Posts

DETROIT—Climate change turned into a flashpoint at last night’s Democratic debate when most of the 10 candidates jumped into an argument about the best way to fight rising temperatures without wrecking the American economy. The episode revealed policy divisions on an issue that’s ignited the liberal base of the party. The roughly 10-minute segment in the two-hour debate was also criticized by climate advocates on social media as unrepresentative of the environmental hazards facing the next president....

In the past 20 years, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has grown from hypothetical hazard to dire global threat. Across the world, a growing number of potentially deadly infectious pathogens, including those that cause tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and staph infections, have developed resistance to treatment regimens. Drug-resistant bacteria account for 700,000 deaths globally every year, and if left unchecked this number could reach 10 million per year by 2050. A 2014 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that “the problem is so serious it threatens the achievements of modern medicine....

An Arctic free of ice and stocked with swamp-loving reptiles. Temperate forests covering Antarctica, thriving on heat that kept them alive through the dark months. Average temperatures along the equator of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. High carbon dioxide levels kept the planet warm enough to sustain that life 50 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch. As the CO2 levels dropped, the planet tilted toward a cooling, and the ice caps were formed, choking off the life that once thrived at the poles....

On January 25 the streets of Cairo erupted in protest against then president Hosni Mubarak’s repressive Egyptian regime. Over the next 72 hours the government shut down the country’s Internet service and mobile-phone system in an attempt to squelch the rebellion—to no avail: a rich ecosystem of Facebook conversations, Twitter outbursts and chat-room plans had already unified millions of Cairo’s people, who continued the relentless uprising. The government backed down and restored communications to keep the country’s economy on life support, but the masses kept up the pressure until Mubarak resigned 14 days later....

A new fossil from China proves that the mammals that lived during the Jurassic era were more diverse than previously thought. The 164-million-year-old creature, dubbed Castorocauda lutrasimilis, had a tail like a beaver, the paddling limbs of an otter, seallike teeth and probably webbed feet. And although most Jurassic mammals discovered thus far were tiny, shrewlike animals, C. lutrasimilis, would have weighed in at approximately a pound. Roughly the size of a small, female platypus, it is the largest mammal from this time period on record....

By Alla Katsnelson It’s not just people that are getting fatter. A statistical analysis of more than 20,000 animals suggests that the obesity epidemic is spreading to family pets, wild animals living in close proximity to humans, and animals housed in research centers–perhaps indicating that environmental factors beyond diet and exercise are at least partly to blame for expanding waistlines.David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and lead author on a study published online November 24 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, stumbled across the trend while looking for a relationship between body weight and longevity in a population of marmosets housed at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center in Madison....

December 1967 X-ray Stars “In the five years since Scorpius X-I was discovered a total of about 30 X-ray stars, or at least sources of X radiation, have been detected in rocket surveys. A general, diffuse background of X rays in space has also been observed. About a dozen rockets have been flown on these missions, and the total observing time so far adds up to only one hour (five minutes being available in each flight)....

It could be said that March’s issue was “problematic”: at first glance, the title of “The Limits of Reason,” by Gregory Chaitin, might have proved somewhat deflating. Chaitin’s logical exploration of the insolvability of the number “omega” implicitly threw down the gauntlet at the human impulse to tackle every problem with the assumption that it has a solution, even if not immediately ascertainable. And, true to form, readers responded with a broadside of questions, challenges–and solutions....

▪ Crash of Civilizations The obvious driver of the huge issues raised by Lester Brown in “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” is overpopulation. Most rational people will agree that this planet does have a limit to the population of humans it can support. Sooner or later we will reach that limit, and then the natural world will abruptly step in and make a major correction through famine, disease and result-ing conflict....

The path to the hydrogen economy is getting visibly brighter–literally. Nanotubes that break apart water molecules to liberate hydrogen can now do so more efficiently and could soon use the optical spectrum of sunlight. In dissociating water with sunlight, engineers have available three technologies: One is solar cells, which hold the record for water-splitting efficiency but are comparatively expensive. Another approach uses microorganisms, which are inexpensive but so far produce only minuscule amounts of hydrogen....

If you feel lonely persistently, blame it partly on your genes. In a survey of 8,387 siblings, 48 percent of identical twins and 24 percent of fraternal twins reported similar levels of moderate to extreme loneliness, with much higher agreement than siblings who were not twins. The results come from a 12-year study done in the Netherlands by psychologists at Free University and the University of Amsterdam and at the University of Chicago....

High school and college are the glory days, and it’s all downhill from there, right? Until now, research has supported that popular idea, suggesting that life satisfaction reaches its low point in middle age. New findings, however, suggest that we continually get happier well into our 30s and perhaps beyond. Past studies that attempted to look at lifelong happiness used a cross-sectional method. At a given point in time, a research team would survey demographically matched groups of people who were different ages....

Among the 23 remarkable individuals who won MacArthur Foundation fellowships earlier this week, there was mathematician Maria Chudnovsky, who is married to a violist, and stringed instrument bow-maker Benoît Rolland. Although these two awardees work in completely different fields, they are linked by personal interest and, oddly enough, a kind of scientific artistry. Mathematicians often describe their field as both an art and a science, and bow-making involves a surprising amount of experimentation and engineering....

NEW YORK—The United States and other countries proclaimed yesterday that an upcoming effort to amend an international ozone treaty to curb refrigerants that contribute to global warming would be a test of the post-Paris Agreement era. Speaking in a posh Midtown hotel conference room blocks away from the United Nations, where the landmark global warming deal struck in the French capital sailed past its first ratification hurdle Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said a hydrofluorocarbon phasedown under the Montreal Protocol would be a “huge step” toward making good on the promise of Paris....

For the first time, scientists have used a satellite to estimate how much methane is seeping into the atmosphere from Arctic lakes. Preliminary data presented this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC help to explain long-standing discrepancies between estimates of methane emissions from atmospheric measurements and data collected at individual lakes. As icy permafrost melts to form lakes, microbes break down organic matter in the thawing ground beneath the water and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas....

The US Supreme Court today ended an effort to shut down government support of human embryonic stem cell research, refusing to hear a case that challenged the legality of funding for the work by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The high court’s refusal to consider an appeal in the case of Sherley v. Sebelius ends a more than 3-year-old effort by the plaintiffs, two adult stem cell researchers, to stop NIH backing of the work, which holds the promise of treatments for a variety of diseases, but which depends upon the destruction of days-old human embryos....

IMAGINE a treatment for depression that possesses the following properties: It is as effective as antidepressant medications but lacks their side effects. Its therapeutic results last longer than those of antidepressant medications after treatment has ended. Its benefits generalize to many domains of life. It causes changes in the brain in processes associated with depression. It usually needs to be administered only once a week. It generally costs the same or less than medications....

There were no longer any illusions that the war could be over by Christmas. Shortages of war supplies were acutely felt by the military, civilians were beginning to feel the pinch of wartime austerity. With the entry of the Ottoman Empire and Italy to the war (on opposite sides), it had become vast, all-encompassing, and immensely destructive. On the battlefield, poison chroline gas began to be used on a wide scale....

Although learning a language is harder as an adult than as a child, here are a few strategies that can help pave the way: Watch social cues: Pay attention to nonverbal cues, such as eye gaze, gestures or pointing. They can enhance your understanding of sounds, words, phrases and even grammar. Sleep on it: Going to bed soon after drilling vocabulary or other practice can help consolidate what you have learned....

Supplying documentation seemed, at the time, like a good idea all around. Mastery made customers happy, and happy customers meant repeat sales. But there were other forces at play. Printing and binding took time and money—and customers didn’t seem to be reading user manuals. Over time, therefore, physical manuals began disappearing from our hardware and software boxes. Maybe you’d get a Quick Start leaflet, but the rest was online. In those days, says my own tech-book agent David Rogelberg, “almost any book published would sell 7,000 copies—even the really bad books....