Science News

[Duke of Buckingham]

Jupiter's Moon Europa Has Plate Tectonics like Earth Does
The discovery could buoy bids for a mission to the Jovian moon
Sep 8, 2014 |By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine

Some of the scars on the Jovian moon Europa could be the result of subducting plates.
Credit: Ted Stryk/Galileo Project/JPL/NASA

If you have got an idea for how to study Europa, then NASA wants to hear from you.

The agency has no official plans for a mission to the Jovian moon, whose icy crust covers a watery ocean in which life could theoretically exist. But spurred by intense congressional interest and several recent discoveries, NASA is seeking ideas for instruments that could fly on a mission to Europa. The possibilities range from a stripped-down probe that would zip past the moon, to a carefully designed Jupiter orbiter that would explore ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20140911


NASA to Send 3-D Printer to Space
The machine is expected to let astronauts create parts to order
Sep 10, 2014 |By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine

Engineers test a 3D printer under microgravity conditions aboard a modified aircraft in parabolic flight.
Credit: Made In Space

In one small step towards space manufacturing, NASA is sending a 3D printer to the International Space Station. Astronauts will be able to make plastic objects of almost any shape they like inside a box about the size of a microwave oven — enabling them to print new parts to replace broken ones, and perhaps even to invent useful tools.

The launch, slated for around September 19, will be the first time that a 3D printer flies in space. The agency has already embraced ground-based 3D printing as a fast, cheap way to make ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20140911

[Duke of Buckingham]

No, Humans Have Not Stopped Evolving
For 30,000 years our species has been changing remarkably quickly. And we're not done yet
By John Hawks


http://www.scientificamerican.com/ma...sa/2014/09-01/

Humans are willful creatures. No other species on the planet has gained so much mastery over its own fate. We have neutralized countless threats that once killed us in the millions: we have learned to protect ourselves from the elements and predators in the wild; we have developed cures and treatments for many deadly diseases; we have transformed the small gardens of our agrarian ancestors into the vast fields of industrial agriculture; and we have dramatically increased our chances of bearing healthy children despite all the usual difficulties.

Many people argue that our technological advancement—our ability to defy and control nature—has made humans exempt from natural selection and that human evolution has ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_EVO_20140915


Is an Unusual Virus Spreading in the Midwest?
The CDC is closely monitoring the outbreak of a rare respiratory infection afflicting people in Illinois and Missouri. Just how bad is it, and what can be done to stop the spread?
Sep 11, 2014 |By Nicholas St. Fleur


Credit: BANANASTOCK

A severe respiratory illness is knocking the wind out of Midwesterners, sending hundreds of children coughing and wheezing to the hospital. The primary suspect in the outbreak is the seldom seen Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), kin to the common cold’s viral culprit.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified EV-D68 in 19 of 22 intensive care patients from Missouri and 11 of 14 in Illinois. EV-D68 targets the upper respiratory tract and causes breathing difficulties. First discovered in the 1960s, EV-D68 has rarely been reported ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_EVO_20140915

[Duke of Buckingham]

Fact or Fiction?: The Ebola Virus Will Go Airborne
Why do some viruses go airborne? Will the pathogen causing the west African outbreak be one of them?
Sep 16, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron


Credit: Photodisk

Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.”

But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20140916


Vaginal Microbe Yields Novel Antibiotic
A new drug is one of thousands of drug-like molecules that may be produced by our microbiome
Sep 11, 2014 |By Erika Check Hayden and Nature magazine


The antibiotic lactocillin was isolated from a Lactobacillus bacterium .
Credit: BSIP SA / Alamy

Bacteria living on human bodies contain genes that are likely to code for a vast number of drug-like molecules — including a new antibiotic made by bacteria that live in the vagina, researchers report in this week's issue of Cell.

The drug, lactocillin, hints at the untapped medical potential of this microbial landscape.

“They have shown that there is a huge ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20140916

[Duke of Buckingham]

How Diversity Makes Us Smarter
Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working
Sep 16, 2014 |By Katherine W. Phillips


Edel Rodriguez

The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult. In the U.S., where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively advanced, even the mention of the word “diversity” can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on the virtues of diversity and the means for achieving it. Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.

It is reasonable to ask what good diversity does us. Diversity of expertise confers benefits that ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_MB_20140917


Virtual-Reality Headset Is Reinventing Exposure Therapy
Researchers are using the Oculus Rift to test immersion treatments for PTSD and phobias
Sep 16, 2014 |By Corinne Iozzio


COURTESY OF OCULUS

Albert “Skip” Rizzo of the University of Southern California began studying virtual reality (VR) as psychological treatment in 1993. Since then, dozens of studies, his included, have shown the immersion technique to be effective for everything from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety to phobias and addiction. But a lack of practical hardware has kept VR out of reach for clinicians. The requirements for a VR headset seem simple—a high-resolution, fast-reacting screen, a field of vision that is wide enough to convince patients they are in another world and a reasonable price tag—yet such a product has proved elusive. Says Rizzo, “It's been 20 frustrating years.”

In 2013 VR stepped into the consumer spotlight in the form of a prototype head-mounted display called ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_MB_20140917

[Duke of Buckingham]

How Big Bang Gravitational Waves Could Revolutionize Physics
If the recent discovery of gravitational waves emanating from the early universe holds up under scrutiny, it will illuminate a connection between gravity and quantum mechanics and perhaps, in the process, verify the existence of other universes
By Lawrence M. Krauss

In March a collaboration of scientists operating a microwave telescope at the South Pole made an announcement that stunned the scientific world. They claimed to have observed a signal emanating from almost the beginning of time. The putative signal came embedded in radiation left over from the action of gravitational waves that originated in the very early universe—just a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the big bang.

The observation, if confirmed, would be one of the most important in decades. It would allow us to test ideas about how the universe came ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20140918

[Fire$torm]

How Big Bang Gravitational Waves Could Revolutionize Physics
If the recent discovery of gravitational waves emanating from the early universe holds up under scrutiny, it will illuminate a connection between gravity and quantum mechanics and perhaps, in the process, verify the existence of other universes
By Lawrence M. Krauss

In March a collaboration of scientists operating a microwave telescope at the South Pole made an announcement that stunned the scientific world. They claimed to have observed a signal emanating from almost the beginning of time. The putative signal came embedded in radiation left over from the action of gravitational waves that originated in the very early universe—just a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the big bang.

The observation, if confirmed, would be one of the most important in decades. It would allow us to test ideas about how the universe came ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20140918

Now this is cool stuff indeed

[Duke of Buckingham]

Gut Bacteria May Play a Role in Autism
Evidence is mounting that intestinal microbes exacerbate or perhaps even cause some of autism's symptoms
Aug 14, 2014 |By Melinda Wenner Moyer


Bacteroides fragilis
Credit: CNRI/SCIENCE SOURCE

Autism is primarily a disorder of the brain, but research suggests that as many as nine out of 10 individuals with the condition also suffer from gastrointestinal problems such as inflammatory bowel disease and “leaky gut.” The latter condition occurs when the intestines become excessively permeable and leak their contents into the bloodstream. Scientists have long wondered whether the composition of bacteria in the intestines, known as the gut microbiome, might be abnormal in people with autism and drive some of these symptoms. Now a spate of new studies supports this notion and suggests that restoring proper microbial balance could alleviate some of the disorder's behavioral symptoms.

At the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology held in May in Boston, researchers at Arizona State University reported ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_MB_20140924

[Duke of Buckingham]

India Spacecraft Successfully Arrives at Mars
The Mangalyaan probe, the country's first mission to another world, has entered the Red Planet's orbit
Sep 24, 2014 |By Sanjay Kumar and Nature magazine


Artist rendering of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), informally called Mangalyaan (Sanskrit: मङ्गलयान, English: Mars-craft) is a Mars orbiter that was successfully launched on 5th November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Credit: Nesnad via Wikimedia Commons

India joined the distinguished club of Mars explorers on 24 September, as its Mangalyaan probe maneuvered into the red planet's orbit according to plan. Until then, only the United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency had conducted missions that successfully reached Mars. India's space program is the first to do so on its first attempt.

“History has been created today,” declared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) mission control room in Bangalore. “The odds were stacked against us but we have prevailed and have achieved the near impossible,” he added.

As the news of the probe's successful insertion into orbit poured in, the ISRO control room ...

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One more to F$.

Betting Against Gravitational Waves: Q&A with Cosmologist Neil Turok
Failure to discover primordial spacetime ripples could open the way for a physicist’s alternative theory
Sep 23, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz


The BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole.
Steffen Richter, Harvard University

Many physicists were disheartened at the news that the apparent discovery of gravitational waves from the big bang was likely an error. But a cosmologist from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario felt a bit vindicated.

Neil Turok has been betting all along that primordial gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—would never be seen. Turok expressed little surprise that new results from the Planck satellite observing light from the big bang show that the supposed observation of gravitational waves from the South Pole’s BICEP2 experiment in March was probably contaminated by a haze of dust in our galaxy.

Gravitational waves, if confirmed, would be proof that the baby universe ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20140925

[Duke of Buckingham]

Transparent Rats Give Scientists Clear View to Innards
New technique turns rodent bodies transparent
Sep 16, 2014 |By Julia Calderone


Credit: Thomas Fuchs

One thing is clear: peering inside animals leads to scientific discovery. In the 1960s and 1970s genetic and developmental biology research exploded after laboratories began studying naturally transparent critters, such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the zebra fish Danio rerio. With them, scientists could watch young cells develop into a full organism. Now, for the first time, they can see through mammalian bodies, thanks to a technique that can make mice and rats— and perhaps larger animals—clear.

Scientists have been able to render tissues such as the mammal brain transparent, but the procedure ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_BS_20140926



Extrapolation Gone Wrong: the Case of the Fermat Primes
By Evelyn Lamb | September 26, 2014 | Comments3
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.


Sorry, Pierre, but not all Fermat numbers are primes. Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Samuel Arbesman recently wrote about incorrect mathematical conjectures. I wanted to add one of my favorites, which came up in my math history class a couple weeks ago. Unlike the disproven conjectures Arbesman wrote about, which fail only for very large numbers, this one fails at 5.

Pierre de Fermat was an amateur number theorist who is now most famous (or perhaps infamous) for a note he scribbled in a margin that led to a 400-year quest to prove what is known as Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Fermat’s conjecture about primes, however, was resolved more quickly, in under a century. Fermat noticed that 221+1, which equals 5, is prime, 222+1, or 17, is prime, and more generally, 22n+1 is prime when n=0,1,2,3, or 4. Numbers of the form Fn=22n are now called Fermat numbers, and ...

More on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...fermat-primes/

[Duke of Buckingham]

Weak Nuclear Force Shown to Give Asymmetry to Biochemistry of Life
"Left-handed" electrons have been found to destroy certain organic molecules faster than their mirror versions
Sep 26, 2014 |By Elizabeth Gibney and Nature magazine


Life is made largely of molecules that are different than their mirror images.
Credit: Brett Weinstein via Flickr

Physicists have found hints that the asymmetry of life — the fact that most biochemical molecules are ‘left-handed’ or ‘right-handed’ — could have been caused by electrons from nuclear decay in the early days of evolution. In an experiment that took 13 years to perfect, the researchers have found that these electrons tend to destroy certain organic molecules slightly more often than they destroy their mirror images.

Many organic molecules, including glucose and most biological amino acids, are ‘chiral’. This means that they are different than their mirror-image molecules, just like a left and a right glove are. Moreover, in such cases ...

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Could Life Survive in the Universe's Far-Distant Future?
Some say its glory days are long gone, but the universe has life in it yet. Brand-new types of celestial phenomena will unfold over the coming billions and trillions of years
By Donald Goldsmith

Time's seemingly inexorable march has always provoked interest in, and speculation about, the far future of the cosmos. The usual picture is grim. Five billion years from now the sun will puff itself into a red giant star and ...

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