Wendy Science

HPV is the most widespread sexually transmitted disease in the U.S. and abroad, yet many people still go unvaccinated—especially men. Current HPV vaccination campaigns focus largely on women’s risk for cervical cancer but researchers have recently in younger men. Experts suggest a push for male vaccination to decrease HPV-caused cancers in both sexes. in the U.S. With the closure of the Vermont Yankee reactor, the nation’s fleet now numbers under 100. As reactors go offline without replacements, the country will be increasingly reliant on natural gas and old, flawed reactor designs. According to lore, cockroaches will be one of the few survivors of a nuclear winter—but that’s not their only supertrait. Scientists have found that cockroaches’ , building an image photon by photon. Understanding how they do it could lead to better night vision for mankind. Humans report worse vision while in space as well as headaches and myriad other . In March NASA plans to send one member of an ...

The lung ailment is a leading killer in the U.S. February 27, 2015 | | The disease that killed Leonard Nimoy, the actor best known for his role as Mr. Spock on , was chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), a progressive illness often linked to smoking. He died at his home on February 27 at the age of 83. He was one of the roughly fifteen million Americans diagnosed with the disorder.But just what is COPD? That umbrella term refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-difficulties, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis. In the United States COPD most often stems from exposure to tobacco smoke. (Last year Nimoy tweeted to fans that he three decades ago.) Genetic factors, respiratory infections and air pollutant exposures, however, can also play a role. It’s a leading cause of death in the U.S., with symptoms including shortness of breathing, wheezing, chronic coughing or excess production of mucus in the airway. The disease is typically diagnosed ...

The lung ailment is a leading killer in the United States February 27, 2015 | | The disease that killed Leonard Nimoy, the actor best known for his role as Mr. Spock on , was chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), a progressive illness often linked to smoking. He died at his home on February 27 at the age of 83. He was one of the roughly fifteen million Americans diagnosed with the disorder.But just what is COPD? That umbrella term refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-difficulties, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis. In the United States COPD most often stems from exposure to tobacco smoke. (Last year Nimoy tweeted to fans that he three decades ago.) Genetic factors, respiratory infections and air pollutant exposures, however, can also play a role. It’s a leading cause of death in the U.S., with symptoms including shortness of breathing, wheezing, chronic coughing or excess production of mucus in the airway. The disease is typically d...

http://ift.tt/1wnsKkg As a visual neuroscientist I think a lot about how we see the world around us. And so I’ve found the scientific and celebrity controversy to be especially fun and exciting. Most of the scientific pundits have concluded that the dress is black-and-blue, and they have offered up an illusions-in-the-brain explanation of why some people see the dress instead as white-and-gold. Yet after thinking thoroughly about this photo, looking at it on a number of different screens, and speaking with some of my lab partners, I’d like to offer my point of view. Yes, there is an illusion at play here that effects our brains, but no, it is not that illusion that causes it to look differently to different people: that difference is caused by a mundane photographic effect. First, the illusory explanation (it’s black-and-blue but only appears white-and-gold) arises from what we scientists call “color constancy.” It’s the process by which we can recognize the same object under differe...

Nimoy, the original Spock, got involved in real space science with NASA February 27, 2015 | and | Actor Leonard Nimoy, who portrayed the iconic logical Vulcan Spock on the TV's "Star Trek" and in feature films, has died. He was 83. Nimoy's career spanned TV, feature films, art and photography, but he was perhaps best known for playing Spock, the logical Vulcan on the starship the USS Enterprise, in "Star Trek." Nimoy died from complications due to "end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease," according to the , which first reported the actor's death Friday morning (Feb. 27). "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP [Live long and prosper]," Nimoy wrote in a recent on Feb. 23. The actor would sign his tweets "LLAP," echoing Spock's famous words on "Star Trek." Nimoy was born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 26, 1931 and started acting by the t...

Books and recommendations from Feb 17, 2015 | Rust: The Longest War Simon & Schuster, 2015 ($26.95) Of all the environmental challenges threatening worldwide infrastructure, rust, journalist Waldman admits, is not “sexy.” It creeps in gradually and seems like more of an aesthetic blight than a dire danger to the modern machinery our society depends on. Yet rust is costlier than all other natural disasters combined, Waldman explains, and the science of corrosion, along with the ingenious engineering strategies humans have devised to fight it, is fascinating. Rust “seizes up weapons, manhandles mufflers, destroys highway guardrails, and spreads like a cancer in concrete,” he writes. Waldman attends “Can School,” interviews rust experts and visits the Alaska pipeline, among other adventures, to illuminate the myriad attacks rust makes on our daily lives. In doing so, he adds luster to a substance considered synonymous with dullness.

Have you been following this ridiculous debate about the color of this dress? People are going nuts all over different social media about what the color of this dress is based on the photo that has exploded all over the internet. I'm calling it ridiculous because people are actually arguing with each other, disagreeing about what they see, and then found it rather odd that other people do not see the same thing as they do, as if this is highly unusual and unexpected. Does the fact that different people see colors differently not a well-known fact? Seriously? I've already mentioned about the limition of the human eye, and why it is really not a very good light detector in many aspects. So already using your eyes to determine the color of this dress is already suspect. Not only that, but due to such uncertainty, one should be to stuborn about what one sees, as if what you are seeing must be the ONLY way to see it. But how would science solve this? Easy. Devices such as a UV-VIS...

Smoke, sirens and flashing lights interrupted the night on Aug. 1, 2012, as a fire took hold at the remote Kahuku wind farm along the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii. The blaze sparked at 3:30 a.m. in a metal warehouse with 12,000 lead acid batteries mounted in racks towering more than 6 feet high. The 10-megawatt battery system, installed by Xtreme Power, was used to buffer electricity from the 12-turbine, 30 MW wind farm operated by First Wind, smoothing out spikes and low spots in wind power production. Within 20 minutes, the Honolulu Fire Department arrived at the scene. It was the third fire the firefighters had responded to at that 9,000-square-foot building since operations there started in 2011, but the previous fires burned themselves out or were extinguished before causing extensive damage. "On-site supervisors advised us that entry into the building was not advised because of the hazards," said Terry Seelig, battalion chief at the Fire Prevention Bureau of the Honolu...

Researchers are trying to develop ways to more quickly and accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s, which might lead to better treatments and understanding in the future February 27, 2015 | | Clinical diagnoses from specialists can be accurate up to 90 percent of the time but the only way to absolutely verify that someone has Alzheimer’s is to examine their brain in a postmortem autopsy. Kathy Stack’s memory loss began with the little things: losing her wallet, taking a wrong turn, forgetting someone’s name. In 2013 at the age of 68, she visited her neurologist, who sent her to a memory loss specialist. He told her she had a 50–50 chance of developing full-blown Alzheimer’s disease within five years. Two years later, Stack, who was the first female department director of community services for Saint Paul, Minn., has made lifestyle changes such as working out regularly and doing daily brain exercises to stave off the disease. She is prepared for what the next stages of Alzheimer’s may bring...

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.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but poorly translated words may also hurt you Feb 17, 2015 | | This magazine has various foreign-language editions. As such, I occasionally get requests from overseas translators tasked with trying to make sense of some of my more idiomatic constructions. For example, my January 2014 column discussed Jesse Bering's book . The book's dedication reads: “For you, you pervert, you.” So I wrote, “Bering was kind enough to dedicate to me. And to you. And, well, to any reader brave enough to crack the binding.” Which prompted this response from a translator: “I guess the phrase ‘crack the binding’ has some special meaning about abnormal sex, but I couldn't find it. Could you enlighten me?” Indeed, translation can be a minefield. If I tried to tell my colleague in his language that I would indeed enlighten him, I could inadvertently say that I was helping him lose weight or setting him on fire. Best leave translation to the pros. Of course...

THIS IS A PREVIEW. or to access the full article.Already have an account? Before Katie Meyler came to West Point, Liberia, the children living there had little hope for the future. The crowded township, which lies on a peninsula that juts into the Atlantic Ocean at the northern end of Monrovia, Liberia's capital, is the worst slum in the country. Less than two square miles in size, West Point is home to more than 75,000 people crammed into decaying tin shanties without electricity, running water or sanitation. “It's no place for a child,” says the 32-year-old Meyler, a native of Bernardsville, N.J. “But the kids who live there don't have a choice. West Point is their home.” THIS IS A PREVIEW. or to access the full article.Already have an account? Digital Issue$5.99 Digital Issue + Subscription$39.99 You May Also Like Scientific American Mind Archive Single Issue Scientific American Mind Archive Single Issue Scientific American Mind Single Issue Scien...

A newly released CDC report focused on the Clostridium difficile bacterium, which can cause deadly diarrhea February 25, 2015 | By Yasmeen Abutaleb NEW YORK (Reuters) - Overuse of antibiotics made Americans more vulnerable to a strain of bacteria that caused nearly half a million infections and contributed to at least 29,000 deaths in a single year, U.S. public health officials warned in research published on Wednesday. The study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused on the Clostridium difficile bacterium, which can cause deadly diarrhea. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlight how overprescription of antibiotics has fueled a rise in bacteria that are resistant to treatment. People who take antibiotics are most at risk of acquiring C. difficile because these medications also wipe out "good" bacteria that protect a healthy person against the infection. "Antibiotics are clearly driving this whole problem,...

Heart failure patients who struggle with daily tasks such as bathing or dressing are more likely to be hospitalized and tend to die sooner than those who are more independent, according to a new study February 25, 2015 | By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - Heart failure patients who struggle with daily tasks like bathing or dressing are more likely to be hospitalized and tend to die sooner than those who are more independent, according to a new study. More than five million people in the U.S. have heart failure and about half die within five years of diagnosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Treatments include medications, a low-salt diet, and daily physical activity. "I certainly suspected that patients who had increasing difficulty with daily living would be at increased risk for death," but just how accurately a brief questionnaire could predict hospitalization and death was surprising, said Dr. Shannon Dunlay, lead author of the study and ...

Pres. Barack Obama on February 24— , not because of and not because of the from the tar sands. Obama vetoed the pipeline bill “because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures.” In other words Obama used the third veto of his presidency to preserve the prerogatives of his office, in this case evaluating cross-border pipelines and the ever-vague “national interest.” A map of Canada's network of pipelines to transport liquids, included diluted bitumen from Alberta's tar sands. The dotted blue line cutting diagonally down from Alberta to Oklahoma is the Keystone XL pipeline while the dotted blue line headed east is the leading alternative, known as Energy East. Courtesy of Canadian Energy Pipeline Association Veto aside, the Obama administration still might find Keystone XL is in the national interest, once the Department of State completes its . Approval appears to hinge on whether the pipeline is judged to “ ,” as the president put it in ...

Here’s the crazy thing about living in Hawaii: Even though the islands are home to more than 18,000 unique species that live nowhere else on Earth, the people of Hawaii rarely see those native plants and animals. In no small part, that’s because Hawaii is the site of an ongoing extinction crisis. Thousands of species in the Hawaiian Islands risk extinction because of invasive species or habitat loss. Most of those native species evolved in extremely limited ranges, so it takes a lot of effort to see them—and it doesn’t take much to wipe them out. In the meantime scientists throughout Hawaii are rushing to conserve the state’s native flora and fauna, the majority of which have never been fully studied. That effort often involves documenting where species live, what they need from their environment and what it will take to save them. Sometimes, in the process of documenting these already endangered species, something novel pops into view. It happened in September 2012 when scientists we...

Revelations about the role of the human microbiome in our lives have begun to shake the foundations of medicine and nutrition Feb 17, 2015 | | Antony van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society of London in a letter dated September 17, 1683, describing “very little animalcules, very prettily a-moving,” which he had seen under a microscope in plaque scraped from his teeth. For more than three centuries after van Leeuwenhoek's observation, the human “microbiome”—the 100 trillion or so microbes that live in various nooks and crannies of the human body—remained largely unstudied, mainly because it is not so easy to extract and culture them in a laboratory. A decade ago the advent of sequencing technologies finally opened up this microbiological frontier. The Human Microbiome Project reference database, established in 2012, revealed in unprecedented detail the diverse microbial community that inhabits our bodies. Most live in the gut. They are not freeloaders but rather perform many f...

An ancient, global-scale collision could explain the Red Planet’s mysterious “two-faced” appearance February 25, 2015 | | When the team simulated a collision with an asteroid about 4,000 kilometers across (slightly larger than Earth’s moon) they found that it caused the crust of the “virtual” Mars to reform into two distinct zones. The planet Mars has been associated with its namesake god of war for millennia, but its own past may have been more violent than was previously imagined. A new study suggests that Mars was once hit by an asteroid so large that it melted nearly half of the planet’s surface. Researchers came to this conclusion while studying a strange feature known as the Martian hemispheric dichotomy—a dramatic drop in surface elevation and crustal thickness that occurs near Mars’ equator. In the northern hemisphere the land’s elevation is on average about 5.5 kilometers lower and the crust is around 26 kilometers thinner. The dichotomy was discovered in the early 1970s ...

The common food additives altered mice microbiomes to encourage gut inflammation and overeating. Dina Fine Maron reports February 25, 2015 | | Inside our guts is a diverse ecosystem of bacteria: the . But the makeup of the community can depend on what we eat. Emulsifiers are food additives that extend the shelf life of processed foods. And now research with mice finds that consuming emulsifiers may and thereby contribute to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.In the study, mice were fed doses of common emulsifiers in their water and mouse chow. The substances appeared to make it easier for gut bacteria to chew through the layers of mucus that typically line the intestine. The result was the triggering of chronic colitis in mice with impaired immune systems that predispose them to the condition.And even in mice with normal immune systems, emulsifier consumption appeared to trigger mild intestinal inflammation. These mice then tended to overeat and become obese and insulin resista...

How the largest outbreak on record jump-started the development of two experimental vaccines and a couple of promising treatments By THIS IS A PREVIEW. or to access the full article.Already have an account? Researchers often talk about a race between the Ebola virus and the people it infects. A patient wins the race only if the immune system manages to defeat the virus before it destroys most of his or her organs. A community wins the race if it can isolate the first few patients before the disease spreads. Humanity will win the race if it develops treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine before the virus gains a permanent toehold in the cities of the globe. For years Ebola held a natural advantage. Outbreaks were too small (typically fewer than 100 people) and too short-lived (less than five months) to give researchers the chance to test potential therapies. By the time they could have put a clinical trial in place, the threat would have passed. Pharmaceutical companies and research ...

Groups that elicit disgust are judged more severely for "impure" acts Feb 12, 2015 | | We like to think of our moral judgments as consistent, but they can be as capricious as moods. Research reveals that such judgments are swayed by incidental emotions and perceptions—for instance, people become more moralistic when they feel dirty or sense contamination, such as in the presence of moldy food. Now a series of studies shows that hippies, the obese and “trailer trash” suffer prejudicial treatment because they tend to elicit disgust. Researchers asked volunteers to read short paragraphs about people committing what many consider to be impure acts, such as watching pornography, swearing or being messy. Some of the paragraphs described the individuals as being a hippie, obese or trailer trash—and the volunteers judged these fictional sinners more harshly, according to the paper in the : volunteers' assessments. A series of follow-up studies solidified the link, finding that...

Booktalking can be a great way to get students excited about the books available in a library or classroom collection. When booktalking a fiction title, you might begin by saying something like “it’s a paranormal romance presented from multiple points of view” or “it’s a contemporary realistic novel with an unreliable narrator.” These descriptions give students a general idea of what they’ll encounter without giving away the book’s plot. Do you approach nonfiction booktalking in the same way? Probably not. Chances are you focus on what the book’s about. Sure, the topic of a nonfiction book is important. But so is the plot of a novel. The reason we focus on a nonfiction book’s topic is because we don’t know how to do anything else. That’s because there’s no widely-accepted categories to provide a broad overview. But there should be, and I don’t think it would be that hard to come up with a system that works most of the time. Earlier this school year, I blogged about nonfiction types ...

The President swiftly delivered on his vow to veto a Republican bill approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, leaving the long-debated project in limbo for another indefinite period February 24, 2015 | By Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday swiftly delivered on his vow to veto a Republican bill approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, leaving the long-debated project in limbo for another indefinite period. The Senate received Obama's veto message and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately countered by announcing the Republican-led chamber would attempt to overturn the veto by March 3. Obama rejected the bill hours after it was sent to the White House. Republicans passed the bill to increase pressure on Obama to approve the pipeline, a move the president said would bypass a State Department process that will determine whether the project is in the U.S. national interest. "Through thi...

Take a sneak peek at the geeky gadgets and games that made their debut at the 2015 Toy Fair February 24, 2015 | | The American International Toy Fair is the stuff of dreams—both childhood and adult. All the newest toys, including magnetic sand, remote-controlled pterodactyls, stuffed-animal Grumpy Cats and endless construction sets, are not only on display throughout three massive floors—they’re unboxed. With wide eyes, scoured the aisles in New York City’s Javits Convention Center this February for the standout science and technology toys of 2015. Here are our favorite six: >>View Slideshow

As soon as we are able to understand that others can have opinions of their own—and might not share our opinion of our killer dance moves—we lose our performance mojo. Picture two birthday parties: one for 4 year olds, and one for 14 year olds. The former conjures kids bellowing “Happy Birthday” and putting their left feet in during the “Hokey Pokey”; the second conjures slump-shouldered teens huddled in corners furtively glancing at each other—even as loud music blares in the background. Why the difference? suggests that the process of kids losing the joy of singing and dancing is intricately linked to a crucial development in their understanding of other people. In short, as soon as we are able to understand that others can have opinions of their own—and might not share our opinion of our killer dance moves—we lose our performance mojo. We tested the link between the ability to understand the minds of observers and willingness to perform with a test of one hundred fifty-nine childre...

A vast ring of dust may explain the star-generating nebula’s birth February 24, 2015 | | STAR CREATOR: The Orion Nebula, which has spawned thousands of stars, may owe its existence to massive stars that lived and died long before its birth. All stars are not created equal, nor are their creators. By far the best-known stellar nursery, the Orion Nebula, has spawned thousands of young stars, large and small. It glows so brightly the naked eye can see it, even though it is away. On a clear, dark, moonless night the cloud of gas and dust that makes up the Nebula looks like a fuzzy star south of the highly visible three-star belt of Orion, a constellation prominent tonight in all populated regions of the world. Now a new imaging technique has revealed that this great nebula is just a small part of an enormous ring of dust stretching across hundreds of light-years. The discovery hints at the nebula’s origins: radiation and explosions of massive stars at the ring's center may have blas...

Revenge is sweet when the target is perceived to be part of a group with the original perpetrator Feb 12, 2015 | | In the Hollywood movie version of revenge, our wronged hero justifiably vanquishes the villain. In real life, though, revenge is hardly ever so clear-cut. Aggrieved persons typically do not know, or cannot access, the specific individual who did them wrong. Instead a phenomenon occurs that psychologists call “displaced revenge,” where avengers target a proxy—someone akin to the original transgressor. A new study finds that displaced revenge is sweeter when the target seems to belong to the same group as the wrongdoer. The study explored entitativity, which is a measure of how closely people are associated with one another. A random crowd at a bus stop is loosely entitative. Sports team members—allied for a common cause and wearing the same jersey—are highly entitative. The study's authors ran three experiments that compared displaced revenge against low- and high-en...