ITALY For the first time, scientists retrieved a human genome from volcanic ash–encrusted remains found in the ancient city Pompeii. They identified the individual as a man in his 30s, with markers for spinal tuberculosis, and they also analyzed the bones of an accompanying woman over 50. EGYPT New analysis of a space rock found in the desert in 1996 suggests it was forged in a rare “type Ia” supernova explosion inside a giant dust cloud....
By Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel MogatoTACLOBAN, Philippines (Reuters) - Rescue workers tried to reach towns and villages in the central Philippines on Tuesday that were cut off by a powerful typhoon, fearing the estimated death toll of 10,000 could jump sharply, as relief efforts intensified with the help of U.S. military.The United States will send an aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, to the Philippines, a U.S. defense official told Reuters, in a move that could further scale up air operations at a time when ground teams are struggling to reach areas where roads are impassable and bridges destroyed....
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, the nation has vowed to rebuild New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities while improving protection against raging storms. But before engineers redesign a single levee, they must consider a fundamental question: Can the Mississippi Delta be restored as a lush, hardy buffer that can absorb surges and rising seas? Or is it too far gone, necessitating a 300-mile wall to hold back the Gulf?...
Waves of nationalist sentiment are reshaping the politics of Western democracies in unexpected ways — carrying Donald Trump to a surprise victory last month in the US presidential election, and pushing the United Kingdom to vote in June to exit the European Union. And nationalist parties are rising in popularity across Europe. Many economists see this political shift as a consequence of globalization and technological innovation over the past quarter of a century, which have eliminated many jobs in the West....
As we head into the second decade of the 21st century, two vexing policy questions stand out not only in the U.S. but in countries around the world: How do we produce more students with strong preparation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), along with the habits of mind vital for a 21st-century workforce? And, what can be done to close widening income and social mobility gaps? Although seemingly unrelated, we can address both questions by transforming the way we teach science....
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority with a 2012 regulation limiting mercury emissions and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants because it refused to consider the costs involved in complying with the mandate. In a 5-4 opinion, the court said that the EPA must consider the cost of an environmental regulation before deciding if it is “appropriate and necessary.” It left it to the EPA to decide how costs should be considered and sent the case back to the federal appeals court to decide whether the rule should remain in effect in the meantime....
All U.S. waters north of the Bering Strait may soon be closed to commercial fishing. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council—the government body charged with administering Alaskan waters—voted unanimously in Seattle today to close 196,000 square miles (507,600 square kilometers) of ocean to any fishing. “This will close the Arctic to all commercial fishing,” says Jim Ayers, vice president for Pacific and Arctic affairs at ocean conservation organization Oceana, based in Juneau, who testified before the vote....
NOWSHERA, Pakistan – “Allah was angry with us when the rain came.” Sumaira Bibi unhesitatingly leans on theology to explain what happened here on the night of July 29, when her world was drowned. Her husband was out of town for work. The 37-year-old mother was left with her five children and sister-in-law to settle in for the night. Then the incessant rain began to swamp this city in northwestern Pakistan, about 50 miles from the Afghan border....
SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. Since the Germanwings plane crash, speculation has focused on the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, and what role mental illness might have played in this horrible tragedy. This question has been magnified by the emergence of information that he had a past history of psychiatric or psychological treatment for what was reported to be depression and suicidal ideation and that his doctors had recently recommended that he take medical leave from work for as yet undisclosed ailments—advice he apparently disregarded....
Einstein himself summed it up nicely when he said, “Nothing happens until something moves.” But going from ‘not moving’ to ‘moving’ can sometimes feel like an unbridgeable gulf. This week, we’ll cover five ways to nudge your mind or body into motion. Tip #1: Rethink what “motivated” means. “Motivated” could mean pumped and ready for anything, or it could just mean a willingness to get up. The bar can feel way too high if you’re nestled all snug in your bed while visions of Tony Robbins dance in your head....
This month, my Scientific American column tackles the new era of vertical video—videos shot and viewed as tall, thin rectangles, suitable for smartphone screens without having to turn them. It’s kind of a mess: Vertical videos look ridiculous on TV sets and computer screens, but traditional horizontal videos play tiny and goofily on smartphones held upright. This isn’t the first time aspect ratios (screen proportions) have changed—or have given society headaches....
When the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona shuts down later this year, it will be one of the largest carbon emitters to ever close in American history. The giant coal plant on Arizona’s high desert emitted almost 135 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2017, according to an E&E News review of federal figures. Its average annual emissions over that period are roughly equivalent to what 3.3 million passenger cars would pump into the atmosphere in a single year....
The newest and most dangerous island in the world is about to get a robotic sentinel. Since bursting to life 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo in 2013, a massive marine volcano called Nishinoshima has erupted dozens of times, spewing red-hot lava that engulfed a neighboring island. As the volcano has grown, so has the risk it represents to 2,500 people living on the nearby Japanese archipelago of Ogasawara. Should Nishinoshima’s rocky slopes collapse during an eruption, they could trigger a deadly tsunami that would reach the Ogasawara islands within 20 minutes....
Len Gillman was hiking among kauri trees with his wife in the forest-clad Waitakere Ranges near his home in West Auckland, New Zealand, when he remembered something that had bothered him since he was a student in the 1980s: Why was the scientific name for these giant conifers Agathis australis when they have been called “kauri” for centuries by New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori? “It just struck me as a very colonial thing to do: to move into a place and essentially rename everything that already had names—names that embodied Indigenous people’s knowledge and were important for their sense of place and belonging,” says Gillman, who is a professor of biogeography at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand....
When a blast rattles the brain, the resulting concussion sometimes leads to unremitting psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, irritability, sleep disorders, pain, and learning and memory problems. Tens of thousands of American veterans are estimated to suffer from this postconcussive syndrome (PCS), formerly associated with shell shock. Now evidence suggests that a hormone imbalance may underlie the chronic symptoms—meaning hormone replacement therapy could spur a dramatic recovery. At least since World War I, scientists have tried to figure out why about 10 percent of adults’ concussions—from any cause, including accidents, falls and sports injuries—lead to persistent psychological and physical complaints....
British society has always prized the scientific mind, producing such luminaries as engineering whiz Isambard Kingdom Brunel, developmental biologist Anne McLaren and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. But in June 2016 the U.K.’s reputation as a future-looking nation suffered a devastating blow. Fifty-two percent of voters decided they wanted to leave the European Union, a club of nations that foster peace and economic growth. On March 29 the government officially started the exit, or “Brexit,” process: a tangle of 143 British and E....
Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Today’s topic will be vaccines and how they work. With all of the controversy surrounding vaccines, I thought that if I am going to make a case for them, I would do little good by giving the standard finger-wagging lecture. People need first to understand infection and immunity before they will accept my claim that immunizations are invaluable....
More than 32 million homes on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are at risk of sustaining hurricane wind damage, according to a report released yesterday that provides the first measurement of wind risk in an era of climate change. The at-risk properties have a combined value of $8.5 trillion, the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic Inc. said in its annual report on hurricane risk. Previous hurricane reports by CoreLogic, a leading property risk researcher, have estimated only potential storm surge damage from hurricanes....
Real-world math problems: for many of us, they were the bane of our existence during high school. A train would leave New York City at a given time headed south at some speed. Another would leave Atlanta headed north at a different clip. It was up to students to determine when and where the two coaches might pass one another. But could all of that information have been for naught? New research published in Science suggests that attempts by math teachers to make the subject easier to grasp by providing such practical examples may actually have made it tougher to learn....
Subsurface Glaciers On Mars Vast glaciers lie buried below thin layers of crustal debris on Mars, according to ground-penetrating radar from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Because current conditions on the Red Planet at the regions measured—between 30 and 60 degrees south latitude—do not support the development office, the glaciers probably took shape in the distant past, when Martian climate patterns were different. The debris covering protected the ice and kept it from sublimating into water vapor....
