The individual cells responsible for responding to sensory inputs–the strong scent of a flower, the light touch of a spring breeze–can cope with only a small amount of input. Yet the human ear can hear and process sounds ranging from a pin drop to the roar of a jet engine. Scientists have struggled to account for how this individually narrow range combines in a network to produce the wide range of sensed experience....
If astronauts hope to ever set foot on Mars, myriad technical challenges will need to be overcome, not the least of which is shielding space travelers from bombardment by energetic particles. Outside Earth’s protective atmosphere and magnetic field, supersonic particles from stellar processes run amok, screaming through space and tearing through just about anything in their path—including the bodies of astronauts, where they can wreak havoc on genetic material. Over the years, a number of protective schemes has been proposed from physical barriers to magnetic or electrostatic shields—solutions that some prominent critics have deemed hopelessly impractical....
Astronomers have known for some 10 years that nearly every large galaxy contains at its core an immense black hole—an object having such intense gravity that even light cannot escape. The death of stars can produce small black holes—with masses ranging from about three to 100 times the mass of the sun—but such stellar-mass black holes are tiny compared with the behemoths at the centers of galaxies, measuring millions to billions of solar masses....
When a person’s behavior is out of control, people might say he is “going ape.” It appears, however, that our closest relatives can behave themselves better than we thought. New research in chimpanzees and monkeys could reveal clues about how self-control originated in humans. Even children know that resisting instant gratification can lead to greater rewards. Past research showed that to cope with such delays kids can distract themselves by playing....
Solar cells made from cheap, plastic polymer barely capture the energy in sunlight. Photons reflect off the plastic and it is too thin to absorb much, giving the polymers color. “The very fact that it has color is telling you this thing is not working as well as it should,” says David Carroll, a physicist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. But plastic solar cells offer flexibility, are lightweight and, theoretically, low cost, which means they could be incorporated into a range of products....
At 2:11 P.M. local time on Monday, New Zealand’s White Island volcano (also called Whakaari) erupted, with clouds of gas and ash filling the air. The volcanic island, which resides in the Bay of Plenty off the country’s North Island, is a popular tourist destination; several dozen people were on and around it when the blast occurred. As of publication time, at least six people were confirmed killed, and several more are missing....
With antibiotic resistance on the rise, the days when doctors and clinics could rely on one treatment to cure all gonorrhea cases may be waning. In fact, clinicians may find that some of their patients respond best to drugs of the past. But how will they know which patients? To answer that question, a handful of researchers and companies are trying to develop rapid, point-of-care diagnostics that would signal which drugs work for a given patient and permit clinicians to tailor treatment to the bacterial strain....
State and local legislatures in the United States are experimenting with new ways to target the topics taught in science classes, and it seems to be paying dividends. Florida’s legislature approved a bill on May 5 that would enable residents to challenge what educators teach students. And two other states have already approved non-binding legislation this year urging teachers to embrace ‘academic freedom’ and present the full spectrum of views on evolution and climate change....
The risk of collisions in space, the fate of the United States in orbit after the space station retires and continuing debates over NASA’s path back to the moon dominated a two-hour hearing on Thursday (Oct. 21) held by a Senate committee focused on space and science. The wide-ranging conversation came as the Senate and the House of Representatives attempt to reconcile how they want NASA to move forward. That debate hinges around passing not just an appropriations bill to fund NASA, but an authorization bill that can shape the agency’s activities....
Kiara Nirghin was leafing through a newspaper one day when she noticed several stories about farmers struggling with drought. Nirghin, a high school junior in Johannesburg, had known South Africa was in the midst of an intense drought, but in that moment she realized the problem extended far beyond her country: “It’s affecting the whole world. And to this point, there hasn’t been something that has revolutionized drought.” Nirghin set about brainstorming on how to ensure that crops have access to water—even during the most severe stretches of dry weather....
When our sun comes to its ending in five billion years or so, it will fade into a quiescent white dwarf. Bigger stars go out with a bang—those with more than 10 times the mass of our sun collapse with enough vigor to spark a supernova, one of the most energetic events in the universe. For decades astronomers have suspected the existence of a type of stellar explosion that is bigger still—a “pair-instability” supernova, with 100 times more energy than an ordinary supernova....
President-elect Trump on Tuesday rounded out a potential dream team of anti-environment cabinet members with the chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, among the world’s 10 largest companies and one that has profited from global warming and worked to slow the fight against climate change. If the nomination of Rex Tillerson for secretary of state is approved by Congress, he would have more influence over America’s role in global environmental agreements than any other member of Trump’s administration—including its participation in the historic United Nations climate pact negotiated last year in Paris....
Sitting in a darkened lab at the National Institutes of Health in 1999, my colleague Beth Stevens and I prepared to send a mild electric current through fetal mouse neurons in a cell culture. We were using a new microscope technique that would let us see electrical activity as a bright fluorescence emitted from a dye we had added to the culture, and we were hoping to find out if another kind of cell common in the nervous system would react in some way—Schwann cells, odd-looking cells that fabricate insulation around neurons....
As we walk along a city street, it takes no effort to recognize the face of a friend in the crowd. But the ease of the feat masks its cognitive complexity—all faces have eyes, noses and mouths in the same relative place and can bear an array of emotional expressions. For decades, scientists have debated the basis for our facility with faces: either human brains evolved specialized face-processing machinery, distinct from regions that deal with other objects, or they process all objects using an expansive, multipurpose network, merely developing an expertise for faces....
A crackdown on illegal tiger products in China has created a soaring trade in lion bones from South Africa to Asia, ecologists say. Alleged ‘tiger’-infused wines and traditional medicines are popular in China. But when the country tightened its rules on selling parts from tigers and other Asian big cats in 2006 and 2007, it may have “inadvertently set off a chain reaction of interlinking and unexpected events” that led to the bones of African lions being exported to fill the gap in demand, according to a July 16 study....
Certainty is the currency of politics and social media, where boiling down complex issues into simple, bite-sized nuggets is now the norm. In his new book, The Primacy of Doubt, climate physicist Tim Palmer argues that the science of uncertainty is woefully underappreciated by the public even though it is central to nearly every field of research. Embracing uncertainty and harnessing “the science of chaos,” he says, could help us unlock new understandings of the world, from climate change to emerging diseases to the next economic crash....
Scott Pace will run the reinstated National Space Council, President Donald Trump announced yesterday (July 13). Pace has been appointed the NSC’s executive secretary, and not just because his first initial and last name flow together so well. Pace heads the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, and he’s Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the school as well. He has also worked at NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy....
The new Ebola outbreak on the western edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has ignited serious concern at the World Health Organization, with signs pointing to an epidemic that may have been underway for weeks or months. Though there are only two confirmed cases at this point, preliminary investigations point to cases in several locations that may date back as far as early this year, Dr. Pierre Formenty, the WHO’s top Ebola expert told STAT....
Luckily for life on Earth, most matter is not radioactive. We take this fact for granted, but it is actually somewhat surprising because the neutron, one of the two components of atomic nuclei (along with the proton), is prone to radioactive decay. Inside an atomic nucleus, a typical neutron can survive for a very long time and may never decay, but on its own, it will transform into other particles within 15 minutes, more or less....
Why do the ice cubes in my freezer often develop stalagmitelike spikes? Stephen Morris, a professor of experimental nonlinear physics at the University of Toronto, explains: Water is one of those rare materials that expand while they freeze. If a crust of ice with a small hole in it forms over liquid water, the crust can trap the liquid below, leaving it no room to expand. So as the water begins to solidify, it is forced up through the hole and starts to freeze around the edge, forming a hollow, water-filled “ice spike....
