People of all ages have moments when it feels like we’re on the edge of recalling something but can’t quite do it—where we parked our car or left our phone, for example, or what name goes with that familiar face. It’s extremely frustrating in the moment, but for most of us, we can usually remember if we try. For patients with Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and many other dementia-causing diseases, however, memory loss is much more profound....
If it looks like a Higgs, and acts like a Higgs, it’s probably a standard Higgs boson. That’s the drift from the latest measurements at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where physicists have been carefully characterizing the new particle they discovered in 2012. So far, every test at the Geneva accelerator confirms that the new particle closely resembles the Higgs boson described by the Standard Model of particle physics. These results resoundingly confirm the Higgs theory first put forward in 1964 by Robert Brout, François Englert and Peter Higgs—and helped win the latter two the Nobel prize last year....
We often attribute key characteristics to one of our parents: “He gets his athleticism from his father.” “Her quickness to anger—that’s all her mother.” Whether the genetics are actually pulling the strings in these cases is another story. But a growing body of research has suggested that heredity does apply to mood disorders—including depression, which afflicts more than 2.8 million adolescents in the U.S. alone—and that there is compelling evidence hereditary ties are strong between mothers and daughters....
Tracking of the Zika virus indicates that 279 pregnant women across the United States and its territories now have it, according to new official figures. Most of these women are still pregnant and are being monitored to see if their fetuses develop abnormalities including microcephaly. The new numbers, published Friday in a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, underscore the challenge of preventing Zika from spreading to pregnant women and their fetuses....
Over the past 40 years the world’s population has gotten about 1.5 kilograms heavier each year, leading to an obesity epidemic. According to a study published in The Lancet, there are now roughly 640 million obese individuals around the world. The study found that not only is the number of obese people greater than ever before but that it has surpassed the number of those dangerously underweight as well. The study looked at trends in adult body mass index, which quantifies an individual’s tissue mass based on height and weight, across 200 countries between 1975 and 2014....
A group of northern California scientists have found a new bend in the Gordian knot of global warming: coastal cooling. The team, headed by meteorologist Robert Bornstein of San Jose State University, has found that as temperatures rise in California, so do pressure differences that control cool Pacific winds. That means higher temperatures inland create lower ones at the coast. “It’s not that the whole Earth is warming like an oven,” Bornstein says....
Key concepts Chemistry Pigments Flowers Plant biology Introduction In the springtime it can be easy to spot flowers in a dazzling array of colors at flower gardens and in plant nurseries. And with Mother’s Day coming, stunning flower bouquets seem to be everywhere. Have you ever wondered what makes a flower appear a certain color to us? For example, what pigments make a rose be a deep, rich shade of red?...
I still have the first stone hand ax I ever made. It’s a pretty poor specimen, crudely chipped from a piece of frost-fractured flint I picked up on a walk through a farmer’s field in West Sussex, England. It would not have impressed the human ancestors known to us as Homo heidelbergensis. These cousins of Homo sapiens from 500,000 years ago left much nicer hand axes at a nearby archaeological site in Boxgrove....
Thanks to a new, wired undersea observatory, when it comes to exploring the deep blue sea, there will be no more of this tethered buoy business or taking ships out to upload data from brief time snapshots taken by instruments. The NEPTUNE network set to go online Tuesday will stream data from hundreds of undersea instruments and sensors direct from the Pacific Ocean floor to the Internet 24/7, year-round. The network is expected to produce 50 terabytes of data annually, all of which will inform scientists about everything from earthquake dynamics to the effects of climate change on the water column, and from deep-sea ecosystems to salmon migration....
In the beginning, there was nothing but cold and dark between the atoms that became the solar system. No sun existed 4.6 billion years ago, only a gossamer cloud of remains from earlier stars, stocked with elements forged in previous cataclysms beyond our comprehension. And then something happened. Maybe a passing celestial nomad’s gravity nudged the cloud; maybe a more distant star exploded, loosing a wind that ruffled the atoms, just as a breeze can push leaves into a pile....
For a scientist studying climate change, “eureka” moments are unusually rare. Instead progress is generally made by a painstaking piecing together of evidence from every new temperature measurement, satellite sounding or climate-model experiment. Data get checked and rechecked, ideas tested over and over again. Do the observations fit the predicted changes? Could there be some alternative explanation? Good climate scientists, like all good scientists, want to ensure that the highest standards of proof apply to everything they discover....
A key Senate committee voted along party lines yesterday to endorse former Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of State, paving the way for easy approval by the full Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 11-10 to back President Trump’s top diplomatic pick. The green light came after Tillerson’s sharpest GOP critic, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, announced he would support the nomination despite lingering concerns, especially about Tillerson’s reluctance to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin....
For years, parents asked Danielle Howa Pendergrass to give their kids “the talk.” They worried that all the sex education bases weren’t covered in their kid’s classroom and didn’t know how to start the conversation themselves. Howa Pendergrass, a nurse practitioner who owns and runs a women’s health clinic in eastern Utah, would have one-on-one discussions with teenagers until she hatched an idea for a broader approach. In late 2020 she launched a sex education program called Eastern Utah Teen Council out of her clinic to fill in knowledge gaps for local teens....
As California continues to burn under some of its largest infernos ever recorded, scientists largely agree that the fingerprint of climate change can be found in the ashes. Hotter, drier conditions are priming the western United States for longer fire seasons and bigger, hotter blazes. It’s not just California. Scientists warn that climbing temperatures will likely lead to more frequent or more severe wildfires in other parts of the world, as well....
Winter blues, spring fever—most of us take seasonal changes in mood for granted. According to a new study, the cause might be the seasons tinkering with the chemicals in our brain. As reported in the November 3 Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health found evidence of seasonal differences in dopamine—a chemical messenger involved in motivation, pleasure, movement and learning. Using brain scans, psychiatrist Daniel Eisenberg and his colleagues measured dopamine levels in the brains of 86 healthy people at different times of the year....
Your brain is a bit like a concert hall. To drive our cognitive processes, several groups of neurons need to become active—and, like the various sections of an orchestra, work in harmony to produce the symphony of computations that allow us to perceive and interact with our surroundings. As with an orchestra, the brain likely requires a conductor to keep all its active parts in sync. There are neuroscientists who think that gamma rhythms, fast brain waves that fluctuate at a frequency of approximately 40 cycles per second, play this role....
From cutting the cost of solar electricity to reducing the risk of ovarian cancer, the 11 early- to mid-career scientists profiled here are emerging as leaders in their fields. They stood out from among 500 scientists assessed using the power of the Nature Index and the League of Scholars Whole-of-Web (WoW) rankings. They are bringing fresh ideas in a range of disciplines, from cognitive neuroscience to geology, and condensed matter physics....
NOTE: The Sabin version became the standard vaccine in the U.S. for the next four decades. As of about 2000, however, an updated version of the Salk vaccine is currently the only one given. Racing Airplane “It is possible to predict with some degree of certainty the leading characteristics of the aeroplane of the future which will be built purely for racing purposes. The speed of the aeroplane in straight-away flight has risen during the past year from 50 to 75 miles an hour....
Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Have you been told by your spouse that you “fidget” in the middle of the night? Or have you noticed your legs or feet may have a mind of their own when you’re trying to fall asleep? Do you have an urge to move your legs a lot at bedtime?...
Pregnant women who have been exposed to higher levels of some types of air pollution are slightly more likely to give birth to underweight babies, a large international study has found. The results are published online today in Environmental Health Perspectives. Low birth weight — defined as a newborn baby weighing less than 2.5 kilograms — increases the risk of infant mortality and childhood diseases, and has been associated with developmental and health problems later in life, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease....
