Wendy Science

Innovation and discovery as chronicled in past issues of Mar 17, 2015 | | AERODYNAMIC PROTOTYPE: A streamlined road and race car from A.L.F.A. (later Alfa Romeo), 1915 . Note how far back the steering wheel is. More In This Article April 1965 An Economic Model “Further development of input-output analysis and the realization of its potentialities for informed and rational decision-making at all levels of economic life call for detailed and more up-to-date tables. Comparison of the 1947 and 1958 input-output tables for the U.S. economy indicates significant changes in the input-output coefficients arising from technological innovation. Work has now begun on the preparation of an input-output table for the U.S. economy based on the data from the census of manufactures for 1963.—Wassily W. Leontief” . Heroin Antidote “Vincent P. Dole of the Rockefeller Institute has reported promising results from experiments with a drug that simultaneously meets the physiological need of the a...

Neuroscientists thought memories were stored in the synapses connecting the brain’s neurons but they may reside in the neurons themselves. If supported, the work could have major implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Along with new findings in gray matter, a new telescopic array in New Mexico has found what might be : faint, incredibly diffuse galaxies hidden in the Coma galaxy cluster. Astronomers say that the “galactic ghosts” offer a good opportunity to study dark matter, which must be holding the galaxies together. Another kind of “dark matter,” dark-colored fur, from dangerous UV rays. Biologists had previously noticed the trend toward dark coloring on birds and mammals in warmer climes, and now flowers have given them a hint as to why. Also in sultry locales, a broad study of the world’s languages revealed that tonal tongues like Mandarin Chinese and Cherokee, which use different pitches to give words new meanings, . The effect rings true for ope...

Why the U.S. needs to establish a DARPA of pedagogy Mar 17, 2015 | | In a recent study sponsored by the Business Roundtable and the nonprofit group Change the Equation, 97 percent of the CEOs of major American companies identified a lack of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills among the national workforce as a problem for their businesses. Over the next five years these firms will need to hire approximately one million new employees with these skills and more than 600,000 with applied science backgrounds. The nation has been in this situation before. In 1944 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned Vannevar Bush, director of the wartime U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, to create a plan for sustaining the momentum of scientific achievement that had occurred during World War II, in part by responding to a looming skills shortage—the result of the large number of potential students who had been drafted into the military. One of the biggest i...

Ordinary tampons can detect sewage pollution, a new study shows. Testing for from leaky pipes or illegal drains can be expensive and time-consuming. For example, in 2007, contractors repeatedly poured dye down the toilets at Milwaukee's Miller Park stadium to track down one misconnected pipe. But deploying tampons in streams and stormwater systems offers several advantages over these traditional methods, the research suggests. "It's cheap, it's easy and it does the detective work," said study co-author David Lerner, a professor of at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. The findings are published March 30 in the . Finding sewer scofflaws usually means doing the tedious work of narrowing down the source of the pollution through dye tests, video camera inspections or repeated water sampling. Some people have even trained dogs to sniff out human waste. [ ] But study author Dave Chandler, the Sheffield graduate student who came up with the tampon te...

People smoke less after smelling cigarettes paired with rotten odors overnight Feb 12, 2015 | | Many decades of research have shown that people cannot learn new information during sleep and then retrieve it once awake. Yet a growing body of work finds that unconscious associations made during sleep can affect waking behaviors. One new study found that pairing the smell of cigarettes with unpleasant odors made people smoke less during the following week. Neurobiologist Anat Arzi and her colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, recruited 66 smokers who wanted to quit and asked them to keep a smoking journal for a week before and a week after spending one night in the laboratory. Some subjects spent the night hooked up to devices that measured breathing and brain activity while they received puffs of the smell of smoked cigarettes followed by puffs of the odor of rotten eggs or decaying fish through a face mask. Other subjects underwent the same odor training ...

Even if you live far away what you buy can help shape the future of the Brazilian rainforest March 30, 2015 | | Even if you live thousands of miles away, you can help prevent deforestation in the tropical rainforests of the Amazon and elsewhere by making smart consumer choices. Dear EarthTalk : What can I do to help prevent deforestation in the Amazon even if I don’t live in the region? The fact that our climate, our air and our water know no national borders means that the forests are our mutual responsibility. We all depend on their services and we all play a part in causing deforestation even if we live far away geographically. Also, deforestation is occurring everywhere on the planet, not just the in the Amazon rainforest, so doing your part locally could help retain tree cover and improve air quality in your region. Most if not all deforestation is ultimately driven by our consumption, so avoiding products and companies responsible for deforestation is the logical first step...

Pillows, bedding and tossing and turning all influence what you inhale while fast asleep Mar 17, 2015 | | If the average American lives to be 78 years old, roughly a third of those years are spent lying on a mattress. Brandon Boor, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, studies air pollutants in the sleep microenvironment. In his most recent study, detailed in the journal , Boor covered a twin mattress with 225-thread-count sheets and seeded the bed with artificial dust as a proxy for the microorganisms, fungal spores and skin cells that routinely collect there. Volunteers dressed in clean suits then sat and spun around on the bed—all inside a sealed chamber—while instruments measured the particles that were kicked up and could be inhaled by the subjects. The concentrations are minute, measured in parts per million, but could affect us because we spend eight hours every day in “uncustomary proximity” to bedding and mattresses. The time spent under roofs in general ha...

Mexico has pledged to unilaterally peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2026 in a detailed climate change plan that is the first of its kind among developing nations. The target unveiled Friday, which also calls for cutting carbon 22 percent below business-as-usual levels by 2030, will become Mexico's official contribution to a global climate change accord. That agreement is expected to be signed in Paris in December and include, for the first time ever, carbon-cutting measures from developed and developing nations alike. The White House praised the Mexican government for "setting an example for the rest of the world" with its climate plan. "In particular, Mexico's target to peak its emissions by 2026 and drive them down thereafter is a landmark step in the global transition to a low-carbon economy," the White House said in a statement. "We hope that Mexico's actions will encourage other economies to submit [plans] that are ambitious, timely, transp...

THIS IS A PREVIEW. to access the full article.Already purchased this issue? When Mick Jagger first sang “what a drag it is getting old,” he was 23 years old. Now at 71, he is still a veritable Jumpin' Jack Flash on stage. Jagger seems to have found the secret to staying physically fit in his advancing years, but getting old can be a drag on the psyche. Many older adults fear memory loss and worry they are headed down the road to dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease. Every time they forget their keys, leave a door unlocked or fail to remember a name, they are reminded of this nagging concern. In most cases, however, such annoying incidents are part of normal age-related memory loss, not a sign of impending dementia. Although lots of older adults think such a decline is inevitable, there is good news for many of them. Researchers have developed an array of activities for exercising our minds and bodies that can help shore up memory in the normal aging brain. THIS IS A PREVIE...

Self-control is not just a puritanical virtue. It is a key psychological trait that breeds success at work and play—and in overcoming life's hardships By THIS IS A PREVIEW. or to access the full article.Already a subscriber or purchased this issue? The ability to regulate our impulses and desires is indispensable to success in living and working with others. People with good control over their thought processes, emotions and behaviors not only flourish in school and in their jobs but are also healthier, wealthier and more popular. And they have better intimate relationships (as their partners confirm) and are more trusted by others. What is more, they are less likely to go astray by getting arrested, becoming addicted to drugs or experiencing unplanned pregnancies. They even live longer. Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho summed up these benefits in one of his novels: “If you conquer yourself, then you will conquer the world.” Self-control is another name for changing ourselves—and ...

“Firewalls” of particles may border black holes, confounding both general relativity and quantum mechanics By THIS IS A PREVIEW. or to access the full article.Already a subscriber or purchased this issue? Falling into a black hole was never going to be fun. As soon as physicists realized that black holes exist, we knew that getting too close to one spelled certain death. But we used to think that an astronaut falling past the point of no return—the so-called event horizon—would not feel anything special. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, no signposts would mark the spot where the chance of escape dropped to zero. Anyone journeying past the horizon would just seem to fall down, down, down into a pit of blackness. Recently, however, my colleagues and I have recast that picture in light of some new information about the effects of quantum mechanics on black holes. It now seems that our astronaut would have an experience very different from Albert Einstein's...

The program will not repeat past mistakes, officials vow, and will launch as planned in 2018 March 30, 2015 | | A telescope project that has become notorious for its ballooning cost and repeated delays has lately been operating on schedule and within budget, NASA officials told Congress last week. One of the most ambitious and powerful observatories ever built, the $8.8-billion (JWST) is on track to launch in 2018, said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor hired to , has lately been troubleshooting a problem with the “cryocooler” meant to stop heat from interfering with the telescope’s sensitive infrared camera, which requires frigid temperatures to see such long wavelengths. The issue raised fears in Congress that the observatory would be delayed, or worse—that it might not work, just as its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, failed to operate properly at first and had to be repaired by shuttle as...

The Most Magnificent Thing is hands-down my favorite book of 2014, and I am so grateful to Alyson Beecher for urging me to read it. Thanks, Alyson! Oh, how I wish this book had been eligible for the Caldecott. But alas, its uber-talented author-illustrator resides in Canada. Why do I love The Most Magnificent Thing so much? Because it deftly introduces young readers to the trials and triumphs of the creative process. The unnamed main character decides to design and build something special for her very best friend, her dog. “ She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work. All she has to do is make it, and she makes things all the time. Easy-peasy!" So she "tinkers and hammers and measures," she "smoothes and wrenches and fiddles," she "twists and tweaks and fastens." But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and after several failures, she decides to quit. But later, she comes back to her project with renewed enth...

CANCER TREATMENT IN SENIORS Never Too Old for Chemo,” by Claudia Wallis [The Science of Health], a welcome and long overdue antidote to the conventional wisdom that it is best for sick old people to bow out quickly, gracefully and inexpensively. (You bet I'll opt for aggressive treatment if I get cancer when I'm 100!) Yet I'm uneasy about considering such factors as “social support” in determining which elderly patients should be eligible for chemotherapy. Doing so risks discriminating against patients who lack families—or whose families would prefer that their old folk be “allowed” to die even if they want to live. FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN I would say that deciding whether to opt in to, or out of, aggressive therapies such as chemotherapy to treat cancer would greatly depend on what type of malignancy a person has. Wallis's father-in-law, whom she describes as deciding against treatment, had what most people would consider a “certain death sentence”: advanced, metastatic...

A U.S. plan will be submitted early this week but most governments will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on a global climate deal due in December March 29, 2015 | * About 30 nations to meet March 31 climate deadline * Mexico is first emerging economy to submit plan By Alister Doyle and Valerie Volcovici OSLO/WASHINGTON, March 29 - The United States will submit plans for slowing global warming to the United Nations early this week but most governments will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on a global climate deal due in December. The U.S. submission, on Monday or Tuesday according to a White House official, adds to national strategies beyond 2020 already presented by the 28-nation European Union, Mexico, Switzerland and Norway. Together, they account for about a third of world greenhouse emissions. But other emitters such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, Canada and Australia say they are waiting until closer to a Paris summit in December, m...

"Stephen Hawking" and "Brian Cox" will be trademark names very soon. So if you have plans to market t-shirts and other products with these people's names, watch out! Maybe this will get rid of some of the tacky stuff that I've seen associated to them, especially Hawking. But then again, who knows, they may turn around and produce their own tacky merchandise. Zz.

It is fascinating to read about the stuff behind the scene involving the negotiations between the United States and Iran regarding Iran's nuclear program. And in the middle of all this are two scientists/engineers out of MIT with nuclear science background. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s, Ernest J. Moniz was an up-and-coming nuclear scientist in search of tenure, and Ali Akbar Salehi, a brilliant Iranian graduate student, was finishing a dissertation on fast-neutron reactors. The two did not know each other, but they followed similar paths once they left the campus: Mr. Moniz went on to become one of the nation’s most respected nuclear physicists and is now President Obama’s energy secretary. Mr. Salehi, who was part of the last wave of Iranians to conduct nuclear studies at America’s elite universities, returned to an Iran in revolution and rose to oversee the country’s nuclear program. You may read more about it in the article. And I definitely agr...

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The finding could mean recollections are more enduring than expected and disrupt plans for PTSD treatments Mar 17, 2015 | | As intangible as they may seem, memories have a firm biological basis. According to textbook neuroscience, they form when neighboring brain cells send chemical communications across the synapses, or junctions, that connect them. Each time a memory is recalled, the connection is reactivated and strengthened. The idea that synapses store memories has dominated neuroscience for more than a century, but a new study by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, may fundamentally upend it: instead memories may reside brain cells. If supported, the work could have major implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition marked by painfully vivid and intrusive memories. More than a decade ago scientists began investigating the drug propranolol for the treatment of PTSD. Propranolol was thought to prevent memories from form...

The rise of senior citizens may have played a big role in the success of our species By THIS IS A PREVIEW. to access the full article.Already purchased this issue? During the summer of 1963, when i was six years old, my family traveled from our home in Philadelphia to Los Angeles to visit my maternal relatives. I already knew my grandmother well: she helped my mother care for my twin brothers, who were only 18 months my junior, and me. When she was not with us, my grandmother lived with her mother, whom I met that summer for the first time. I come from a long-lived family. My grandmother was born in 1895 and her mother in the 1860s; both lived almost 100 years. We stayed with the two matriarchs for several weeks. Through their stories, I learned about my roots and where I belonged in a social network spanning four generations. Their reminiscences personally connected me to life at the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era and to the challenges my ancestors faced and the wa...

Books and recommendations from Mar 17, 2015 | Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and Land Yale University Press, 2015 ($35) Van Dokkum is an astronomer with a passion for dragonflies. When he is not imaging distant objects in the cosmos using some of the world's most powerful telescopes, he produces close-up photographs of one of the universe's smaller inhabitants: the dragonfly. In this large-format book, van Dokkum captures the exquisite colors and varied features of the insects, portraying the creatures' full life cycle, from the time a larval “nymph” metamorphoses into an adult dragonfly through mating and eventually death at the hands of bird predators, spider webs, cold weather or other mishaps. Captions and commentary fill out the pictures, tracing the short but curious lives of dragonflies. MORE TO EXPLORE For more recommendations and to watch a video of dragonfly metamorphosis, go to

Books and recommendations from Mar 17, 2015 | Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and Land Yale University Press, 2015 ($35) Van Dokkum is an astronomer with a passion for dragonflies. When he is not imaging distant objects in the cosmos using some of the world's most powerful telescopes, he produces close-up photographs of one of the universe's smaller inhabitants: the dragonfly. In this large-format book, van Dokkum captures the exquisite colors and varied features of the insects, portraying the creatures' full life cycle, from the time a larval “nymph” metamorphoses into an adult dragonfly through mating and eventually death at the hands of bird predators, spider webs, cold weather or other mishaps. Captions and commentary fill out the pictures, tracing the short but curious lives of dragonflies. MORE TO EXPLORE For more recommendations and to watch a video of dragonfly metamorphosis, go to

The rise of senior citizens may have played a big role in the success of our species By THIS IS A PREVIEW. to access the full article.Already purchased this issue? During the summer of 1963, when i was six years old, my family traveled from our home in Philadelphia to Los Angeles to visit my maternal relatives. I already knew my grandmother well: she helped my mother care for my twin brothers, who were only 18 months my junior, and me. When she was not with us, my grandmother lived with her mother, whom I met that summer for the first time. I come from a long-lived family. My grandmother was born in 1895 and her mother in the 1860s; both lived almost 100 years. We stayed with the two matriarchs for several weeks. Through their stories, I learned about my roots and where I belonged in a social network spanning four generations. Their reminiscences personally connected me to life at the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era and to the challenges my ancestors faced and the wa...

By Tom Käckenhoff DUESSELDORF, Germany, March 27 (Reuters) - German authorities found torn-up sick notes showing that the pilot who crashed a plane into the French Alps was suffering from an illness that should have grounded him on the day of the tragedy, which he apparently hid from the airline. French prosecutors believe Andreas Lubitz, 27, locked himself alone in the cockpit of the Germanwings Airbus A320 on Tuesday and deliberately steered it into a mountain, killing all 150 people on board. "Documents with medical contents were confiscated that point towards an existing illness and corresponding treatment by doctors," said the prosecutors' office in Duesseldorf, where the co-pilot lived and where the doomed flight from Barcelona was heading. "The fact there are sick notes saying he was unable to work, among other things, that were found torn up, which were recent and even from the day of the crime, support the assumption based on the preliminary examination that...

The airliner will introduce new rules requiring two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times after one of the pilots at its Germanwings unit crashed a plane in the French Alps March 27, 2015 | BERLIN, March 27 (Reuters) - Lufthansa said it will introduce new rules requiring two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times after one of the pilots at its Germanwings unit crashed a plane in the French Alps. Prosecutors believe Andreas Lubitz, 27, locked himself alone in the cockpit of the Airbus A320 on Tuesday and deliberately steered it into a mountain, killing all 150 people on board. Lufthansa had said on Thursday that it did not see any reason to hastily change its procedures, but many other airlines swiftly changed their own rules. "The passenger airlines of the Lufthansa Group will put this new rule into place as soon as possible in agreement with the relevant authorities," Lufthansa said in a statement on Friday. The Lufthansa Group also includes Germanwings,...

Blood is extracted from an umbilical cord. (Blood and Tissue Bank/Flickr) Whenever one examines any area of scientific inquiry, there are two important things to understand: where the science is today, and where it may lead us in the future. To examine only the former is to engage in half an inquiry and create the perception that things in this particular area have reached a dead end or are in some way, static. That is the missing piece in a story published by on December 5 entitled because it focused on the present state of therapies alone. “Vast Majority of Life-Saving Cord Blood Sits ” would be a far more apt headline for a proper examination of the opportunities being created by extensive research already ongoing in this promising area of medicine. It is human nature to be disappointed when scientific progress appears slow, particularly when the goal is saving lives or dramatically improving the quality of life. As a society, we have grown accustomed to the incredible pace of adv...

How a one-year orbital mission to the ISS advances a deep-space journey to Mars March 27, 2015 | | The Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft is seen after having rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, March 25, 2015. SA Forum This week NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a yearlong mission onboard the orbital laboratory, where they will conduct research to test how the human body endures a long-duration stay in space. Their mission is part of the work NASA is presently doing on the ISS to develop and test a whole host of long-duration mission capabilities and health-risk mitigations that are moving us forward toward a future Mars mission. Sustained risk reduction research and testing on the ISS provides the most viable and best path to sending astronauts to the Red Planet. Contrary to the opinion the editors of expressed in their commentary, " ,...

ESBJERG, Denmark—Flying 56 miles west from this port, you are greeted by a 10-story, yellow, boxlike platform rising out of the North Sea. It is called SylWin1, the connection to Europe's electric grid from one of the largest power plants ever built offshore. Beyond it, arrayed over 27 acres of ocean, are the 80 Siemens 3.6-megawatt turbines of the Dan Tysk wind farm. For Europeans, and perhaps for some Americans, this may be their energy future. The unobstructed winds at sea here are capable of spinning up enough power to electrify around 1 million German households. It's an interesting sight to behold, not least because of the technical and engineering prowess required to overcome an often hostile North Sea environment. Yet in five years' time, Dan Tysk might be outdated—if Siemens, MRI-Vestas, Dong Energy and other big corporate players in the offshore wind power industry are to be believed. Turbines are going to grow bigger, to the 6-to-8-MW range, while the transformer...

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.

’s Dina Maron talks with Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general for health security at the World Health Organization, about the current Ebola outbreak, the threat of sexual transmission and the hope for a vaccine. They were both at an Institute of Medicine Forum on Microbial Threats held at the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, concentrating on Ebola in West Africa.