“ ’Tis the gift to be simple,” the Shakers sing. Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks take vows of poverty. Why? A new study published online in May in Psychological Science offers a hint. Money—even the thought of it—reduces satisfaction from life’s simple pleasures. Studies have shown that a person’s ability to savor experiences predicts their degree of happiness. Savoring is defined as the emotions of joy, awe, excitement and gratitude derived during an experience....
COCODRIE, La.—Five million barrels of oil seems like a lot. That is approximately what spewed from the blowout at BP’s Macondo well last year, about enough to fill an area the size of an American football field more than 90 meters deep—and much of it has gone missing. “There’s a lot of water out there for the oil to be in,” notes toxicologist Scott Miles of Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who has researched the fate of the oil from last year’s spill....
End of Life I agree with Robert D. Truog—quoted in Robin Marantz Henig’s “When Does Life Belong to the Living?”—that the dead-donor rule, which says that organs can be taken only from donors who have already been declared dead, is eyewash and should be scrapped. The rule is horrible and medically counterproductive and is merely a sop to the most skittish, and probably least informed, members of society. And Arthur L....
Adam Steltzner rose to engineering stardom in 2012, when NASA’s Curiosity rover plummeted to a perfect landing on Mars, thanks to a daring, fiery manoeuvre designed by his team. Now, all Steltzner wants to talk about is how to clean. The object of his sanitary obsession is a dark-grey metallic tube about the size of his hand. It sits on a workbench inside a warehouse-like building at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where Steltzner works as chief engineer for NASA’s next Mars rover....
Sometimes it’s cute when kids act self-centered. Yet parenting styles can make the difference between a confident child and a narcissistic nightmare, psychologists at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University in the Netherlands concluded from the first longitudinal study on the origins of intense feelings of superiority in children. Two prominent but nearly opposing schools of thought address how narcissism develops. The first attributes extreme self-love to a lack of affection from parents; the other implicates moms and dads who place their children on a pedestal by lavishing them with praise....
When I met with psychologist and author Jesse Bering in October 2013, I asked him when he intended to write a book that I could read on the subway without the cover bringing me unwanted attention. The title of Bering’s 2012 book—Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?—was bad enough, even though it offered up fascinating insights into the evolution of anatomy. But that was nothing compared with the pitchforks-and-torches looks from people who spied me perusing his more recent work, Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us....
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions, redefining floodplains and building sea walls may not be enough to protect against the most devastating climate change impacts like fires, floods, heat waves and drought. As a result, some are pushing scientists to explore every possible option to keep the world from getting warmer, including geoengineering. This idea encompasses strategies to reflect sunlight back into space by seeding clouds or spraying aerosols into the air, as well as soaking up greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere with giant machines or microorganisms....
November 1964 Hemoglobin Protein “In its behavior hemoglobin does not resemble an oxygen tank so much as a molecular lung. Two of its four chains shift back and forth, so that the gap between them becomes narrower when oxygen molecules are bound to the hemoglobin, and wider when the oxygen is released. Evidence that the chemical activities of hemoglobin and other proteins are accompanied by structural changes had been discovered before, but this is the first time that the nature of such a change has been directly demonstrated....
When he was 29 years old, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone—a claim that is reportedly one of the most lucrative ever filed in the U.S. Patent Office. Not long after, the young inventor lost interest in the device and put his growing wealth toward other pursuits—such as giant kites capable of lifting people off the ground. “It is fortunate for those interested in aeronautics and the exploration of the air that Professor Alexander Graham Bell has joined the band of experimenters and is lending his inventive genius to the cause,” wrote meteorologist Henry Helm Clayton, one of Bell’s admirers, in 1903....
The universe’s oldest light hasn’t made a pit stop for 13.82 billion years—beginning its journey just 380,000 years after the big bang. That light, the so-called cosmic microwave background (CMB), serves as a familiar hunting ground for astronomers who seek to understand the universe in its infancy. Unfortunately, it also obscures what lies beyond it: the first hundreds of thousands of years of the universe. Now astronomers think they have peeked beyond even the CMB by capturing evidence of neutrinos traveling since the cosmos was just a second old....
Scientists often refer to the mitochondria as the energy factories of the cell. For good reason. The intracellular organelles transform the food we eat and the air we breathe into an electric potential that drives processes like DNA replication or protein building. Individually, the impact of any given mitochondrion is small. The potential energy within a cell is about 0.2 volts. But add all those cells up, and the potential energy within a human body is roughly equivalent to a lightning bolt....
By Mary Wisniewski and Steve Bittenbender AUSTIN, Ind (Reuters) - Since Indiana opened its first state-run needle exchange last spring, Tara Burton, 25, has made weekly visits to turn over needles she used to shoot Opana, a prescription painkiller, up her track-marked arm. The one-story clinic in rural Scott County, Indiana, marks a sea change in states where conservative lawmakers had staunchly opposed old needles-for-new exchanges. An HIV epidemic in Indiana and a rise in hepatitis C cases in Kentucky helped push those states to pass laws allowing communities to open needle exchanges....
Most of us have felt the satisfaction that comes from spending money on another person, whether it be a gift for a friend or a donation to disaster victims. Now an international team of psychologists report that the relation between generous spending and happiness holds around the world, even in countries as impoverished as India and Uganda. “Here in North America we might think we have the luxury of extra money to spend on others, whereas people in poorer places might be better off spending their limited resources on themselves,” says the study’s lead author, Lara Aknin of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia....
By Helen Shen of Nature magazineArmed with a three-dimensional (3D) printer and the type of silicone-based sealant typically used for bathrooms, researchers have demonstrated a novel way to control chemical reactions: by making the reaction vessel an integral part of the experiment itself. The results, published 15 April in Nature Chemistry, could open the door to a new generation of custom labware made to suit individual researchers’ needs.Led by Leroy Cronin, a chemist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, the researchers took advantage of 3D printing – a computer-guided process that builds up solid objects layer by layer – to cast a variety of reaction vessels from the quick-setting bathroom sealant....
Why do I get a slump in mental energy after eating a meal? —Pranati Kapadia, via e-mail Paul Li, lecturer of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, offers an explanation: FALLING ASLEEP at your desk after that heaping bowl of pasta? You may be experiencing what people commonly refer to as a “food coma.” Medically known as postprandial somnolence, a food coma isn’t an actual coma but rather a lack of mental energy that people often experience after eating a large meal....
Nail biting—as well as its close cousins hair pulling, skin picking, knuckle cracking, lip chewing, cheek biting, and other body-focused repetitive habits—usually happens without a conscious decision; instead, we discover ourselves with the aftermath—nubby nails, a lip callus, or an accumulation of inadvertently pulled-out hair. Body-focused habits can begin at any age, but they usually begin in childhood and peak in the pre-teen years—around ages 11 to 13. But whether you’re young or young at heart, if your nervous habits are bothering you, check out these 10 tips to stop body-focused behaviors like going dental on your digits....
NEW YORK, Oct 10 (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday the country may start to see a small number of drug shortages within two or three weeks due to delays in restoring manufacturing operations in Puerto Rico, where 10 percent of drugs prescribed in the United States are made. Hurricane Maria slammed into the Caribbean island on Sept. 20, knocking out electricity and causing widespread damage to homes and infrastructure....
A hopeful President Obama delivered his farewell address to America last night, making a final plea for democratic engagement and fact-based debate, including on climate change. Speaking from Chicago, Obama urged restoring a “common purpose” and “basic sense of solidarity” in an increasingly politically divided country. Obama struck an optimistic note, offering his pitch for unity above partisanship just 10 days before President-elect Donald Trump will take office and begin to carry out promises to rescind as much as possible of his predecessor’s legacy....
Consider Andy, who is worried about contracting COVID in 2020. Unable to read all the articles he sees on it, he relies on trusted friends for tips. When one opines on Facebook that pandemic fears are overblown, Andy dismisses the idea at first. But then the hotel where he works closes its doors, and with his job at risk, Andy starts wondering how serious the threat from the virus really is....
Topics ranging from tabletop reactors to forensic investigations of the first president helped to pep up the humdrum month of February for readers. Two articles that caught letter writers’ attention were about rethinking established technology: In “Plasma Accelerators,” Chandrashekhar Joshi showed how small, inexpensive particle accelerators promise a wealth of data in lower-energy research. “Protecting New Orleans,” by Mark Fischetti, assessed various flood-control system designs for the Mississippi Delta able to withstand major storms and rising sea levels....
