For hundreds of years people have used the scientific process to build a better future, one step at a time. This year is no exception, as you will see in our cover story and annual appreciation of innovation, “World Changing Ideas,” beginning on page 34. The section celebrates ideas as they emerge from the lab to make a practical difference in our lives. As is usual, strong themes emerge across the developments....
Russia conducted an anti-satellite test (ASAT) early on Monday (Nov. 15), generating hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris and threatening the safety of astronauts on the International Space Station, the U.S. government has confirmed. “Earlier today, the Russian Federation recklessly conducted a destructive satellite test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile against one of its own satellites,” U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said during a daily press briefing today (Nov....
Scientists now believe that a number of genetic disorders, from polycystic kidney disease to some forms of retinal degeneration, can ultimately be traced back to cilia—bristly, hairlike structures that dot cell surfaces. In a review article published in the December 1 BioScience, George B. Witman, a cellular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, highlighted the growing body of evidence that abnormal or absent cilia can cause a wide range of human disorders, dubbed “ciliopathies....
A disastrous combination of tinder-dry vegetation, the strongest Santa Ana winds in a decade and a spark caused a wildfire to explode in Ventura County, California, north of Los Angeles, overnight Monday (Dec. 4). Less than 24 hours later, the blaze had torn through more than 45,000 acres and destroyed 150 structures, with windy conditions hampering efforts to combat the flames. While not unprecedented, such winds and wildfires are somewhat unusual this time of year, as the wet season has usually kicked in by now, quashing the potential for fires to start and spread, said Eric Boldt, the warning-coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles....
Changing wind patterns could accelerate sea level rise along the West Coast, new research suggests. The cause is an apparent shift in a climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, said researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The climate pattern cycles between two phases every few decades, driven largely by changes in broad-scale wind patterns. Each phase produces its own recognizable fingerprint of sea level rise and sea surface temperatures along the West Coast....
In August 2019, Iceland held a funeral for the Okjökull Glacier, the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change. The community commemorated the event with a plaque in recognition of this irreversible change and the grave impacts it represents. Globally, glacier melt rates have nearly doubled in the last five years, with an average loss of 832 mmw.e. (millimeters water equivalent) in 2015, increasing to 1,243 mmw.e. in 2020 (WGMS). This high rate of loss decreases glacial stores of freshwater and changes the structure of the surrounding ecosystem....
KEYSTONE, Colo.—Your gut is the site of constant turf wars. Hundreds of bacterial species—along with fungi, archaea and viruses—do battle daily, competing for resources. Some companies advocate for consuming more probiotics, live beneficial bacteria, to improve microbial communities in our gut, but more and more research supports the idea that the most powerful approach might be to better feed the good bacteria we already harbor. Their meal of choice? Fiber. Fiber has long been linked to better health, but new research shows how the gut microbiota might play a role in this pattern....
The first launch of NASA’s Space Launch System, which will carry the new Orion spacecraft, should still be possible by December 2019, according to NASA officials, although a new report puts the estimated launch date at June 2020. The mission, called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), will be uncrewed—although, earlier this year, NASA considered adding crew—and will pave the way for future missions to the moon and deep space. NASA’s review considered challenges related to building the SLS rocket’s core stage, issues with constructing Orion’s first European service module and tornado damage at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, NASA officials said in a statement....
For tens of thousands of years, human societies have struggled to come up with solutions for what to do with all the waste they produce. It is a dilemma that has grown only more exasperating. Since 2008, according to the United Nations, a majority of the world’s population now lives in cities, many of which lack even rudimentary energy generation and waste management infrastructures. New research findings announced today offer a small, albeit promising, breakthrough in addressing the vexing issue of waste....
From Quanta (Find original story here). Examine the delicate branching patterns on a leaf or a dragonfly’s wing and you’ll see a complex network of nested loops. This pattern can be found scattered throughout nature and structural engineering: in the brain’s cerebral vasculature, arrays of fungi living underground, the convoluted shape of a foraging slime mold and the metal bracings of the Eiffel Tower. Loop architectures, like redundant computer networks or electrical grids, make structures resistant to damage....
On Wednesday, September 6, the colossal category 5 Hurricane Irma amped up its already stunning winds to 185 miles per hour—the second fastest ever recorded for a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. We are all fascinated with brutal extremes, it seems. So, below are the records set by the most impressive North Atlantic hurricanes, since meteorologists began to name them more than half a century ago—as well as for storms in the Pacific Ocean, which actually rank number one in many of the categories....
Tragically, more than 20 percent of mass shootings, as tracked by the National Institute of Justice for the past 50 years, have occurred in the past five. The past three have been the deadliest. In the U.S., there is well-deserved attention on the availability of guns (because the deadliness of method and ease of access to weapons matter greatly) and on whether we pay sufficient attention to mental health support for troubled young men....
An unmanned NASA probe made history 117 million miles from Earth on Saturday (July 16) when it arrived at the huge asteroid Vesta, making it the first spacecraft ever to orbit an object in the solar system’s asteroid belt. The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta after a four-year chase and will spend about a year studying the huge space rock before moving on to visit another asteroid called Ceres. Vesta is a huge asteroid about the size of the U....
By Meredith WadmanOne of the better-kept secrets about the massive clinical research hospital at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., has been tucked away for half a century in Wing D of a building that dates to 1953. That is about to change.The Pharmaceutical Development Section (PDS) is a corps of 20 chemists, pharmacists, pharmacokineticists and technicians who make investigational agents for many of the 1,500 clinical research studies running at any given moment at the NIH’s Clinical Center....
William Shakespeare—arguably the greatest playwright of all time—is missing his head, scientists have discovered. Archaeologists recently scanned the famed writer’s grave with ground-penetrating radar. They found that the bard’s skull was missing and that he isn’t buried in a coffin. Instead, Shakespeare’s body is wrapped in cloth and buried inside a shallow grave less than 3 feet (1 meter) deep, the researchers said. “Now, we all have a much greater understanding of what lies beneath his gravestone,” said Kevin Colls, an archaeological project manager at Staffordshire University in the United Kingdom....
Feeling down? Having a stimulating conversation might help, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. Researchers at the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis used unobtrusive recording devices to track the conversations of 79 undergraduate students over the course of four days. They then counted the conversations and determined how many were superficial versus substantive, based on whether the information exchanged was banal (“What do you have there?...
Tomatoes come in a dizzying array of shapes, sizes and flavors—and a new study uses state-of-the-art DNA-sequencing technology to finally trace the genetic underpinnings of these differences. The comparison of 100 tomato varieties’ genetic sequences reveals more than 230,000 variations within their DNA. Understanding how these mutations modify tomatoes will give breeders and scientists new tools to refine this crop and others, says Zachary Lippman, a plant biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a senior author on the study, published in July in Cell....
When Paris-based pharmaceutical giant Sanofi started to sell malaria drugs made with the help of genetically engineered yeast in 2014, the move was hailed as a triumph for synthetic biology. The yeast was fermented in a vat to produce a chemical that Sanofi converted into artemisinin, which is used to make leading malaria treatments called artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). Many hoped that the process would offer a cheap and plentiful supply of drugs to tackle a disease that claims almost half a million lives worldwide every year....
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been hearing from parents across the country asking how to help their children process grief. Millions of kids are experiencing grief, not just those who know someone who died from the virus. Death is taking place all around us. Families are suffering. They’re also grieving the loss of businesses, livelihoods, freedoms and a sense of normalcy. And in a broad sense there’s collective grief, felt by a society or a nation....
Donald Trump’s promise to open shuttered coal mines in Appalachia might be as hard to fulfill as getting Mexico to pay for a new wall, analysts suggested. The vow by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would likely mean turning back regulations on greenhouse gases and perhaps toxic air pollutants, experts said. Even then, it’s unlikely that the cost of extracting coal from eastern mines would be cheaper than using natural gas in power plants, they said, making a widespread mining revival improbable....
