Wendy Science

Diagnostics, vaccines and new drugs could vastly improve the way future Ebola outbreaks manifest in Africa, according to emerging infectious disease expert Jeremy Farrar. Steve Mirsky reports. October 31, 2014 | | “Classic public health, isolation and respect and dignity for the people infected, and respect and dignity if individuals do die that they’re buried in appropriate manner, is absolutely critical to bringing this epidemic under control.” Jeremy Farrar is an expert and the director of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable health foundation. He talked about the current in West Africa during a produced by the on October 22 nd . “The society where these epidemics are occurring are ultimately going to be critical to bringing the epidemic under control. “I believe in the 21 st century, the classic public health measures that are critical can be complemented by the addition of rapid diagnostics; by the development of vaccines, assessment of safety and efficacy and then d...

Symbiont Orbit, 2014 (($26)) In this book, the second in Grant's Parasitology series of thrillers, a medical breakthrough is not all that it seems. Most of the world lives with implanted genetically engineered tapeworms that boost the immune system, protect against illness and secrete helpful drugs. The powerful biotech company behind the worms has an interest in keeping any risks under wraps, but a serious danger becomes public when a zombielike sleepwalking sickness begins infecting people. Now scientists who created the extraordinary worms have to grapple with a creation they can no longer control.

Rooms beneath the mysterious city contain jade statues, jaguar remains and thousands of other objects October 31, 2014 | | | Scans of a tunnel complex under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent show the large entry hole as well as the small shaft that allowed it to be discovered. Further on are a series of chambers, the first found in 2013 and the next this past year, under the ancient city of Teotihuacan. More In This Article Scientists with the Mexican government announced Wednesday the discovery of three new chambers at the end of a tunnel under the ancient city of Teotihuacan. The tunnel was discovered in 2003 beneath the popular tourist destination just outside today’s Mexico City and is among the most important finds in the lost city’s history. In a press briefing at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, Mexican archeologists say that the new rooms contained thousands of objects, including carved statues, rubber balls, jade from Guatemala and a wooden box of sh...

I came across this car collision problem , and thought you guys might be interested in tackling it. I was involved in a car accident. My car was thrown 83 feet. The guy who hit me was driving a 2002 Thunderbird, weighing 3,775 pounds. My car was a 2006 Toyota Matrix, weighing 2,679 pounds. Is there any way that I can calculate how fast his car was going at the point of impact? I was turning left, and the guy smashed into my passenger side as I crossed his lane. I would say the angle at which he hit me was about 110 degrees, since I wasn’t quite at 90 degrees to him yet. I was just starting to turn, so I was going no more than 5 mph. I ended up 83 feet away. There were no tire tracks at the point of impact, so my car must have gone airborne! This seems like a physics problem, and I have contacted some physics students, but they are students and are not interested. I think it should be possible to calculate it, but I don’t know physics. Please help! My car was totaled. The other guy clai...

Mosquitoes that harbor a soil microbe called have a harder time catching dengue virus and the malarial parasite. Christopher Intagliata reports. October 31, 2014 | | The human microbiome is the community of tiny organisms that live on us and inside us. These critters play vital roles in our health. They , , even . But if we stop the navel gazing--literally, because some --there's a whole lot to be found in the microbiomes of other organisms too. Take the pesky mosquito. A few years back, scientists found a soil microbe called living in the guts of mosquitoes in Panama. Upon further study, the researchers say this mosquito-occupant could be a remarkably versatile weapon to fight malaria and dengue fever. Because shortens the lifespan of disease-transmitting mosquito species that harbor it; and kills their larvae outright. It also reduces mosquitoes' ability to catch the dengue virus, or the malarial parasite; and it kills both pathogens in the lab. Those findings are in...

Mike S. (not his real name) was 13 years old when one of us (Lilienfeld) met him on an inpatient psychiatric ward, where Lilienfeld was a clinical psychology intern. Mike was articulate and charming, and he radiated warmth. Yet this initial impression belied a disturbing truth. For several years Mike had been in serious trouble at school for lying, cheating and assaulting classmates. He was verbally abusive toward his biological mother, who lived alone with him. Mike tortured and even killed cats and bragged about experiencing no guilt over these actions. He was finally brought to the hospital in the mid-1980s, after he was caught trying to con railroad workers into giving him dynamite, which he intended to use to blow up his school. According to psychiatry's standard guidebook, the (now in its fifth edition), Mike's diagnosis was conduct disorder, a condition marked by a pattern of antisocial and perhaps criminal behavior emerging in childhood or adolescence. Psychologists hav...

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.

A nurse in Maine has vowed not to be bullied by politicians and is threatening to sue the state over an Ebola quarantine she calls unscientifically sound October 30, 2014 | (Reuters) - A nurse in Maine vowing not to be bullied by politicians and threatening to sue the state over an Ebola quarantine she calls unscientifically sound, defied the order and left her home for a bike ride on Thursday, according to television images. Kaci Hickox left her home in Fort Kent to take a morning bicycle ride with her boyfriend, MSNBC and other networks reported. Hickox, 33, who tested negative for Ebola after returning from treating patients in West Africa, said that she plans to take the issue to court if the state did not lift the quarantine by Thursday. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Scott Malone)

See Inside Total energy must be conserved. Every student of physics learns this fundamental law. The trouble is, it does not apply to the universe as a whole By Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This principle, called conservation of energy, is one of our most cherished laws of physics. It governs every part of our lives: the heat it takes to warm up a cup of coffee; the chemical reactions that produce oxygen in the leaves of trees; the orbit of Earth around the sun; the food we need to keep our hearts beating. We cannot live without eating, cars do not run without fuel, and perpetual-motion machines are just a mirage. So when an experiment seems to violate the law of energy conservation, we are rightfully suspicious. What happens when our observations seem to contradict one of science's most deeply held notions: that energy is always conserved? Skip for a moment outside our Earthly sphere and consider the wider universe. Almost all of our information about outer space ...

October 27, 2014 It may sound like something straight out of a horror movie, but many animals can come under the zombie-like control of parasites. So what about humans? Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon fills us in on the ghoulish side of Nature. Showing 16451 Back to School Sale! 12 Digital Issues + 4 Years of Archive Access just $19.99 > X Email this Article X

Tucked beside fossils of long-gone gigantic sloths and knee-high horses stands a newcomer to the American Museum of Natural History’s extinction parade: Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island giant tortoise. For four decades the 100-year-old reptile served as a conservation icon on Ecuador’s Galápagos Archipelago. His subspecies, hunted for meat and tortoise oil, all but vanished in the 1900s. George was its only survivor, and despite several attempts to get him to reproduce with giant tortoises from similar subspecies, on June 24, 2012. Now, what remains of Lonesome George’s legacy is a lifelike mount at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. Designed by an expert team of taxidermists, the display depicts George at his most majestic; with neck outstretched and shell polished. Serendipity brought him to the museum. On the same morning that Fausto Llerena, George’s handler since 1983, found the tortoise sprawled out dead in his pen, a congregation of cons...

Routine clinical use of his vaccine forestalled the paralysis and death brought by the dreaded illness October 28, 2014 | | Jonas Salk Congressional Gold Medal (front), awarded to Salk in 1955 More In This Article The first vaccine against polio, developed by Jonas Salk in 1954 while he was at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, registered a success rate of only 60 to 90 percent. Yet the annual incidence of polio in the U.S. quickly and dramatically fell from tens of thousands of cases to a few dozen in only a few years. The initial Salk vaccine, a “killed-virus” version, was replaced within a few years by a “live-virus” formulation developed by Albert Sabin of the University of Cincinnati. Since 2000, however, an updated version of the Salk vaccine, safer than the Sabin version, has been the only one given in the U.S. to prevent polio: it is 99 percent effective after three doses. Salk never patented nor made any money from his discovery. In later life Salk went on ...

Scărişoara Ice Cave, Romania On a recent visit to Crystal Ice Cave in Idaho, climate and cave researchers had to wade through frigid, knee-deep water to reach the ice formations that give the cave its name. Cavers are good-humored about the hardships of underground exploration, but this water was chilling for more than one reason: it was carrying away some of the very clues they had come to study. Ice is an invaluable source of information about the earth's past. Pollen trapped in ice from polar ice caps and mountaintop glaciers documents plant life up to 1.5 million years ago, and gas bubbles and water isotopes reveal glimpses of ancient temperatures. Polar ice samples cannot necessarily reveal what the climate was like in, say, New Mexico or other temperate regions, however. So a decade ago a small group of researchers began meeting to discuss the potential of cave ice, some of which is more than 3,000 years old. Since then, studies have confirmed that cave ice can illuminate som...

According to CCSS, there are four types of nonfiction—literary, expository, persuasive, and procedural. But traditionally, writers have used terms like these as labels for various nonfiction writing styles . I like the word “styles” because it implies some sort of craft, some sort of decision-making process on the part of the writer. When reading a nonfiction text, it’s important for students to think about the author’s purpose and how that purpose influenced the way he/she chose to present facts, ideas, and/or true stories. Remembering that the author is a person with a distinct point of view will help young readers think critically and spot potential biases. And that’s not all. Recognizing how other authors craft their manuscripts can help young writers communicate their own thoughts and ideas more effectively. Okay, I’ll get down off my soapbox now. If you google “nonfiction writing styles,” you’ll pull up a gazillion different articles. Some of the ideas in them overlap, and som...

Routine clinical use of his vaccine forestalled the paralysis and death brought by the dreaded illness October 28, 2014 | | Jonas Salk Congressional Gold Medal (front), awarded to Salk in 1955 More In This Article The first vaccine against polio, developed by Jonas Salk in 1954 while he was at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, registered a success rate of only 60 to 90 percent. Yet the incidence of polio in the U.S. quickly and dramatically fell from an average 25,000 cases to a few dozen in only a few years. The initial Salk vaccine, a “killed-virus” version, was replaced within a few years by a “live-virus” formulation developed by Albert Sabin of the University of Cincinnati. Since 2000, however, an updated version of the Salk vaccine, safer than the Sabin version, has been the only one given in the U.S. to prevent polio: it is 99 percent effective after three doses. Salk never patented nor made any money from his discovery. In later life Salk went on to found t...

Scărişoara Ice Cave, Romania On a recent visit to Crystal Ice Cave in Idaho, climate and cave researchers had to wade through frigid, knee-deep water to reach the ice formations that give the cave its name. Cavers are good-humored about the hardships of underground exploration, but this water was chilling for more than one reason: it was carrying away some of the very clues they had come to study. Ice is an invaluable source of information about the earth's past. Pollen trapped in ice from polar ice caps and mountaintop glaciers documents plant life up to 1.5 million years ago, and gas bubbles and water isotopes reveal glimpses of ancient temperatures. Polar ice samples cannot necessarily reveal what the climate was like in, say, New Mexico or other temperate regions, however. So a decade ago a small group of researchers began meeting to discuss the potential of cave ice, some of which is more than 3,000 years old. Since then, studies have confirmed that cave ice can illuminate som...

Christo Wilson, a computer scientist at Northeastern University, says prices online are "super subjective" and vary according to your past clicks and purchases, or whether you're shopping on a mobile phone. October 28, 2014 | | "If you were to walk into a store and they were offering better prices for less affluent people there would be a revolt, right? No one would stand for this." Christo Wilson, a computer scientist at Northeastern University. But on the Internet, he says, when it comes to pricing. "It is super subjective. Everything can be personalized." Wilson and his colleagues analyzed just how personal online shopping can get. They compared the search results of 300 real-world users to searches by cookie-free, fake accounts on 16 major e-commerce sites. Turns out half the sites personalized search results, based on who was searching. Especially travel sites. Expedia and Hotels.com prioritized more expensive hotels for certain users; and ...

Law enforcement agencies and retailers such as Walmart and Best Buy balk at Apple's operating system and payment app privacy efforts. Larry Greenemeier reports October 28, 2014 | | Apple’s efforts to improve your have met with surprisingly strong resistance from companies and agencies that want your info. Seems that confidentiality hampers efforts to track —and bad guys.The controversy revolves around what’s called Apple Pay. By employing the newly released payment system, users of the latest i-devices can now buy things without flashing a credit or debit card. Google’s offered a similar digital wallet for years, but Apple’s version will not collect transaction info or store card numbers on your device.Many retailers have bought in to Apple Pay. It promises to be more secure than plastic, and when it comes to data security. But other outfits, including retail giants Walmart and Best Buy, have rejected the Apple Pay technology because it prevents them from tracking customer-pur...

This blog is the last in a series of guest posts on technology and the brain to celebrate Scientific American Mind’s 10-year anniversary. The magazine’s specialNovember/December issue similarly highlights the interface between code and thought in profiling a future, more digital YOU. I have been a practicing psychiatrist at the Cleveland Clinic since 1989. Back in 1999, my colleagues and I began looking into a technology called deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a treatment for psychiatric disorders. Initially we wanted to see if DBS, in which surgeons implant a 1-milllimeter thin electrode through the skull to stimulate a specific region of the brain, could help people with very severe obsessive compulsive disorder. These patients needed serious help. Many of them couldn’t leave the house; they spent many hours per day on rituals and compulsive behaviors, and were completely disabled. Placed in a specific area of the brain, a DBS electrode delivers constant low intensity stimulation ...

Unexplained gamma rays streaming from the galactic center may have been produced by dark matter, but more mundane explanations are also possible October 28, 2014 | | This Fermi map of the Milky Way center shows an overabundance of gamma-rays (red indicates the greatest number) that cannot be explained by conventional sources. So far, dark matter has evaded scientists’ best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. , however, suspicious gamma-ray light radiating from the Milky Way’s core—where dark matter is thought to be especially dense—has intrigued researchers. Some wonder if the rays might have been emitted in explosions caused by colliding particles of dark matter. Now a new gamma-ray signal, in combination with those already detected, offers further evidence that this might be the case.One possible explanation for dark matter is that it is made of theori...

The African lion () faces the threat of extinction by the year 2050, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe warned today. The sobering news came as part of the agency’s announcement that it has that African lions receive much-needed protection under the Endangered Species Act. The decision to list the big cats as threatened—one level below endangered—would allow the U.S. government to provide some level of training and assistance for on-the-ground conservation efforts and restrict the sale of lion parts or hunting trophies into the country or across state lines. The total population of lions in Africa is currently estimated at about 34,000 animals, down by at least 50 percent from three decades ago. Those numbers, however, tell only part of the story. As Ashe pointed out during a press conference today, about 70 percent of the remaining lions—24,000 cats—live in just 10 “stronghold” regions in southern and eastern Africa. Lions in other regions, , have been almost complet...

See Inside Enough physicians have substance abuse problems to make random drug testing a needed part of medical practice Oct 14, 2014 | | We hold our physicians to high standards because they make life-or-death decisions. Yet when it comes to drug addiction, their behavior can be disturbing. Their overall rates of substance abuse are roughly on par with the rest of the population, at about 10 percent. For prescription drugs, abuse rates for doctors in several specialties are estimated to be even higher—not surprising given their access to addictive medications. One doctor, who cared for patients while surreptitiously taking large doses of prescription narcotics, wrote in the that “I held patients' lives in my hands when I practiced medicine while high on narcotic drugs for 3½ years. I made errors.” Systematic studies connecting medical errors to drug abuse are hard to do, in part because physicians are skilled at hiding their addiction, yet experts who have culled through case da...

It may sound like something straight out of a horror movie, but many animals can come under the zombie-like control of parasites. So what about humans? Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Tucked beside fossils of long-gone gigantic sloths and knee-high horses stands a newcomer to the American Museum of Natural History’s extinction parade: Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island giant tortoise. For four decades the 100-year-old reptile served as a conservation icon on Ecuador’s Galápagos Archipelago. His subspecies, hunted for meat and tortoise oil, all but vanished in the 1900s. George was its only survivor, and despite several attempts to get him to reproduce with giant tortoises from similar subspecies, on June 24, 2012. Now, what remains of Lonesome George’s legacy is a lifelike mount at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. Designed by an expert team of taxidermists, the display depicts George at his most majestic; with neck outstretched and shell polished. Serendipity brought him to the museum. On the same morning that Fausto Llerena, George’s handler since 1983, found the tortoise sprawled out dead in his pen, a congregation of cons...

As scientists look at crops to find ways to help them deal with climate change stress and growing populations, a tool has emerged to give them a new perspective: the view from underground. Plants are a lot like icebergs: A bulk of their mass is invisible to the naked eye, buried in their roots. Roots allow plants to compensate for their stationary role in life, hunting for nutrients and diving to mine for water in times of drought. These are abilities food security researchers would like to be able to enhance to develop more durable crops, but laboratory conditions currently confine experiments to the first few days or weeks of a sprouting plant's life. Alexander Bucksch, a computer scientist turned plant genetic mathematician, said he was driven to find a way to shed light on roots in his postdoctoral work at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was struck by how little is known about their growth and how similar the scale, overlap and diversity of branching was to other system...

Tell us how you use your smartphone, which gadgets it has replaced and where you would like to see the technology go October 27, 2014 | | Smartphones have become the Swiss Army knives of the digital age. No need to fill your pockets and handbags with cameras, maps and music players—just grab your all-in-one iPhone or Android device on your way out the door. The new feature in iOS 8 promises to help the newest iPhones and iPads replace yet another staple of modern life: the credit card. Apple launched its latest attack on the status quo on October 20, with dozens of major retailers—Macy’s, McDonald’s and Whole Foods Market among them—ready to accept payment. Several banks, payment providers and app makers are likewise onboard. Google has on its Android devices for a few years, but the company has built little fanfare to usher its technology into the mainstream. The Apple effect could change that. wants to know more about your smartphone use, the technology it has replaced and what ...

See Inside Many people prefer any activity to simply sitting quietly—even an electric shock Oct 16, 2014 | | “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” said French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal in the mid-17th century. The sentiment may be truer today than ever, according to a paper published July 4 in . Researchers asked participants to rate how much they enjoyed being in a room with nothing to do. Of 409 participants, nearly half said that they did not like the experience. When asked to do the same at home for six to 15 minutes, a third said that they had cheated. In one telling experiment, each of 55 participants was seated alone in a quiet, empty room with nothing to do—except they had access to a button that would deliver an electric shock to their ankle which they had previously described as “unpleasant.” In their 15 minutes of solitude, 67 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women chose to shock themselves...

See Inside For some cancer patients, viruses engineered to zero in on tumor cells work like a wonder drug. The task now is to build on this success In 1904 a woman in Italy confronted two life-threatening events: first, diagnosis with cancer of the uterine cervix, then a dog bite. Doctors delivered the rabies vaccine for the bite, and subsequently her “enormously large” tumor disappeared (“”). The woman lived cancer-free until 1912. Soon thereafter several other Italian patients with cervical cancer also received the vaccine—a live rabies virus that had been weakened. As reported by Nicola De Pace in 1910, tumors in some patients shrank, presumably because the virus somehow killed the cancer. All eventually relapsed and died, however. Even though the patients perished, the notion of treating cancer with viruses able to kill malignant cells—now termed oncolytic virotherapy—was born. And investigators had some success in laboratory animals. Yet for a long time only partial responses and ...

NGSS K-ESS2-2. Construct an argument supported by evidence for how plants and animals (including humans) can change the environment to meet their needs. Try these book pairs: For more suggestions and full lesson plans, check out Perfect Pairs :