Wendy Science

In a bid to boost fitness, new park benches in Moscow will let sitters see their weight and receive health tips. Dina Fine Maron reports. Sep 30, 2014 | | On a beautiful day in Moscow, can sit on a bench, enjoy the scenery…and find out how much they weigh. New park benches will include that capture a weight. The smart seats are to be sponsored by local gyms, according to . In a bid to boost fitness, the benches will also display health tips. And, of course, advertise nearby fitness centers.The idea has been vetted before: a fitness club in the Netherlands installed benches with scales at a public bus stop. The sitter’s weight was shown in large lettering on a nearby electronic panel. Russia aims to scale up the experiment: Moscow plans to debut at least 20 weighing benches by the end of the year.The benches have their limits: they don’t throw people off so they’ll get some exercise instead of sitting, and they have yet to be programmed to make snide remarks. Still, perhaps the wa...

Floating refuse reveals ocean currents that in turn show where the world's oceans mix and where they stay relatively discrete. Karen Hopkin reports. Sep 30, 2014 | | At some point, we all had to memorize the names of . But in reality all this water is connected. So how do we know where one body begins and another ends? Just follow the trash—because the location of can be used to define the oceans’ borders. That’s according to a study in the journal . [Gary Froyland, Robyn M. Stuart and Erik van Sebille, Historically speaking, the planet’s waters have been partitioned into discrete oceans for reasons that are geographical, historical, . To approach the problem from a more anatomical perspective, researchers came up with a model of how surface waters move. Which is where the rubbish comes in. Flotillas of flotsam are formed by currents that gather the garbage in large floating patches. But the currents also create barriers that minimize mixing between different ocean regions.By...

The New York Times On Tuesday, the federal government is expected to release details of payments to doctors by every pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer in the country. The information is being made public under a of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The law to doctors, dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists and optometrists for things like promotional speaking, consulting, meals, educational items and research. It's not quite clear what the data will show 2014 in part because the first batch will be incomplete, covering spending for only a few months at the end of 2013 2014 but we at ProPublica have some good guesses. That's because we have been detailing relationships between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry for the past four years as part of our project. We've aggregated information from the websites of some large drug companies, which publish their payments as a condition of settling federal whistle-blower lawsuits alleging improper marketing or kickback...

More In This Article The thick layer of permafrostunderneath the Alaska Highway is thawing, and with it goes the highway’s integrity. “It is really, really bumpy,” says Tanis Davey of the , where scientists study the on permafrost. Permafrost is a layer of frozen soil or rock that sits under an estimated 20 percent of the world’s total land area. That includes stretches of the Alaska Highway—the only land route from Alaska to the continental U.S.— where the layer can be up to 65 feet thick. Geoscientists from the center have collected samples of permafrost () along the 1,390-mile-long highway for the past three summers to record how global warming is changing the ground and to predict where future damage may appear. Roadways with recurring damage from thawing permafrost cost about roads to maintain, according to scientist Fabrice Calmels, who submitted this photograph to

As is customary at this time of the year, everyone is anticipating the announcement out of Sweden of this year's Nobel Prize award. Of course, there have been some guessing game on who will receive the prestigious prize. Science Watch has made its own predictions this year. Interestingly enough, all of their candidates are from Material Science/Condensed Matter field. Maybe this is to balance out the fact that last year, the winners were from elementary particle/high energy physics theory. Zz.

Productivity and equity are probably the most often cited reasons to attend to diversity in science. Gender and culture also affect the science itself, however. They influence what we choose to study, our perspectives when we approach scientific phenomena and our strategies for studying them. When we enter the world of science, we do not shed our cultural practices at the door. Evolutionary biology is one example. Despite popular images of Jane Goodall observing chimpanzees, almost all early studies of primate behavior were conducted by men. Male primatologists generally adopted Charles Darwin's view of evolutionary biology and focused on competition among males for access to females. In this view, female primates are passive, and either the winning male has access to all the females or females simply choose the most powerful male. The idea that females may play a more active role and might even have sex with many males did not receive attention until female biologists began to do ...

Writing guides tend to be pretty unsatisfying. They offer plenty of concrete rules, but why, a reader might ask, should the rules be followed? The answer is usually “because” — as in, “because I say so.” This, of course, is where humanity found itself before the advent of the scientific method: the mystics spoke, and everyone had to decide for themselves whom to believe. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker takes a different approach, one that is both more ambitious and more modest. In his new book, “ ,” he draws on research, and particularly his deep knowledge of linguistics, to give his writing principles a scientific basis. Readers can thus have some assurance that Pinker’s advice is good, and, knowing the reasons why, they will be more likely to know when a rule should be broken. Yet he does not push this method beyond its natural limits. Scientists, after all, still know relatively little about the ways dark squiggles communicate ideas. Instead, he shows readers how to take apart a ...

Kickstarter wasn't intended to be a platform for elaborate, participatory jokes. It's a Web site where entrepreneurs seek funding help from the public. You watch a video or read a pitch about a project, and then, if compelled, you donate a few bucks—not because you're investing (you're not) but just to show your support, maybe to feel like a part of someone's quest. In July, Ohio resident Zack Brown started what may have been the silliest Kickstarter project ever. He set a fundraising goal of $10—to make a potato salad. He didn't even bother with a video. His entire pitch was: “Basically I'm just making potato salad. I haven't decided what kind yet.” The Internet loves a good joke. Within a couple of days, this one went viral. Thousands of Web surfers thought of the same punch line: contribute to the absurd campaign. The media picked up on the gag, too; next thing anyone knew, Brown's potato salad quest had racked up more than $70,000 in pledges. Bro...

Genetically manipulated yeast can produce morphine, which could help get around the problems with poppy crops, which include climate, disease and war. Karen Hopkin reports. Sep 29, 2014 | | They already participate in producing some of the most popular around: . Now, scientists have engineered yeast that can also make one of the most powerful analgesics: . Their work is in the journal . [Kate Thodey, Stephanie Galanie and Christina D. Smolke, Opiates like morphine and codeine are essential for treating severe pain. But making these meds isn’t easy. All are derived from opium poppies, and tens to hundreds of thousands of tons are needed to meet global needs. The crops can also be affected by climate, disease and even political turmoil in the countries where the plants are grown, which further limits commercial production. The scientists inserted into yeast cells a handful of genes isolated from the opium poppy. These genes encode the enzymes the plants use to produce opiates...

Smog and soot top the list, even though there are remedies for both Sep 29, 2014 | The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) points to mobile sources (trains, planes and automobiles) as the greatest contributors to American air pollution, but industrial sources such as power plants and factories are not far behind. Dear EarthTalk : What are some of the more dangerous threats to our air quality and what can be done to eliminate them so we can all breathe more easily? The main threats to local air quality across the United States (as well as most everywhere else) remain smog and particulate pollution, which combined or acting alone trigger millions of hospital visits and health complications for citizens every year. The American Lung Association (ALA) reports that almost half of all Americans live in counties where air pollution routinely reaches unhealthy levels and can therefore make people sick or exacerbate pre-existing health conditions. The U.S. Environmental Protection A...

Absence from work due to illness increased dramatically for those who slept less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours per night. Christie Nicholson reports. Sep 29, 2014 | | called sleep the But today we know it’s so much more. contributes to the risk of , and . And now a study finds that too little or too much sleep are both associated with a significant increase in sick days away from work. Almost 4,000 men and women between 30 and 64 years old (in Finland) participated in the study, which followed them for seven years. The research revealed that the absence from work due to illness increased dramatically for those who said they slept less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours per night. The sleep time that was associated with the lowest number of sick days was 7 hours 38 minutes for women and 7 hours 46 minutes for men. The study is in the journal Sleep. [Tea Lallukka, ] Of course these findings are associative and not necessarily causal. Other factors may be responsible for th...

One morning in South Africa's mountainous , an adult female samango monkey came down from the trees to search for peanuts in an experimental food dispenser. Every once in a while she scanned her surroundings for predators, but she never bothered to look behind her once she realized that Katarzyna Nowak was there. Animals that are not at the top of their food chains are adept at avoiding their predators. , for example, stay up in trees. But to retrieve peanuts from the center's dispensers, they have to be on the ground—and that makes them vulnerable. Only when it is certain that no predators are around will a monkey spend time looking for food. So why did this one stop checking for danger behind her? Nowak, a biological anthropologist at Durham University in England and at South Africa's University of the Free State, suspects that the monkey figured that if a human was around, then a leopard was probably not. “[It was] as if she was thinking that I had that area covered,” ...

This may be a week old, but it is still important in validating SR. A new result on the measurement of the effect of relativistic time dilation in stored Li ion has come up trumps for Special Relativity. To carry out such a test, Benjamin Botermann of Johannes Gutenberg-University, Germany, and his colleagues looked for the relativistic Doppler shift in lithium ions accelerated to a third of the speed of light at the Experimental Storage Ring in Damstadt, Germany. The team stimulated two separate transitions in the ions using two lasers propagating in opposite directions with respect to the ion motion. The experiment effectively measures the shift in the laser frequencies relative to what these transition frequencies are for ions at rest. The combination of two frequency shifts eliminates uncertain parameters and allows the team to validate the time dilation prediction to a few parts per billion, improving on previous limits. The result complements other Lorentz violation tests that u...

See Inside How a researcher’s background can determine her mission Sep 16, 2014 | | Creating safer communities. Ensuring access to clean water. Tackling such problems requires science. Yet for much of its history, science has been shaped by European values. White European and American men have largely controlled who asks the questions, how they are studied and what is significant. Many important discoveries and innovations have been made, but many questions have been overlooked or unacknowledged because the experiences of investigators were limited. Pursuing personally relevant research broadens science and makes it more meaningful for us all. Robin Nelson, an assistant professor of anthropology at Skidmore College, acknowledges that opinions on research design in biological anthropology are shifting because more people recognize the role of personal experience in shaping science. She recalls the moment in her work on caretaking strategies in Caribbean families when she decided to he...

3-D visualizations combine EEG and MRI data to illustrate how brain signals propagate and could be used to study neural disorders Sep 29, 2014 | | MINDFUL: Former Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart wore a 64-electrode EEG skullcap and an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to demonstrate Neurodrummer and the Glass Brain at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference in March. This enabled the audience to see a visual representation of his brain signals as he played. Hart was joined on stage by Tim Mullen, a chief scientist on the Glass Brain project. Former takes pride in his brain. Large, anatomically realistic animations representing the inner workings of his and have graced video screens at several science and technology conferences. These visualizations use imaging and advanced computing systems to depict in colorful detail the fiber pathways that make Hart’s brain tick. The researchers behind the project hope it will also form the basis of a new type of tool for the diagnosis ...

See Inside Kids with autism may learn valuable social skills in drama-based therapies Aug 14, 2014 | | iStockphoto Science and the arts have never made easy bedfellows, but three projects that unite psychology and theater could help treat autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). The skills developed in drama training closely correspond with three of the main impairments seen in autism: social interaction, communication and flexibility of imagination. One drama-based intervention is the SENSE Theatre project, which aims to help children with ASD improve their social skills. “I knew from experience that acting can have a profound impact on how we interact with others,” says Blythe A. Corbett, a psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University and former actor, who started SENSE in 2009. “It can facilitate more flexible thinking and behavior.” So far the SENSE project has run two summer camps that served as pilot studies. The camps begin with improvisation and role-playing games, move on to scripted ...

I was a young African-American woman in 1996, determined to do my best at Lockheed Martin, one of the world's foremost technology companies, when I was named to lead an integrated-product team for a mission-critical U.S. Navy program. I was confident in my abilities as a software engineer, and I had been intimately involved in writing the program requirements. But the scope of the program was much broader than software development. We were tasked with creating an advanced launch control unit peripheral for a navy vertical-launch system. Our challenge was to take a legacy system, based on a 16-bit computer with a rudimentary keypad input and tape cartridge device, and design a new unit that incorporated off-the-shelf technology—a 166-megahertz PowerPC VME processor and a touch-screen graphical user interface. This was before the iPad, when touch screens were a big deal. It was one of the navy's first ventures into forward-compatible, off-the-shelf technology. The system also had...

Anyone following the saga of the BICEP-2 results on the expansion of the early universe will have read many opinion pieces on it. Here is another one from The Economist , and strangely enough, it is quite well-written. I emphasis towards the end of the article on how science works: Rowing back on a triumphant announcement about the first instants of creation may be a little embarrassing, but the saga is a useful reminder of how science works. There is no suggestion that anyone has behaved dishonourably. Admittedly, the BICEP team’s original press conference looks, with hindsight, seriously overconfident. More information-sharing between the various gravitational wave-hunters, all of whom guard their data jealously, might have helped tone down the triumphalism. But science, ideally, proceeds by exactly this sort of good-faith argument and honourable squabbling—until the weight of evidence forces one side to admit defeat. This is where many in the general public don't fully understa...

More than 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and many of them become unreachable as their cognitive impairment advances. Incredibly, though, when these same people listen to personally meaningful music, they can sometimes reconnect with their emotions, memories and identities. Filmmaker Rossato-Bennett follows social worker Dan Cohen as he brings iPods into nursing homes around the country. One resident with advanced dementia instantly awakens from a stupor when he hears music from his past and recalls decades-old details about his favorite singer, Cab Calloway. Cohen's ultimate goal is to make personalized music a standard tool at the tens of thousands of elderly care facilities in the U.S. “We need to use music to engage with people,” Cohen says, “to allow them to express themselves, enjoy themselves, and live again.”

Image courtesy of Dimitris Tsakiris et al. Robot can already walk, jet along and . But new advances have these machines swimming faster than ever. And thanks to the addition of soft, fleshy webs, they’re starting to look—and move—much more like the real thing, too. In fact, the latest octopus robot has already been for a successful swim—alongside real fish—in the sea off the coast of Crete. The same team of researchers from Greece built —and even added a “sculling” stroke—last year. This year they have made a new step toward a more lifelike robotic octopus by adding the web to its soft arms. And setting it free from cables. The robot is controlled wirelessly via radio frequencies, and its on-board battery can last for an hour of solid swimming. The body of the robot is Polyurethane, cast in molds . The soft web-arm combo is made from silicone, which, like a real octopus, has a similar density to water. The webby octopus was presented last week at the in Chicago. The robot can s...

High-pressure cycles unexpectedly convert benzene into superstrong and ultrathin fibers. Will they put a space elevator within reach? Sep 26, 2014 | | Rings of six carbon atoms bind together to form the core of the diamond nanothread The classic Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” may have a new meaning. Scientists announced they have likely discovered the strongest, stiffest diamond-based nanomaterial to date. Its properties suggest it could have important industrial applications, such as in transportation or aerospace manufacturing, and it might revive the idea of building elevators to space.A team led by chemist John Badding of Pennsylvania State University took an approach reminiscent of the way Superman squeezed coal into diamond in comic books. The researchers found that isolated, liquid-state benzene molecules, which consist of rings of carbon atoms, assemble into surprisingly neat and orderly chains after enduring slow, alternating cycles of pressure. The resulting ...

The skies of Mars just got a little more crowded. On September 21st, 2014 NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) fired its engines for some 33 minutes in order to swing into a safe orbit. And a few days later, early on Sept 24th, India’s Space Research Organization (ISRO) made history by joining the likes of the US, the former Soviet Union, and Europe, in successfully placing a spacecraft into martian orbit – their Mars Orbiter, or Mangalyaan (“Mars-craft”) mission. The Indian accomplishment is hugely impressive. Even if Mangalyaan is primarily a test bed for a variety of spacecraft engineering designs – carrying a handful of scientific instruments – to get to Mars in one piece is quite something. The history of efforts to explore the 4th planet from the Sun is littered with disappointments, and quite a few unintentional craters. Only about . Little wonder that the men were very, very happy. Among the Lyman-Alpha Photometer, Methane Sensor, Quadrupole mass anal...

John D. Mayer , professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire, replies: A cautious answer is that psychologists still are not sure whether adults can enhance their emotional intelligence. Current research suggests, however, that people can almost surely increase their emotional competence. To explain the distinction, I first need to define these terms. Emotional intelligence is the ability to reason about emotions and emotional information, which includes recognizing, understanding and managing feelings in ourselves. Psychologists view intelligence as mental capacities. Demonstrating an increase in a person's potential to learn something is very difficult, which is why we do not know whether emotional intelligence can improve. In contrast, emotional competence—a person's emotional functioning or ability to learn about emotions—is relatively straightforward to measure. The largest review of curricula in social and emotional learning, which aggregated studies with th...

For centuries people have painted cities as unnatural human conglomerations, blighted by pathologies such as public health crises, aggression and exorbitant costs of living. Why, then, do people throughout the world keep leaving the countryside for the town? Research that has been forming a multidisciplinary science of cities is beginning to reveal the answer: cities concentrate, accelerate, and diversify social and economic activity. The numbers show that urban dwellers produce more inventions and create more opportunities for economic growth. Often large cities are also the greenest places on the planet because people living in denser habitats typically have smaller energy footprints, require less infrastructure and consume less of the world's resources per capita. Compared with suburban or rural areas, cities do more with less. And the bigger cities get, the more productive and efficient they tend to become. *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription ...

Over the summer, I decided it would be fun to look back through all the mail kids sent me during the 2014-2015 school year. I've picked out some of my favorites and will be posting one every Friday. They truly are inspiring.  Frog life cycle

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 and 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 can take months. To speed up the process and apply it on a larger scale, Viviana Gradinaru, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology, exploited a rodent’s blood vessels. Using a dead rat, the team pumped a series of chemicals through its vessels and into its tissues. The compounds removed cloudy fats and replaced them with clear liquids. In just two weeks the entire rat turned into a see-through, jellylike specim...

NEW YORK—A trio of senior environmental officials from local and federal government yesterday offered its views on how the average American might need to get a better grasp of the risks posed by climate change. Speaking here during a conference on rising seas, the officials were pressed by a moderator from the Association of Climate Change Officers to discuss how they tend to approach widespread ambivalence or downright ignorance about global warming. Explaining the executive federal view was Alice Hill, senior adviser for preparedness and resilience to President Obama on the national security staff. Hill said there is a recognition at the White House that climate is an issue of national security significance. She stressed that the president takes the matter seriously, but she also worries that Americans tend not to follow in his footsteps or view the issue with much urgency. "It is not a priority for the American public," she said. "I don't pick up the sense of urge...

That joke is so old that when it was first told the Dead Sea just had a bad cough. It's one of some 265 in a quip collection called , which translates to “Laughter Lover,” often cited as being the world's oldest book of jokes. If the story did not compel you to guffaw, no worries—when Samuel Johnson published parts of , he said that the punch line left him befuddled. That Henny Youngmanesque offering is also in , which is the subject of intense scrutiny in the much newer book , by University of Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard. She points out that although is thought to date back to the fourth or fifth century a.d., our copy “never existed in the ancient world, certainly not in the form in which we now read it.” What we have, as is true for much literature from antiquity, is an amalgam of surviving bits of various versions. Think of a giant game of telephone played in numerous languages for a couple of millennia. . I have taken the liberty to rework these jokes the way I...

The squirrels gliding amid the mountains east of Los Angeles have been, for the most part, flying under the scientific radar. There has never been a single scientific paper published specifically about the San Bernardino flying squirrel (), even though hundreds of papers about squirrels in general are published every year. Despite this scientific oversight, the San Bernardino flying squirrel—a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel—has become very popular among some conservationists, who have been fighting to get it protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since at least 1985. This week they finally made progress: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), in response to a 2010 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), agreed that the squirrels may deserve ESA protection. The agency said it will make a recommendation, either for or against protection for the subspecies, by April 2016. Of course protecting a rare species depends on possessing detailed scientif...

An anthropologist studying current hunter-gatherers finds that nighttime around the fire is when conversation turns from business to bonding. Cynthia Graber reports. Sep 24, 2014 | | Some scientists say the helped make us modern humans—it dramatically changed and may have even altered our anatomy. But University of Utah anthropologist thinks that fire was also important in shaping human social interactions and cultural traditions. Her conclusions are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Polly W. Wiessner, ] Wiessner evaluated day and night activities and conversations of Kalahari Bushmen from Botswana and Namibia. These communities still live by hunting and gathering, as most humans did over evolutionary history. During the day, nearly a third of the conversations dealt with economic issues such as hunting strategies and foraging plans. Another third covered complaints, criticisms and gossip. But at night around the fire, more than 80 percent of group co...

Earth's magnetic field is shown in midreversal. More In This Article Earth's magnetic north and south poles have many times in our planet's history—most recently, around 780,000 years ago. Geophysicists who study the magnetic field have that the poles may be getting ready to switch again, and , it might happen earlier than anyone anticipated. The European Space Agency's satellite array dubbed “Swarm” revealed that Earth's magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than previously thought, decreasing in strength about 5 percent a decade rather than 5 percent a century. A weakening magnetic field may indicate an impending reversal, which scientists predict could begin in less than 2,000 years. Magnetic north itself appears to be moving toward Siberia. Geophysicists do not yet fully understand the process of geomagnetic reversals, but they agree that our planet's field is like a . Earth's center consists of an inner core of solid iron and an outer core of...

A study in mice suggests that chemical changes that occur during dry roasting may increase the odds of an allergic reaction. Dina Fine Maron reports. Sep 24, 2014 | | [ ] Exposure to peanuts can be deadly to people with an allergy. But here’s a finding that could start to thwart the : peanuts that are dry roasted may be more likely to trigger an than do their raw counterparts. At least that’s the case in mice. The study is in the . [Amin E. Moghaddam et al, ] Researchers looked at how the immune systems of mice respond to purified proteins from dry roasted peanuts versus raw peanuts. Temperatures required to dry roast peanuts—160 degrees C or higher—create chemical compounds that incite the mouse immune system. If the findings extend to humans, it could help explain the difference in the higher incidence of peanut allergies in the western world compared with East Asia. Peanuts are equally popular in both regions, but in the west, dry roasted peanuts are more prevalent. Th...

Can someone be cured of the AIDS virus? Video examined this question during this summer's Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, which brought early-career biologists together with Nobel Prize–winners Sep 24, 2014 | | In 2008, Timothy Ray Brown became the first person to be cured of HIV—or so many claim. Brown is known as “the Berlin patient,” and six years on, the virus has still not been detected in his blood. In this Video, reporter Lorna Stewart wants to know the implications of his remarkable treatment. But her dreams of an imminent cure quickly fade as Nobel laureate Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, who discovered HIV, brings Lorna back to Earth with a bump.