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BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts General Hospital admitted a patient possibly exposed to the Ebola virus on Tuesday, the hospital said in a statement. The patient, whose identity was not disclosed, is being treated in a “specially prepared area within the hospital,” Mass General said, noted that the diagnosis has not yet been confirmed. The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed more than 6,000 people, with the vast majority of cases in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone....

Intrepid rovers on Mars responsible for major scientific discoveries on the Red Planet exemplify what is “best in us,” President Barack Obama said today (April 29). Obama made the remarks during an address to the National Academy of Sciences that marked the organization’s 150th anniversary. In the speech, Obama expressed his support for the sciences as a fundamental part of American life in today’s world. “Today, all around the country, scientists like you are developing therapies to regenerate damaged organs, creating new devices to enable brain controlled prosthetic limbs, and sending sophisticated robots into space to search for signs of past life on Mars,” Obama said during his address....

Reform or Re-reform? In “Numbers War” [News Scan], Linda Baker’s treatment of our inquiry-based Discovering Mathematics series is filled with errors and naive claims. For instance, there was no “three-year pilot” of our texts, contrary to what Baker reported. The article repeats many unfounded criticisms of reform in mathematics education. For one, Baker describes the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) document as a volley in the war, although it is actually an effort to bring coherence and conceptual clarity to the most important topics in high school mathematics....

In this column, I’ll look at an equally ambitious and closely related claim, that science will absorb other ways of seeing the world, including the arts, humanities and religion. Nonscientific modes of knowledge won’t necessarily vanish, but they will become consistent with science, our supreme source of truth. The most eloquent advocate of this perspective is biologist Edward Wilson, one of our greatest scientist-writers. In his 1998 bestseller Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Wilson prophesies that science will soon yield such a compelling, complete theory of nature, including human nature, that “the humanities, ranging from philosophy and history to moral reasoning, comparative religion, and interpretation of the arts, will draw closer to the sciences and partly fuse with them....

When the noted particle theorist Alessandro Strumia gave a talk at CERN near Geneva in 2018, he raised a storm of protest by suggesting that women in his discipline were somehow less capable than men. In response, a collection of physicists who gave themselves the endearing name Particles for Justice came together to issue a statement condemning Strumia’s remarks. Last week, members of the group (who had remained in close touch after the Strumia incident) had a virtual meeting and decided to mount a light-speed response to the current global wave of pushback against racism following the death of George Floyd....

Although many women begin their studies in these fields, their numbers drop at every stage of educational and professional advancement. At the undergraduate level in the U.S., about half of all students are women. Yet in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math—STEM for short—women account for only 39 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 35 percent of Ph.D.s. At the end of this leaky educational pipeline, only 27 percent of the people working in STEM-related occupations are women....

Pulling essential minerals from the ground is dirty work, and most of the stuff miners extract is useless sediment. In some Chilean copper mines, for instance, hundreds of thousands of tons of material are processed every day, “but 95 percent of that is waste,” says D. R. Nagaraj, a mining industry expert at Columbia University. To sift out precious minerals, engineers often blow air bubbles through the material in a setup called a bubbling fluidized bed—and a new twist could make this costly process more efficient....

Dear EarthTalk: A few years back a study found over 200 chemicals in the umbilical cords of newborns, particularly African-American, Asian and Hispanic babies. What are the causes of this phenomenon and what can be done about it?—Bettina Olsen, New York City The study referenced found traces of some 232 synthetic chemicals in cord blood samples from 10 different babies of African American, Asian and Hispanic descent born in 2009 in different parts of the U....

Key Concepts Physics Deflection Potential Energy Kinetic Energy Introduction Have you ever wondered about the secret behind a ball’s bounce? Observing these bounces, however, can be difficult! A bounce often happens too quickly to see precisely what is occurring as the ball hits and deflects off a surface. In this experiment you’re going to see how a ball bounces by watching in slow-motion—in real time! Background This experiment is all about two forms of energy: potential and kinetic....

The country, in the midst of the deepest economic recession in more than a century, saw its gross domestic product fall 3.8 percent last year. Concurrently, almost 2,400 square miles of forests was lost, the first major jump in deforestation in four years. The jump in emissions—the country is now at the same emissions level that it had in 2010—has called into question whether the South American country can meet its international climate commitments....

Many injuries respond to cold. Sprains and inflammation can be eased by the timely application of some ice or a cold compress. And healers have known that cooling the skin can also block pain at least since the time of Hippocrates, the Greek father of Western medicine, who prescribed “a copious affusion of cold water” to reduce swelling and discomfort, “for a moderate degree of numbness removes pain.” A few millennia later, modern researchers have identified the mechanism in the nervous system that gives rise to this effect and proved its efficacy for blocking pain in rats....

Every day on the dot of noon, Jane* would eat her 150-calorie lunch: nonfat yogurt and a handful of berries. To eat earlier, she felt, would be “gluttonous.” To eat later would disrupt the dinner ritual. Jane’s eating initially became more restrictive in adolescence, when she worried about the changes her body was undergoing in the natural course of puberty. When she first settled on her lunchtime foods and routine—using a child-size spoon to “make the yogurt last” and sipping water between each bite—she felt accomplished....

Several DNA testing companies have volunteered their services to help reunite immigrant families separated at the southern U.S. border. But scientists and ethicists warn broad-based genetic tests are “overkill” and do not make sense for making such matches. Instead, if the government really needs help accurately reuniting immigrant families, it should consider a more basic paternity or maternity test, several say. Regardless of the test used, issues of privacy and consent need to be taken into account, experts say....

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected a massive, never-before-seen icy cloud at the south pole of Saturn’s huge moon Titan. The newly spotted feature—part of a cloud system known as the south polar vortex—suggests that winter in the southern hemisphere of Titan will be even colder than predicted, scientists said. The atmospheric signal “looks pretty normal, then BOOM!, increases,” indicating the presence of a brand-new cloud, said Cassini participating scientist Carrie Anderson, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland....

The other day, I was browsing nutrition headlines when I came across a summary of some new research on exercise and fat loss, which concluded that “it is not possible to lose more than 1 kilogram of fat per month.” (A kilogram is just over 2 pounds). Not possible to lose more than 2 pounds of fat per month? Most diets promise that you’ll lose that much every week! Intrigued, I pulled up the actual study, which was published last month in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, and read the whole thing....

In 1962 a small spherical satellite weighing about 77 kilograms was launched from Cape Canaveral. Its name was Telstar 1, and it was the first commercial telecommunications satellite—the first of a long line that have led to today’s digitally connected world, where television programs and other media are easily accessible at locations across the globe. By the following February, however, Telstar 1 had been completely fried by energetic electrons from a U....

A math puzzle a day keeps your brain saying “Yay!” I know that’s not the most memorable saying in the world, but it’s definitely true—puzzles are a fantastic workout for your brain. As such, you’d be wise to try your hand at tackling at least a few different kinds of puzzles every week. And the best part of this is that mental exercise like this is fun! To help you in your endeavor to start puzzling more, today we’re going to take a look at a great brain teaser that I recently ran across....

Dear EarthTalk: Do environmentalists think the Endangered Species Act has been a success or failure with regard to protecting biodiversity in the U.S.?—Ron McKnight, Trenton, N.J. While that very question has been a subject of debate already for decades, most environmental advocates are thankful such legislation is in place and proud of their government for upholding such high standards when it comes to preserving rare species of plants and animals....

You might not think of the lobster you’re munching as a vicious predator but green crabs would beg to differ. Researchers recently discovered that, much to their surprise, lobsters (aka Homarus americanus), which troll the ocean floor along the east coast of North America from Labrador to North Carolina, move inshore at night with the high tide, hunting for prey. “We shone our lights around and there were lobsters everywhere, all cruising around the intertidal zone,” says Patricia Jones, a recent Cornell University graduate now headed to a graduate program in ecology evolution and behavior at the University of Texas at Austin....

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - In a huge immunization effort in 150 countries, health teams will on Sunday launch what they hope will be the final push against polio. Stopping transmission of the contagious viral disease that has infected millions is possible within a year, experts say. And full, official, global eradication could be declared by the end of this decade. First, however, the vaccine that has successfully fought polio for more than 30 years needs to be switched for one that targets the last few areas of risk....