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Many people with bipolar disorder have a strong attraction to marijuana. A 2019 review of 53 studies found that almost a quarter of a combined sample of 51,756 individuals with the condition used cannabis or had a problematic pattern of consumption (cannabis use disorder), compared with 2 to 7 percent in the general population—and an earlier study placed usage estimates still higher. Cannabis and bipolar disorder do not go particularly well together....

Imagine going to the market, leaving with three full bags of groceries and coming home. Before you step through your door, you stop and throw one of the bags into a trash bin, which later is hauled away to a landfill. What a waste. Collectively, that is exactly what we are doing today. Globally, 30 to 40 percent of food intended for human consumption is not eaten. Given that more than 800 million people go hungry every day, the scale of food loss fills many of us with a deep sense of anguish....

MARCH 1957 CHILDREN AND PHYSICS–“Does a child’s first conception of velocity include comprehension of it as a function of distance and time, or is his notion more primitive and intuitive? Albert Einstein himself posed this question to me in 1928 when I was demonstrating some experiments on causality to him one day. I have since performed a very simple experiment which shows that a child does not think of velocity in terms of the distance-time relation....

Forty-five percent of California’s native salmon, steelhead and trout species face extinction within 50 years, and nearly three-quarters will be wiped out in a century without intervention, a study released yesterday said. The analysis from California Trout (CalTrout) and University of California, Davis, Center for Watershed Sciences blamed climate change as a primary culprit, titling the report “State of the Salmonids II: Fish in Hot Water.” It details the status of 32 types of salmon, steelhead and trout native to the Golden State....

Last summer, scientists announced that they had found what could be the first moon to be spotted outside of the solar system. But new research on the supposed moon’s evolution calls its existence into question. If it does exist, the moon is most likely a large, Neptune-size object orbiting an even larger gas-giant planet. But the unwieldy system strains understanding of how it may have formed, researchers have said. In July 2017, scientists reluctantly announced the possible discovery of an exomoon....

Four chemicals present both inside and outside homes might disrupt our endocrine systems at levels considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to an analysis released today. The chemicals—benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene—are ubiquitous: in the air outside and in many products inside homes and businesses. They have been linked to reproductive, respiratory and heart problems, as well as smaller babies. Now researchers from The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, say that such health impacts may be due to the chemicals’ ability to interfere with people’s hormones at low exposure levels....

Glowing “jellyfish” galaxies have revealed a new way to power some of the most powerful objects in the universe. The same process that feeds the most voracious black holes at the galactic centers may also create dangling “tentacles” of newborn stars, a new study found. While most galaxies, including the Milky Way, hide massive black holes at their centers, only a few produce enough electromagnetic radiation as they eat to create active galactic nuclei (AGN)....

Until recently, most astronomers believed that the universe had entered a very boring middle age. According to this paradigm, the early history of the universe–that is, until about six billion years after the big bang–was an era of cosmic fireworks: galaxies collided and merged, powerful black holes sucked in huge whirlpools of gas, and stars were born in unrivaled profusion. In the following eight billion years, in contrast, galactic mergers became much less common, the gargantuan black holes went dormant, and star formation slowed to a flicker....

President Biden is in Brussels today to discuss ways the United States can help Europe end its dependence on Russian energy. It’s a conversation that could lead to any number of outcomes for the global fight against climate change, analysts say. European Union officials already have said that Russia’s war in Ukraine has provided the shock needed to rapidly reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and pivot toward clean energy. Getting there won’t be easy or immediate, however, and it could compel some policymakers—particularly in the United States—to back extending the use of fossil fuels as a way to blunt Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leverage....

Biotech The DNA Drug Revolution By manipulating life’s master molecule, scientists are treating the root cause of disease January 1, 2020 — Josh Fischman Biotech The Power of Spheres DNA or RNA molecules, arranged into spherical shapes, can attack brain cancers and other illnesses that evade conventional drug design January 1, 2020 — Chad A. Mirkin, Christine Laramy and Kacper Skakuj Biotech 23 and Baby We now have the ability to screen for thousands of genetic diseases in newborns....

Vance Bergeron was once an amateur cyclist who rode 7,000 kilometres per year—much of it on steep climbs in the Alps. But in February 2013, as the 50-year-old chemical engineer was biking to work at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyons, France, he was hit by a car. The impact sent him flying through the air and onto his head, breaking his neck. When he woke, he learnt that he would never again move his legs on his own, and would have only limited use of his arms....

Back when I was in grade school—wearing my split shorts, knee-high sports socks, and participating in the mandatory track events to earn a scrap of satin in the form of a participation ribbon—stretching was a ritual that we all performed before the main event. Back then we were all programmed to believe we absolutely had to stretch our muscles before exerting them if we wanted to avoid things like the dreaded groin pull....

Type 2 diabetes affects one in ten American adults—that’s 30 million people. A quarter of these don’t even realize they have the disease! And for every person with Type 2 diabetes, there are two more who are considered prediabetic, meaning their blood sugar levels are in the high-normal range. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with diabetes, you probably have a lot of questions. In this article, I’ll clear up some of the most common misunderstandings, and answer the following questions people often ask....

Living standards during the past generation have improved massively across the broad spectrum of our lives thanks to technological innovation and productivity. A new pair of shoes, a gallon of milk, a flight to visit our parents, a coast-to-coast call or a new television require only a fraction of hours worked compared to our parents. Health care has been a stunning exception. Spending in the U.S. is the highest among any developed nation in the world....

It’s the beginning of the end for the Antarctic ozone hole. A new analysis shows that, on average, the hole — which forms every Southern Hemisphere spring, letting in dangerous ultraviolet light — is smaller and appears later in the year than it did in 2000. The 1987 global treaty called the Montreal Protocol sought to reduce the ozone hole by banning chlorofluorocarbons, chlorine-containing chemicals — used as refrigerants in products such as air conditioners — that accelerated ozone loss in the stratosphere....

One of the most talked about findings in psychology today is “stereotype threat” – a phenomenon in which a person experiences anxiety because of the fear of confirming a negative stereotype. Research has shown that stereotype threat can lead people to perform worse than expected. For example, women make more mistakes on a math test after being reminded of the stereotype that men are better at math. Despite hundreds of studies showing its effects, stereotype threat remains controversial as an explanation for real-world performance gaps....

When I proposed an article to Scientific American on energy return-on-investment, also known as EROI, I didn’t realize how much legwork would be involved in gathering the numbers needed for an infographic to accompany the story. On the surface, the measurement of EROI seems simple. It is just the energy output divided by the energy input. (For gasoline, for example, the output would be the energy in a gallon of gasoline, and the input would be all the energy required to make the gasoline—including oil exploration, drilling and refining....

Scientific American presents Tech Talker by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. A while back, I did an episode on some amazing apps for iOS devices. And now it’s time for some awesome Android apps! If you don’t have an Android device, you might want to keep listening in case you’re interested in the newest Nexus 7 tablet or considering getting an Android phone sometime down the road....

The orbits of all seven Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are now known. Astronomers have nailed down the path of TRAPPIST-1h, the outermost planet in the system, finding that this world takes just under 19 Earth days to complete one lap around its small, faint host star. The new result suggests that TRAPPIST-1h is too cold to host life as we know it, and it confirms that all seven TRAPPIST-1 worlds circle their star in a sort of gravitational lockstep with one another, study team members said....

When a scientist wins a Nobel Prize, the King of Sweden hands that person a golden megaphone. It’s not the loudest instrument of its kind, but it has a bright, luxuriant finish, and it is guaranteed to work for the lifetime of its owner. That is how it came to pass that on July 1st, as temperatures in Paris reached a record 103.5 degrees F, as the London underground became hotter than the legal limit for transporting cattle, a Nobel laureate named Ivar Giaever (Physics, 1973) stood at a dais in Lindau, Germany, and argued that climate change wasn’t happening....