Ohio The Gulf of Mexico may be open for business and eager to attract tourists, but it’s still unclear whether or not marine and coastal ecosystems there are healthy two years after BP’s offshore drilling rig exploded 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, eventually releasing 205....

In a rapidly urbanizing world, cities have become a hot spot for climate action. As urban communities expand, urban planners must increasingly play the role of climate change problem solvers, experts said yesterday. Currently, more than 3.5 billion people live in cities, according to the World Bank. That number is expected to reach 5 billion by 2030, with two-thirds of the global population living in cities. The adverse health and environmental effects of urban sprawl will become even more pressing as urban populations grow and their greenhouse gas emissions increase, researchers say....

What’s on your music player? If you’re older than 30 years, it probably includes songs from your teenage years. Childhood and adolescence are the most impressionable period of a person’s life. The earliest memories and experiences are essential in shaping character—and they profoundly influence everything that comes next. “The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference,” Aristotle proclaimed more than 2,000 years ago....

In a little over half a century, the number of transistors on a silicon chip has grown from just one to nearly a billion–an accomplishment celebrated as Moore’s Law. By greatly enhancing digital machines’ ability to crunch numbers, execute logical operations and store data, this unprecedented manufacturing success has enabled revolutionary changes in our day-to-day lives while spawning one of the planet’s largest and most influential industries. As more and more transistors are packed onto silicon integrated circuits (ICs) during the next decade and a half, the lengths of the smallest chip features will shrink to nearly the molecular scale....

Life expectancy worldwide has risen for decades. But more people are living more years with debilitating ailments, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle. In developed countries (top half of graphic), the trouble comes almost entirely from noncommunicable conditions such as heart and lung disease and back pain (orange)—ills typically associated with lifestyle choices such as diet and exercise. In developing nations, however (bottom), the prevalence of these ailments is increasing rapidly, even as those countries continue to try to stamp out communicable diseases such as diarrhea and malaria that have plagued them for a long time (blue)....

Social activity is well known to influence mental health, particularly as people age—but the details behind this phenomenon are unclear. Different types of social interactions may be more or less important, depending on the circumstances. One-on-one relationships, such as those between spouses, may yield specific emotional benefits. When it comes to slowing cognitive decline, however, group interactions have more power, according to a recent study published in Social Science & Medicine....