Posts

Explosive storms spawned by interactions between the magnetic fields of Earth and the sun can endanger satellites, spacecraft and astronauts in space, as well as power grids on Earth. Now, a fleet of NASA spacecraft has for the first time directly witnessed the mysterious way in which these magnetic explosions occur. This work could help shed light on dangerous solar outbursts and help improve the design of advanced nuclear reactors, researchers said....

Novartis International’s Sandoz division, which manufactures ranitidine, a generic form of the heartburn drug Zantac, has halted its distribution over concerns that it may be contaminated with low levels of a probable carcinogen. Sandoz has also issued a recall of the drug in the U.S., Canada and parts of Europe.* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a statement last week saying some ranitidine medicines, including the brand-name drug Zantac, contain traces of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA)....

By Janice Neumann (Reuters Health) - Moderate-intensity exercise, or even just walking, can improve quality of life for depressed middle-aged women, a large Australian study suggests. Women who averaged 150 minutes of moderate exercise (golf, tennis, aerobics classes, swimming, or line-dancing) or 200 minutes of walking every week had more energy, socialized more, felt better emotionally, and weren’t as limited by their depression when researchers followed up after three years. They also had less pain and did better physically, although the psychological benefit was greater....

Higher temperatures with climate change will push up demand for air conditioning significantly in some states, potentially taxing electric grids, a new analysis said. Demand in some parts of the United States could rise more than 13 percent, according to the studypublished in Earth’s Future, the American Geophysical Union’s journal. “We know that when it gets warmer out, we use more air conditioning and know that climate change is going to lead to higher temperatures, particularly in the summer,” Renee Obringer, the lead author and an assistant professor at Penn State University, said in an interview....

What will it take to develop a geothermal pump that can operate miles underground in 430-degree-Fahrenheit fluids while maintaining a steady 750 horsepower? A pair of West Coast foundations hope they have the answer: lots of cash. The Oregon-based Foundation for Geothermal Innovation and the California-based Lemelson Foundation last week released design criteria for a race to build the next generation of “temperature hardened” electric submersible pumps (ESP), one of a number of technologies crucial to the advancement of geothermal energy on a commercial scale....

Get-Fit Guy podcast listener named Brian wrote to me earlier today: “Hi, Brock. I just received the news from my doctor that I have Crepitus in my right knee. It does not hurt a lot and I have not seen a PT yet. I stopped running and am using the RICE protocol on my knee. But do you have any other suggestions? What exercises do you suggest? Should I put a knee brace on?...

The field of virology spends a substantial chunk of its resources inspecting every minute step of the HIV life cycle–from the binding and entry of the virus into an immune cell to its replication and release of a new virus from the host cell and, finally, the seeking of a new cell on which to prey. The last major new class of anti-HIV drugs emerged about a decade ago with the introduction of the protease inhibitors, which curb the action of an enzyme that is critical to a late stage of viral replication....

The Last Ocean: Antarctica’s Ross Sea Project: Saving the Most Pristine Ecosystem on Earth by John Weller Rizzoli, 2013 At the edge of Antarctica, shielded by great expanses of thick sea ice, the Ross Sea is one of the coldest, remotest and most inhospitable places on earth. Yet it is also one of the planet’s last relatively untouched ecosystems, sheltering large numbers of Adélie and Emperor penguins, Weddell seals, orcas, minke whales and other creatures....

NOVEMBER Dementia, you thief Leaving so little behind All is forgotten. 1 This haiku-style poem by Max Natick was a winning entry from last year’s Neuroscience for Kids Poetry Contest, for ages five to 17. Winners from 2008 wrote haikus, limericks and rhyming poems about the brain—how it works and what happens when it’s impaired. Contest entries are accepted through February 1, 2010, and prizes include educational neuroscience books and games....

The people of the world get 75 percent of their sustenance—either directly, or indirectly as meat—from four crops: maize (corn), wheat, rice and soybeans. The world’s rising population—now predicted by the United Nations to reach 10.1 billion by century’s end—has been fed thanks to rising yields of all four of these crops during the past century. Humanity’s predilection for burning fossil fuels, however, is now contributing to the slowing of such rising yields, cutting harvests of wheat 5....

Key concepts Patterns Code Puzzles Cryptography Introduction If you need to send a secret message to a friend, how could you prevent other people from reading it? One way is to encrypt the message—that is, use a secret code that only you and your friend know. Try this activity to learn how to create your own “Caesar cipher,” a popular type of code that is easy to learn. Background Cryptography is the study of writing or solving secret codes that are used for secure communication....

By Emma Marris of Nature magazineOn 12 July, the US government agency that administers the Endangered Species Act came to an agreement with a wildlife group that has sued them numerous times over the past decade. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) in Tuscon, Arizona, will cut back on its lawsuits against the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for six years if the agency takes action on hundreds of species – from the Mojave fringe-toed lizard to the Pacific walrus – by specific dates....

*Editor’s Note (1/3/21): The number of COVID deaths in the U.S. is now more than 350,000, as of the beginning of January, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. A persistent falsehood has been circulating on social media: the number of COVID deaths is much lower than official statistics, and therefore the danger of the disease has been overblown. In August, President Donald Trump retweeted a post claiming that only 6 percent of these reported deaths were actually from COVID-19....

Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes—the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge....

Critics sometimes tell us that Scientific American has strayed from what might be called “classical science content” and is wading into subject areas where we don’t belong. This claim bubbles up most often when we publish stories related to social justice or human rights—on the research supporting health care for transgender people, for instance, or abortion as basic medical care. A Twitter user replied to an opinion piece against forcing trans girls to play on boys’ sports teams by writing, “You should probably move everything back to science, facts and stats and leave the ‘wokness’ [SIC], narrative skewing and agenda setting behind....

If it’s September, it’s time for creationism in schools. That’s how some would like it, anyway. Sure, evolution is the linchpin of modern biology, explaining everything from antibiotic resistance in bacteria to the progression of species found in the fossil record. That didn’t stop Republican vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, from expressing the idea that creationism—the biblical notion that God created Earth and its life forms a few thousand years ago–should get equal footing with evolution in public school science classes....

On January 31, 1958, the U.S. put its first satellite into space. As the Jupiter C rocket carrying the satellite burned its way through the upper atmosphere, engineers at Cape Canaveral in Florida were “shouting, singing, cheering.” At the National Academy of Sciences, there was “hardly elbow room among the crowd on hand to hear that the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, was up.” But how did Americans feel about what followed?...

Black particles floating in vials of supposedly sterile medicine; poor air filtration systems; insufficient microbiological testing: These are just some of the issues federal drug inspectors discovered in recent inspections of compounding pharmacies like the one linked to a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak this fall. Months later questions linger about how to best regulate compounding pharmacies like these and avert future tragedy. Federal drug inspectors recently tried to step up their oversight but faced stiff opposition, sometimes being denied access altogether....

The drop stones in the tropical rocks were among the first clues that something strange once happened to planet Earth. Drop stones are rocks that land on the seabed, sometimes with so much force that the sediment deforms. But there shouldn’t have been any drop stones in these rocks. Glaciers are the most usual source; ice sheet bellies collect rocks like ticks, then shed them when they put to sea. But the drop stone–bearing rocks were formed under what were intermittently hot tropical waters, evident from the bands of limestone interspersed with them....

By Robin Respaut and Yasmeen Abutaleb (Reuters) - Uncertainty surrounding the Republican plan to replace Obamacare is forcing some U.S. hospitals to delay expansion plans, cut costs, or take on added risk to borrow money for capital investment projects, dealing an economic blow to these facilities and the towns they call home. Hospitals typically lay out multi-year operating plans that prioritize investments, such as new clinics, medical wings, technology or other projects that help draw in more patients and increase revenue....