China’s second moon probe is parked at a stable spot in deep space, called a Lagrangian point, as part of a new mission to study the sun and Earth’s magnetic field. The multi-tasking spacecraft, called the Chang’e 2, completed its moon mapping mission earlier this year. Its new mission may be a signal of China’s expanding prowess in space — not only for scientific purposes, but perhaps for showcasing strategic intentions, experts say....
Facing a limited vaccine supply, the United Kingdom embarked on a bold public-health experiment at the end of 2020: delaying second doses of COVID-19 vaccines in a bid to maximize the number of people who would be at least partially protected from hospitalization and death. Now, a study suggests that delaying the second dose of the Pfizer–BioNTech mRNA vaccine could boost antibody responses after the second inoculation more than threefold in those older than 80....
Starting as early as the 1970s, some cognitive psychologists, philosophers, and linguists began to wonder whether meaning wasn’t something totally different from a language of thought [Call it Mentalese, whichtranslates words into actual concepts: a polar bear or speed limit, for instance]. They suggested that—instead of abstract symbols—meaning might really be something much more closely intertwined with our real experiences in the world, with the bodies that we have. As a self-conscious movement started to take form, it took on a name, embodiment, which started to stand for the idea that meaning might be something that isn’t distilled away from our bodily experiences but is instead tightly bound by them....
Key Concepts Biology Bacteria Health Medicine Mathematics Probability Introduction Have you ever had to take antibiotics? Your doctor or nurse probably told you to finish taking every dose of the medication—even if you start to feel better before you finish it. But why is that? You might be surprised to learn that if you stop taking antibiotics early, you might contribute to the creation of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” which can make our medicine less effective—and illnesses harder to treat....
Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels and meet energy needs, the International Energy Agency warned today. IEA’s “World Energy Outlook” raises the stakes for U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. Delaying the shift to low-carbon energy by just a few years, it says, will make it impossible to avert catastrophic temperature rises. The report predicts $26 trillion in 2008 U....
What’s at the bottom of things? If we keep asking “Why?” where do we end up? The monotheistic faiths assert that our questions must culminate in God, a solitary, supernatural creator. Dissatisfied with that hypothesis, physicists postulate that everything stems from a single primordial force or particle, perhaps a supersymmetric string, from which flow the myriad forces and particles of our fallen world. Notice that, for all their differences, religion and physics share the ultrareductionist conviction that reality comes down to one thing....
Editor’s Note: On February 13, 2019, after a final attempt to reestablish contact, NASA officials announced the formal end of the Opportunity rover’s 15-year mission to Mars. Mired in dust on the afternoon of June 10, 2018, NASA’s Opportunity rover received a final command from Earth. Take a photo of the sun, the Deep Space Network sang in code. Send telemetry. The rover’s cameras could barely see through all the swirling dust, which had been blown aloft by a planet-spanning storm....
Even though the recent heat wave has ended, weeks of drought and days of 100-degree temperatures have already taken a toll on this year’s corn crop in a large part of the Midwestern United States. The corn crisis from several weeks ago is now becoming a disaster. Many farmers in parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kansas are facing a crop failure and financial impact. Ultimately, the consumer will likely feel the heat from the upcoming corn shortfall....
Advances in the 1950s and 1960s, including unprecedented cooperation between Soviet and U.S. scientists, allowed polio to be eradicated throughout the Americas by 1994 and all of Europe in 1998. Eliminating the crippling scourge has been more difficult, however, in some parts of Africa and Asia. Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/health/01polio.html http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/timeline/index.htm http://www.polioeradication.org/Aboutus/History.aspx www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/FOrgsHistory/CBER/ucm135758.htm http://www.marchofdimes.com/mission/history_indepth.html https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4585992 Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/health/01polio.html http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/timeline/index.htm http://www.polioeradication.org/Aboutus/History.aspx www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/FOrgsHistory/CBER/ucm135758.htm http://www.marchofdimes.com/mission/history_indepth.html https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4585992
A handful of stencils and three pens sound like materials for a child’s art project. But researchers have now used these tools to draw functional health monitors directly on human skin. Wearable sensor technology, which helps doctors check a variety of health indicators, has in recent years advanced from bulky devices to flexible patches that stick to people like temporary tattoos. These prefabricated sensors can be expensive, however. They also tend to follow skin contours imperfectly, making them sensitive to the wearer’s motion....
NEW YORK — A group of scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs are tired of waiting around for E.T. to get in touch. Instead of passively listening for signs of intelligent life in the universe, the Lone Signal project is asking everyone with an Internet connection to help beam messages into outer space in an attempt to make our presence in the universe known. When Lone Signal goes live late in the day on June 17, it will mark humanity’s first-ever attempt to send continuous messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence, officials said....
By Lucas LaursenA new defense of the fossil Ida as a precursor to today’s primates, including humans, has emerged from the research team that last year bought and promoted the 47-million-year-old remains.Ida, or Darwinius masillae, was described in 2009 by Jens Franzen at the Research Institute and Natural History Museum of Senckenberg in Frankfurt, Germany, and colleagues, who identified it as a haplorrhine, precursors to modern-day monkeys and apes. However, two studies by other groups since then citing evidence from a new fossil and an independent study of similar primate fossils concluded Ida was closer to the strepsirrhine branch, precursors to today’s lemurs....
Edited by Dava Sobel Schrödinger’s Cat Laments Look at me in this box all alone. Who’s to care if I don’t feel at home? There’s just this device, Which isn’t so nice, To see that I live or get blown….* Schrödinger’s Cat Complains Erwin’s cat caterwauls to her mate: Verschränkung’s† controlling my fate. Alive and quite dead, I exist in his head, A mere plaything of his mental state. Schrödinger’s Cat Reconsiders So, okay, I’ll exist in his head, Both alive and impossibly dead....
By Timothy Gardner FAIRBANKS, Alaska (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed an agreement recognizing the landmark Paris climate accord at a meeting of Arctic nations in Alaska on Thursday, but said President Donald Trump was not rushing to decide whether to leave or weaken U.S. commitments to the pact. Trump’s efforts to dilute U.S. climate policies have made the country an outlier on the issue and put Tillerson in an awkward position at a meeting of the Arctic Council....
For years, blue-ribbon panels of experts have sounded the alarm about a looming shortage of scientists, mathematicians and engineers in the U.S.–making dire predictions of damage to the national economy, threats to security and loss of status in the world. There also seemed to be an attractive solution: coax more women to these traditionally male fields. But there was not much public discussion about the reasons more women are not pursuing careers in these fields until 2005, when then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers offered his personal observations....
Scientists and politicians in South Africa are together celebrating the official opening of a gigantic telescope that is already transforming astronomy research in the nation. A ceremony that was live-streamed on national television stations on 13 July from a remote site in Northern Cape province marked the completion of the powerful MeerKATT radio telescope, which was designed in, and funded by, South Africa. An array of 64 dishes, each 13.5 metres in diameter, MeerKAT is the most sensitive telescope of its kind in the world and will map the radio sky in unprecedented detail....
Electronics cannot handle the heat. That is why computers rely on fans, and car engines need radiators. But these cooling devices are necessarily rigid, which makes them a bad fit for soft robots made from stretchy, flexible plastics instead of metal. So some Cornell University researchers have taken their inspiration from perspiration and developed a soft robotic gripper that automatically starts sweating when temperatures rise. Thanks to their squishy construction, soft robots are sometimes more adaptable and durable—and can be less likely to cause injury—than their metallic counterparts....
Roughly 10 billion years ago the Milky Way—then a smaller galaxy that did not contain its current spiral structure or diffuse halo of surrounding stars—suffered a massive head-on collision that shook it to its very core. That is when our galaxy’s gravity pulled a smaller companion, roughly one quarter its mass, into a dangerous dance: One where the dwarf galaxy plunged into and out of the Milky Way’s disk, oscillating back and forth until it was finally swallowed whole....
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Before the 1980s, clinicians actually performed surgery on newborns without giving them anaesthetics or pain medications. This wasn’t because they thought babies were completely incapable of feeling pain. But they didn’t know how much pain the newborns could experience and feared that the medications may be too dangerous to warrant use. Luckily we are better informed today....
Rather than chasing their prey in flight like many other birds, Acadian flycatchers prefer to ambush insects from a perch. Researchers recently discovered an odd structure in the birds’ eyes that may help them track a moving insect while sitting still themselves. Visual ecologist Luke P. Tyrrell of the State University of New York Plattsburgh and his colleagues found that the photoreceptors, or light-sensitive cells, at the center of the flycatcher’s retina contain extralarge mitochondria....
