Science News

[Duke of Buckingham]

How to Grow Stronger Without Lifting Weights
A study finds improvement from pretending to move muscles
December 23, 2014 |By Clayton Mosher


Gain, no pain?
Credit: Nastco/Thinkstock

We yearn to believe that we can get fit without effort. We build “ab belts” to electrocute our muscles to give us six-packs. We invent chocolate-chip cookie diets to make us thin while eating fat. We wish to get fit from doing absolutely nothing. We wish to lie in bed, think about going to the gym and then, poof, obtain the body of a Greek god.

Well, a remarkable new study from Brian Clark at Ohio University shows that sitting still, while just thinking about exercise, might make us stronger. Clark and colleagues recruited 29 volunteers and wrapped their wrists in surgical casts for an entire month. During this month, half of the volunteers thought about exercising their immobilized wrists. For 11 minutes a day, 5 days a week, they sat completely still and focused their entire mental effort on pretending to flex their muscles. When the casts were removed ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_MB_20141224


Avoid Backlit Reading Before Bed
Volunteers who read from an iPad before bed took longer to fall asleep and had less restful nights than when they read from a printed book. Dina Fine Maron reports.
December 23, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

When you curl up in bed, consider reading an old-fashioned printed book rather than a smartphone or tablet. Your sleep should be deeper and more restful. That’s the finding of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Anne-Marie Chang et al, Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness]

Researchers had 12 healthy young adults read either a printed book or an iPad for four hours before bed during five consecutive evenings. During the fifth night blood samples were collected every hour via an IV during both the reading and sleeping periods. The research team assessed sleep time ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/po...SA_MB_20141224

[Duke of Buckingham]

The Year in Energy and Environment: It Wasn’t All Apocalyptic
By David Biello | December 22, 2014 | Comments9



‘Tis the season for year end lists. The problem is: news keeps happening. One of the members of this list only happened just last week.

Two of these you’ve no doubt already seen on Scientific American’s annual Top 10 list:

Scientific American‘s Top 10 Science Stories of 2014

I’ll add them here, because they are important, but with a few new thoughts:

(1) Global Warming

Could be the top energy and environment story of every year since the Industrial Revolution, but 2014 was the best of times for climate change: ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...l-apocalyptic/


How Lithium Ion Batteries Grounded the Dreamliner
Official report on Boeing 787 fires tells a cautionary tale about advanced batteries
December 18, 2014 |By Umair Irfan and ClimateWire


In its assessment, the NTSB report criticized the battery manufacturer for faults in production.
Credit: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)/Wikimedia Commons

At 10:21 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2013, about a minute after all 183 passengers and 11 crew members from Japan Airlines Flight 008 disembarked at Boston's Logan International Airport, a member of the cleaning crew spotted smoke in the aft cabin of the Boeing 787-8.

A mechanic then opened the aft electronic equipment bay of the plane, parked at the airport gate, and saw billowing smoke and flames coming from the batteries for the 787's auxiliary power unit (APU). He tried to use a fire extinguisher, but the blaze didn't go out.

Firefighters arrived at the scene at 10:37 a.m., and using a thermal imaging camera, they looked through the smoke in the equipment bay and saw a ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...GYSUS_20141226

[Duke of Buckingham]

Pacemaker Powered by Heartbeats Has Watch Parts
An automatic wristwatch mechanism harnesses heartbeats
Dec 16, 2014 |By Prachi Patel


Brown Bird Design

Electronic pacemakers time the heartbeats of more than three million people in the U.S. For these patients, surgery is a regular occurrence. A pacemaker's batteries must be swapped out every five to eight years, and the electric leads that connect the device to the heart can wear out, too.

In an effort to eliminate the batteries and leads altogether, biomedical engineers at the University of Bern in Switzerland have built a heartbeat-powered pacemaker, assembled from self-winding clockwork technology that is more than two centuries old.

Automatic wristwatches, invented in 1777, contain a weighted rotor that ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._HLTH_20141230

[Duke of Buckingham]

Strategies for Sticking to Your Goals



Setbacks are inevitable but there are ways to cope with them and meet your goals

Read mnore on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ed...SA_MB_20141231


Beautiful Minds
The Messy Minds of Creative People
By Scott Barry Kaufman | December 24, 2014 | Comments11


Creativity is very messy.

According to one prominent theory, the creative process involves four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. This is all well and good in theory. In reality, the creative process often feels like this:



Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...eative-people/

[Duke of Buckingham]

Epidemic of Violence against Health Care Workers Plagues Hospitals
Hospital administrations and the judicial system do little to prevent assaults against nurses and other caregivers by patients
December 31, 2014 |By Roni Jacobson


Emergency room and psychiatric nurses and workers involved in elder and in-home care are at an especially high risk.
Credit: COD Newsroom via flickr

In a harrowing video that surfaced last month, a 68-year-old hospital patient attacks a group of nurses with a pipe pulled from his bed. They flee through a nearby door in a streak of rainbow scrubs, but the patient pursues and lands several more blows on one fallen nurse in the hallway.

This assault is far from an isolated incident. Health-care workers are hit, kicked, scratched, bitten, spat on, threatened and harassed by patients with surprising regularity. In a 2014 survey, almost 80 percent of nurses reported being attacked on the job within the past year. Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_SP_20150105


Banking Culture Encourages Dishonesty
What is it about the financial sector that encourages bad behavior?
December 30, 2014 |By Francesca Gino


Opportunity beckons
Credit: Jacob Wackerhausen/Thinkstock

Across the globe, many people and institutions suffered large costs from the 2008 financial meltdown. Among the victims is the financial sector itself—whose reputation has been questioned after scandals involving the manipulation of interest rates and fraudulent deals. In trying to make sense of the crisis, some have pointed the fingers to individual bankers and banks, others to institutional pressures. But new research suggests that one important cause may reside elsewhere: in the banking culture itself. A paper recently published in Nature magazine found that the financial sector’s culture encourages dishonesty.

This is an important finding, as it suggests that good conduct starts with ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_SP_20150105

[Duke of Buckingham]

Virtual Reality Comes to the Web—Maybe for Real This Time
Backed by Google and Mozilla, VR-enabled browsers and gear could soon immerse Web users in 3-D worlds
December 29, 2014 |By Susan Kuchinskas


WEB VR FOR REAL: Gadgets that can take advantage of Web VR include the still-in-beta Oculus Rift (via Facebook) and Samsung Gear VR (pictured here).
Courtesy of Samsung Electronics Co.

Get ready to take the stage with Paul McCartney. If that’s not your thing, you can test-drive the latest SUV before it's available in showrooms or experience a movie as though you're in the scene. That's been the promise of virtual reality (VR) for years, although stepping into an immersive three-dimensional virtual world has always required expensive stereoscopic head-mounted displays and other specialized equipment.

A new, more accessible form of virtual reality delivered via the Web promises to let people experience digital worlds in 3-D using head-mounted displays connected to a variety of browser-enabled devices. Web VR is expected to offer ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._TECH_20150106


What Black Box Data Will Tell Us about the AirAsia Crash
One of the "black boxes," the flight data recorder, keeps track of hundreds of measurements, including engine temperature and vertical and horizontal speed
December 31, 2014 |By Kelly Dickerson and LiveScience


Flight 8501 crashed on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on December 28.
Credit: Google Maps

Pieces of an AirAsia jet and the bodies of some of its 162 passengers were recovered today (Dec. 30) off the coast of Borneo, snuffing out hopes that the missing plane had somehow made a miracle landing and that survivors might be found.

Life vests, aircraft debris and a small blue suitcase were among the items that the search and rescue team found floating in the Java Sea. But Indonesian authorities are still working to recover a key piece of the plane that should reveal what caused the mysterious crash: the black box.

"Recovering victims is [the] highest priority, but they'll have enough search and rescue team members to simultaneously search for ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._TECH_20150106

[Duke of Buckingham]

Get the New Skinny on Dietary Fat
What is the new consensus on whether fat is good or bad for you?
January 7, 2015 |By EarthTalk


Avocado is one of the superfoods which contain good fat that is crucial for brain health.
Credit: Cyclonebill, Flickr CC

Dear EarthTalk: What's the skinny on fat these days? I saw a major magazine cover image recently that was suggesting fat wasn't so bad for us after all? -- Marcy Bellwether, Taos, NM

Going “fat-free” might seem like an effective, safe way to lose weight when considering that fat contains nine calories per gram, compared to four calories per gram in carbohydrates and proteins. But if you take into account the fact that approximately 60 percent of human brain matter consists of fats, eating reduced fat or fat-free foods high in sugar and refined carbohydrates no longer seems as appealing for our health.

“The brain thrives on a fat-rich, low carbohydrate diet, which unfortunately is relatively uncommon in human populations today,” reports ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_MB_20150107


The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
HINT: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on “process”—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life
Jan 1, 2015 |By Carol S. Dweck


JIM CUMMINS Getty Images

A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son's confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...g-smart-kids1/

[Duke of Buckingham]

Newfound Exoplanets Are Most Earth-Like Yet
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft finds two worlds that have sizes and orbits similar to ours
January 6, 2015 |By Lee Billings


This artist's conception depicts an Earth-like planet orbiting an evolved star that has formed a stunning "planetary nebula." Earlier in its life, this planet may have been like one of the eight newly discovered worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars.
Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

After five years of searching, researchers using data from NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler spacecraft have discovered what look to be two of the most Earth-like worlds yet. Dubbed Kepler 438 b and Kepler 442 b, both planets appear to be rocky and orbit in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold habitable zones of their stars where liquid water can exist in abundance. Astronomers announced the planets along with six other newfound small, temperate worlds today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Their findings will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The discoveries double the number of known potentially habitable exoplanets. They also push Kepler's tally of vetted, confirmed worlds to just over 1,000, marking a milestone in the mission's epochal search for alien Earths.

Both planets are many hundreds of light-years away and orbit stars smaller and dimmer than our sun. Like most of Kepler's finds, they were discovered via transits—the shadows they cast toward our solar system as they cross the blazing faces of their stars. Transits allow astronomers to measure a planet's size, orbit and exposure to starlight. Kepler 438 b is only about ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20150108


Tau Ceti’s Dust Belt is Huge
New image shows the star’s system shares features with our own
Dec 16, 2014 |By Ken Croswell


COURTESY OF GRANT KENNEDY University of Cambridge AND SAMANTHA LAWLER University of Victoria

Shining just 12 light-years from Earth, the star Tau Ceti so resembles the sun that it has appeared in numerous science-fiction stories and was the first star astronomers ever searched for signs of intelligent life, half a century ago. In 2012 Tau Ceti grew still more intriguing when astronomers reported five possible planets somewhat larger than Earth circling closer to the star than Mars orbits the sun—one of which is in the star's habitable zone. Newly released far-infrared images taken by the Herschel Space Observatory yield even more insight about Tau Ceti's solar system: greater detail about its dust belt.

Dust arises when asteroids and comets collide, so its location reveals ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...A_SPC_20150108

[Duke of Buckingham]

Game Theorists Crack Poker
An "essentially unbeatable" algorithm for Texas hold 'em points to strategies for solving real-life problems without having complete information
January 8, 2015 |By Philip Ball and Nature magazine


As part of its developing strategy, the computer learned to inject a certain dose of bluffing into its plays. Although bluffing seems like a very human, psychological element of the game, it is in fact part of game theory — and, typically, of computer poker.
Credit: Thinkstock

A new computer algorithm can play one of the most popular variants of poker essentially perfectly. Its creators say that it is virtually “incapable of losing against any opponent in a fair game”.

This is a step beyond a computer program that can beat top human players, as IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Blue famously did in 1997 against Garry Kasparov, at the time the game's world champion. The poker program devised by computer scientist Michael Bowling and his colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, along with Finnish software developer Oskari Tammelin, plays perfectly, to all intents and purposes.

That means that this particular variant of poker ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_BS_20150109


Where in the World Are the Fossil Fuels That Cannot Be Burned to Restrain Global Warming?
A new analysis reveals the nations—U.S. included—that must sacrifice exploiting much of their carbon-based energy resources if they are serious about combating climate change
January 7, 2015 |By David Biello


(DO NOT) BURN NOTICE: A new analysis notes that fossil fuel reserves like Canada's oil sands cannot be used if the world is serious about restraining global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.
© David Biello

Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. cannot burn much of the coal, oil and gas located within their national territories if the world wants to restrain global warming. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis aimed at determining what it will take to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius this century—a goal adopted during ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"If we want to reach the two degree limit in the most cost-effective manner, over 80 percent of current coal, half of gas and one third of oil need to be classified as unburnable," said Christophe McGlade, a research associate at University College London's Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR) and lead author of the report published in Nature on January 8, during a press conference. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Those global restrictions apply even if technologies ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_BS_20150109

[zombie67]

"combating climate change"? Climate is constantly changing, and always has. The Thames used to freeze over, and parties were held on the ice, for example. Most of us have see the painting of GW crossing the Delaware river with ice chunks. Google "The Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period". All that radical climate change happened long before the industrial age. The primary influences on climate are the giant fireball in the sky (and its belches) and volcanic activity (and its belches). Trying to stop the changing climate is hubris and futile in the long run. Reduce pollution where it's convenient and not an economic disaster, and get on with your lives.