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Dear EarthTalk: What are the pros and cons of feeding babies formula versus breast milk? And if I purchase formula, should I spend the extra money on the organic variety? —Suzy W., via e-mail It is generally acknowledged within the medical community that breast milk is the ideal first food for babies, though modern formula brands can get the job done, too. Human breast milk naturally contains the vitamins and minerals a newborn requires....

Key concepts Physics Evaporation Heat transfer Temperature Introduction Have you ever wondered why we sweat when our environment is hot or when we exercise? Sweating is a life-saving strategy that cools the body down and maintains its temperature. Without sweating, the body cannot regulate its temperature, which can lead to overheating or even heatstroke. But why does sweating have a cooling effect? The answer is evaporative cooling. Turning a liquid such as sweat from its liquid state into a gas requires energy....

Hillary Clinton declared herself the Democratic presidential nominee last night, delivering an impassioned speech basking in the historic status of becoming the first woman to lead a major American political party. Surrounded by a cheering crowd in Brooklyn, Clinton celebrated the latest primary votes that helped her clinch the nomination as a history-making event in the long march of the women’s movement. “Thanks to you, we have reached a milestone. … We all owe so much to who came before,” Clinton told the crowd....

Finding a bug in your drink is an unpleasant surprise, but researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a fanciful cocktail accessory based on the mechanics of water bugs—and another less ironically modeled after the workings of a delicate water lily. In partnership with José Andrés, a renowned chef who lectures on the science of cooking at Harvard University, applied mathematics professor John Bush designed two cocktail accessories—a pipette modeled after a water lily, which serves to pick up drops of cocktails meant to cleanse the palate and drop them on the diner’s tongue, and an edible “boat” that circles around the surface of alcoholic drinks....

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, signup here. Here’s the best chart I’ve found so far to compare the effectiveness of the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), and Novavax vaccines against COVID-19 (last updated 1/31/21). The chart is published at the site “Your Local Epidemiologist,” by epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina. Other factors compared in the table: effectiveness of each vaccine against the variant first identified in the UK and the one first identified in South Africa, where known; effectiveness against severe COVID-19; status of each vaccine in the U....

Unless there is widespread testing for COVID-19, experts warn, cases will surge as governments reopen more businesses and public spaces. But there is still a woeful shortage of diagnostic tests for coronavirus infections, because of unprecedented demand for chemicals and supplies. The U.S., for instance, does hundreds of thousands of tests a day, but that number is still far short of the millions of daily assays recommended for a safe return to normal....

Many animals can pick out auditory patterns in human speech—but it turns out that dogs are particularly good at doing so. It is no secret that dogs are pretty special when it comes to how interested they are in humans and how they interact with us. But how much do they capture the subtleties of the language coming out of our mouths? Do they perceive it distinctly as speech, as opposed to other sounds reaching their ears?...

For decades researchers have run longitudinal studies to gain new insights into health and illness. By regularly recording information about the same individuals’ medical history and care over many years, they have, for example, shown that lead from peeling paint damages children’s brains and bodies and have demonstrated that high blood pressure and cholesterol levels contribute to heart disease and stroke. To this day, some of the original (and now at least 95-year-old) participants in the famous Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1948, still provide health information to study investigators....

Leaked documents from the free-market conservative organization The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change. The documents, leaked by an anonymous donor and released on DeSmogBlog, include the organization’s 2012 fundraising plan. It lists Heartland Institute donors, from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation (established by Koch Industries billionaire Charles G. Koch), to Philip Morris parent company Altria, to software giant Microsoft and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly....

Physicists have been struggling for decades to unify quantum mechanics, which corrals the particle flock, with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which sculpts space and time. They’ve come at it with various approaches, including string theory, but it remains stubbornly intractable. Yet—taking a common tactic that physicists use to break apart complex challenges—what if we simplified the problem? They’ve now come to a whole new understanding of quantum particles that enormously eases the task....

The last male northern white rhinoceros is wallowing in the mud and grazing again after an age-related infection nearly spelled his end earlier this month. But although 45-year-old Sudan is still standing—for now—conservationists are debating whether his subspecies has a chance at survival. There are only three northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) left in the world. Sudan, the eldest, is the only male. The other two, Najin and Fatu, are his daughter and granddaughter, respectively....

MECHANICAL MIND “The Brain, Reimagined,” by Douglas Fox, concerns work by physicists Thomas Heimburg and Andrew D. Jackson, who argue that signals in neurons are conveyed by mechanical waves of expansion and contraction of the cell membrane rather than by electrical spikes, or action potentials, as described by British researchers Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley. Heimburg’s contention is described as being that the Hodgkin-Huxley model is simply wrong. It is astonishing that he would not accept a compromise between the two models....

Companies, governments and other customers will soon be able to directly access instruments on a satellite and assign them new missions on the fly. According to program manager Frédéric Piro, the Eutelsat Quantum, which blasted into space from Kourou in French Guiana this summer, is the world’s first commercial satellite that can be fully reprogrammed in orbit. Adjustable antennas, reconfigurable transmission beams and customized electronics let the satellite run a wide range of applications—and switch between them in minutes—at 36,000 kilometers above Earth....

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano registered one of its most powerful earth tremors yet on Wednesday while the sinking of its caldera raised concerns of an eruption and flooding, authorities said. The caldera, the cauldron-like crater at the top of a volcano, had sunk by up to around 20 meters since last week as magma channeled through underground passages moves away from the volcano, Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, geophysics professor at the University of Iceland, told public service broadcaster RUV....

On the same day that President Donald Trump announced his COVID-19 diagnosis, Twitter reminded users of its policy that “tweets that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against anyone are not allowed and will need to be removed.” The social media platform soon filled with posts accusing it of hypocrisy: threats targeting women and people of color have accumulated for years without removal, users said. But even as Twitter attempted to enforce its rules more stringently, thinly veiled posts slipped through the cracks....

We tend to be worse at telling apart faces of other races than those of our own race, studies have found. Now research shows some people are completely blind to features that make other-race faces distinct. Such an impairment could have important implications for eyewitness testimony in situations involving other-race suspects. The ability to distinguish among members of one’s own race varies wildly: some people can tell strangers apart effortlessly, whereas others cannot even recognize the faces of their own family and friends (a condition known as prosopagnosia)....

SpaceX has a fix in play to make its bright Starlink satellites less disruptive to astronomy, according to a SpaceNews report. After the first Starlink internet satellites launched in May, astronomers noticed that the little satellites are quite reflective and bright. With SpaceX reporting it wants to put 42,000 of these satellites in the sky, astronomers were concerned about it washing out parts of the night sky. So now the company plans to treat one of the Starlink satellites with a special coating, when the next group goes in late December, according to SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell....

Perhaps it is because of an injury, maybe work is extra busy, or family commitments pile up. Perhaps it’s an illness or any number of other life events that causes you to take a break from your fitness routine. Let’s face it, no matter who you are, life happens. Those accidental and out-of-our-control breaks aside, what I want to focus on is those times when you actually know a time-out is coming....

President Trump touted infrastructure in his State of the Union address last night without mentioning climate change. But the two issues are intimately related. Experts say the impacts of climate change—including floods, wildfires and sea-level rise—could place a big strain on the nation’s aging infrastructure. They caution that the country’s roads, highways and bridges must be rebuilt in a resilient manner so that they can withstand the consequences of a warming world....

Yahoo Mail just got a facelift. The longstanding e-mail service underwent a revamp to focus on faster access to e-mail, fewer distractions, and an easier-to-use interface. Yahoo also worked to keep the look consistent throughout a variety of platforms, whether it’s on the Internet, Windows 8, iPhone, or Android. The changes were announced today by CEO Marissa Mayer on Yahoo’s blog. Related stories Flickr’s new iPhone app puts mobile front and center Yahoo, NBC Sports team up to share broadcast sports, news Yahoo to live-stream Rolling Stones concert for $40 a pop Google+ adds Communities, hits 135 million active users Plaintiff in $2....