The latest and most detailed analysis comes from a group headed by biologist Marc L. Imhoff of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Using satellite and climate data, the team calculated the worldwide amount of solar energy converted to plant organic matter through photosynthesis. This measure, called net primary production (NPP), is the chief source of food for living creatures. (It excludes other forms of energy, such as fossil fuels or seafood....
More than 40 years ago, psychologists found signs that children living in noisy places were having trouble learning to read. They suspected that the noise interfered with language learning. Now, their suspicions have been confirmed, this time in the lab. The original experiment, published in 1973, looked at children living in four unique apartment buildings in New York City. The Bridge Apartments, on the Manhattan side of the George Washington Bridge, sit directly on top of Interstate 95....
When you walk into a room, your eyes process your surroundings immediately: refrigerator, sink, table, chairs. “This is the kitchen,” you realize. Your brain has taken data and come to a clear conclusion about the world around you, in an instant. But how does this actually happen? Elissa Aminoff, a research scientist in the Department of Psychology and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University, shares her insights on what computer modeling can tell us about human vision and memory....
Imagine if we could peek through the skull to see what makes one brain smarter than another. Or to discover whether hidden traits might be driving a person’s schizophrenia or dyslexia. A new kind of imaging technique is helping scientists observe such evidence, and it is revealing a surprise: intelligence, and a variety of mental syndromes, may be influenced by tracts within the brain made exclusively of white matter. Gray matter, the stuff between your ears your teachers chided you about, is where mental computation takes place and memories are stored....
Physician Claudette Poole doesn’t take long to rattle off a list of antiviral medications she prescribes to her patients. “There really aren’t very many,” says Poole, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And for people with Covid-19, there’s just one approved for use: remdesivir, which doesn’t seem to save lives, but speeds recovery in those who do get well. Clearly, more antivirals would be nice to have—so why don’t we have them?...
A controversial report suggests that hundreds of known neurotoxins may be affecting the brains of children around the world and yet are loosely regulated because too high a standard of proof is required before stricter controls are considered. Philippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author Philip J. Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine compiled their list of more than 200 chemicals known to be neurotoxic to adults from government databases....
By century’s end, tens of millions of U.S. coastal property owners will face a decision embodied in the popular exhortation, “Move it or lose it.” But there’s an option for people who can’t imagine a home without an ocean view. It’s called “seasteading,” and it could be a 21st-century antidote to the nation’s disappearing shorelines. “Floating cities” could become climate havens for people whose lives and livelihoods are tethered to the sea or nearby coast, according to the San Francisco-based Seasteading Institute....
A defunct German satellite is expected to plunge to Earth this week, but exactly when and where the satellite will fall remains a mystery. The massive German Roentgen Satellite, or ROSAT, is expected to plummet to Earth on Saturday or Sunday (Oct. 22 or 23), though German space officials have also offered a wider re-entry window of between Oct. 21 and Oct. 25. This latest falling satellite comes about a month after a dead NASA climate satellite, called the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), plunged into the Pacific Ocean in late September....
For the past 20 years, French neuroscientist Erwan Bezard has spent at least one week every two months in Beijing. Bezard makes the long journey from France to visit the primates bred in Chinese labs. China has become the top destination for research involving these animals, which are invaluable models for studying human disease. Other countries do not breed the primates in such large numbers or to the standard produced in China....
A technique that allows particular genes to spread rapidly through populations is not ready to be set loose in the wild, warns a committee convened by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In a report released on June 8, the committee argued that such ‘gene drives’ pose complex ecological risks that are not yet fully understood. “It is not ready—and we are not ready—for any kind of release,” says Elizabeth Heitman, co-chair of the committee and a research integrity educator at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee....
The U.S. government has attempted to obtain the master encryption keys that Internet companies use to shield millions of users’ private Web communications from eavesdropping. These demands for master encryption keys, which have not been disclosed previously, represent a technological escalation in the clandestine methods that the FBI and the National Security Agency employ when conducting electronic surveillance against Internet users. If the government obtains a company’s master encryption key, agents could decrypt the contents of communications intercepted through a wiretap or by invoking the potent surveillance authorities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act....
My client Amy recently asked for help because whenever she got overwhelmed at work, she’d freeze as if her brain had blown a fuse. She’d find herself mindlessly clicking a retractable pen for minutes at a time, or frantically scrolling through documents without even seeing them. Her brain’s power grid was overloaded, so the result was like summer in the city when everyone’s running an air conditioner: the lights flicker, and then go out....
Millions of Americans who suffer from bipolar disorder depend on lithium. The medication has been prescribed for half a century to help stabilize patients’ moods and prevent manic or depressive episodes. Yet what it does in the brain—and why it does not work for some people—has remained largely mysterious. But last year San Diego–based researchers uncovered new details about how lithium may alter moods, thanks to an approach recently championed by a small number of scientists studying mental illness: The San Diego team used established lab techniques to reprogram patients’ skin cells into stem cells capable of becoming any other kind—and then chemically coaxed them into becoming brain cells....
Truman’s owners first thought he had twisted his ankle: The Bernese mountain dog was limping and might have landed awkwardly after jumping off the couch. But when he was still hobbled a few days later, they got an x-ray. The scan revealed that Truman had osteosarcoma, a deadly, fast-moving bone cancer that typically strikes breeds of large dogs. The owners’ veterinarian told them amputating Truman’s leg, followed by chemotherapy, might buy them another year or so with their fun-loving clown....
What is Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)? Unfortunately, Angie, you’ve got plenty of company. Polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS, is a condition that affects up to 1 in 10 women of child-bearing age. In a nutshell, PCOS is characterized by hormonal imbalances, involving not just the reproductive hormones (like estrogen and testosterone) but also hormones that regulate blood sugar, fat storage, and appetite. Symptoms of PCOS may include painful or irregular periods, acne, abnormal hair growth, increased appetite, weight gain, and difficulty losing weight....
Editor’s Note: This story is part of an In-Depth Report on the science of beauty. Read more about the series here. Cottage cheese, orange peel, hail damage. By any other name, cellulite may still throw the perfectly sane into a tizzy as winter pants and coats are doffed for more revealing spring and summer styles. This cultural anxiety has meant big bucks for some beauty product–makers and medical practitioners alike. A barrage of products and procedures promise to seek out and destroy the lumpy fat on thighs, bottoms, arms and tummies, but a miracle cellulite assassin has still yet to be uncovered....
LONDON (Reuters) - Since he ditched Marlboro Lights five years ago, Daniel’s fix is fruit-flavored nicotine gum that comes in neat, pop-out strips. He gets through 12 to 15 pieces a day and says he has “packets of the stuff” stashed all over. But he doesn’t see himself as a nicotine addict. Like many people, Daniel believes nicotine gum is far less harmful for him than smoking. Doctors worldwide agree. By giving up cigarettes, they say, Daniel has removed at least 90% of the health risks of his habit....
When experts predicted in 2014 and into 2015 the impending arrival of a major El Niño event for 2015-2016, Californians breathed a collective sigh of relief. The phenomenon marked by warm Pacific Ocean temperatures was predicted to bring substantial amounts of precipitation, which has been sorely lacking over a dramatic four-year drought in the state. However, the latest updates on precipitation and snowpack shows a mixed bag in California, highlighting that with El Niño, prediction is a tricky business....
Scientists knew Neptune’s magnetic field was strange—just not this strange. Neptune, the eighth planet from the sun, has vivid blue clouds and fierce windstorms, but also a badly behaved magnetic field. The field is 27 times more powerful than Earth’s and sits at an angle on the planet, changing chaotically as it interacts with the solar wind. Researchers reconstructed the distant planet’s magnetic field by combining data gathered by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe in 1989 with a new model that was originally built to describe how plasma acts in the lab....
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom. Ecco, 2016 ($26.99; 304 pages) Most of us see empathy as a force for good. From an early age, adults tell children to imagine stepping into another’s shoes to teach them respect and kindness. But in his new book, Yale University psychologist Bloom argues that empathy is actually a poor moral guide and that we may be better off with less of it....
