In the race to put 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015, another challenge awaits on the other side of the finish line: recycling all of those batteries. The Department of Energy recently awarded $9.5 million to a California-based recycling company to boost capacity for lithium-ion batteries, the kind used to power most of the new hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles entering the world market. Toxco Inc....
Getting humans back to the moon—“this time to stay”—will require the exploitation of lunar resources, NASA officials and exploration advocates say. The most important resource, at least in the short term, is water ice, which is abundant on the floors of permanently shadowed polar craters. The ice found in these “cold traps" is thought to be stable and accessible. But there may be other spots on the moon that could yield a mother lode of scientific data—as well as the resources needed to sustain human occupation of Earth’s celestial next door neighbor....
The Arizona desert is really dry. Anyone stuck in it without water would die from dehydration within three days. Unless, that is, they had one of Omar Yaghi’s next-generation water harvesters. Although daytime humidity is only about 10 per cent, this rises to 40 per cent at night, which means there’s enough water in the atmosphere to support life — if it can be converted into liquid form. That’s exactly what Yaghi’s device does....
Question: Are antidepressants effective or ineffective? Answer: Yes! In my view, both these statements are true: Antidepressants do work. And antidepressants don’t work. Not to put too fine a Clintonian point on it, but determining whether antidepressants work depends on the definition of the word “work.” A controversial article just published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos for most depressed patients....
U.S. health officials say a person from Illinois who was infected with the new coronavirus in China has transmitted the virus to her spouse, marking the first known instance of person-to-person spread of the virus in the U.S. The initial patient in Illinois was a Chicago woman in her 60s who had recently returned from Wuhan, China, where the outbreak is thought to have started. The new case, disclosed Thursday, is likely to heighten fears that the United States and other countries could see broader spread of the virus....
In January 2007 Nguyên Phú was prepping his small boat for what appeared to be just another day of fishing for octopus off the Vietnamese coast. Soon after he headed out to sea, several Chinese boats appeared on the horizon. Phú thought momentarily about fleeing but knew he would not get far. When the gunships sidled up to his boat, he and his crew put up no resistance. “We don’t mess with the Chinese,” he says....
Dozens of current and former students and postdoctoral fellows at Columbia University are urging administrators to specify why the school announced last week that it would close the lab of prominent neuroscientist Thomas Jessell and end his administrative positions. Columbia has declined to offer any explanation for Jessell’s removal beyond a terse statement that said an investigation had “revealed serious violations of University policies and values governing the behavior of faculty members in an academic environment....
When the digital currency Bitcoin came to life in January 2009, it was noticed by almost no one apart from the handful of programmers who followed cryptography discussion groups. Its origins were shadowy: it had been conceived the previous year by a still-mysterious person or group known only by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. And its purpose seemed quixotic: Bitcoin was to be a ‘cryptocurrency’, in which strong encryption algorithms were exploited in a new way to secure transactions....
Researchers are continually finding new evidence that common items in our kitchens, bathrooms and toy chests can make us sick. One of the most insidious substances is bisphenol A, a component of the light plastics used in baby bottles and many other consumer products. Over the past several years, scientists have reported that low levels of bisphenol A can disrupt cell division, leading to spontaneous miscarriages and birth defects such as Down syndrome....
Spanish health authorities said on Thursday they were investigating a possible outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) which has killed one man and infected a nurse, in the first non-imported case reported in Western Europe. The 62-year-old man died on Aug. 25 after contracting the CCHF disease during a walk in the Castilla-Leon region, probably from a tick bite he reported - which is one of the main ways it is transmitted - authorities said in a statement....
When the coal ran out in Kentucky’s first mountaintop removal (MTR) mine in the early 1990s, the site met a fate that has become common: The property owner filled the gouged, barren land back in with the material hacked off during mining, in accordance with a 1977 law meant to turn spent mines into cropland, pasture or some other means for local residents to make a living. But like most reclaimed MTR mines, this one wound up as unused expanses of brush with still-contaminated streams flowing nearby....
Finding Planet Nine may require looking at telescope images in a different light. Astronomers are vetting a “shifting and stacking” technique that could aid the hunt for the putative world, which some researchers think lurks undiscovered in the far outer system, way beyond Pluto’s orbit. The strategy involves shifting space-telescope images along sets of possible orbital paths, then stacking the photos together to combine their light. The technique has already been used to discover some moons in our solar system, and it could potentially spot Planet Nine—also known as Planet X, Giant Planet Five or Planet Next—and other extremely farflung objects, researchers said....
Carter Newell owns and operates one of the most productive mussel farms in the state of Maine. One frigid spring morning I joined him and his two-person crew on a short boat ride to the barge he calls Mumbles, a 60-by-24-foot vessel anchored that day in a quiet cove in the brackish Damariscotta River. Named for the Welsh seaside town where Newell once did research, Mumbles was tethered to a steel-framed raft hung with hundreds of 45-foot ropes, each thick with thousands of mussels in various stages of development....
Hollywood seems to have caught alien fever. In the past few months, a slew of big-budget alien movies has hit theaters, from kiddie flicks (“Mars Needs Moms”) to comedies (“Paul”) to high-octane action films (“Battle: Los Angeles,” “Green Lantern” and the just-released “Cowboys & Aliens,” among others). And many more such movies are on the way, both this year and next. This glut of alien sci-fi films comes at a time when scientific discoveries are making the existence of life beyond Earth seem more and more plausible....
It took Amy only a few minutes to make up her mind: I’ve got absolutely nothing in common with this guy. She wasn’t sure why, but she was convinced. Was it his two-day stubble? The tattered jeans? Perhaps the way he stared at her while they talked? In any case, after a mere five minutes Amy was already wishing she had never agreed to this blind date with Andy. Now she would have to spend several hours in a bar with a guy who didn’t understand why sports don’t do it for her and why she prefers to read....
Vaccinating people with both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines produces a potent immune response against the virus SARS-CoV-2, researchers conducting a study in Spain have found. Preliminary results from the trial of more than 600 people — announced in an online presentation on May 18 — are the first to show the benefits of combining different coronavirus vaccines. A UK trial of a similar strategy reported safety data last week, and is expected to deliver further findings on immune responses soon....
Editor’s Note (4/8/21): On March 31, 2021, Russia submitted documents to an international commission claiming that far more of the vast Arctic Ocean seafloor belongs to that country. In recent years the five nations bordering the ocean—Russia, the U.S., Canada, Norway and Denmark (via its territory of Greenland)—have submitted claims that certain large portions of the Arctic seafloor are natural extensions of their continental shelf, giving them rights over those regions....
Wormholes and entanglement—two of science fiction’s favorite concepts from modern physics—may in reality be two sides of the same coin, physicists say. The findings may offer a way to solve puzzling mysteries about black holes and perhaps help reconcile theories of gravity and quantum physics, which has been the dream of physicists since the mid–20th century. Wormholes are hypothetical shortcuts through spacetime, also known as Einstein–Rosen bridges, after Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, who predicted them in 1935....
Ask someone where they are from and most likely they will tell you their hometown, perhaps even a specific neighborhood. Put the same question to physicist Brian Cox and you get an entirely different response—one that involves the recycling of atoms brought together from the far reaches of the universe. Cox likes to remind people that every atom of their bodies used to be part of something else, and will become part of something new in the end....
Long before the first birds flapped and fluttered, pterosaurs took to the skies. These leathery-winged reptiles, their bodies coated with wispy filaments paleontologists call pycnofibers, were the first vertebrates to truly fly. Now experts are beginning to think pterosaurs and birds had more in common than previously assumed: An exquisitely preserved fossil from Brazil not only hints that pterosaurs’ peculiar filaments may have been true feathers but also suggests that this plumage could possibly have been as riotously colored as that of any modern toucan or tanager....
