Wendy Science

The famed neurologist–author found uniqueness in every patient and savored the miracle of existence, whether it be found in squirrel monkeys or people By | | Oliver Sacks has left the world. The British-born neurologist-cum-writer who called New York City his home for the past half century at his Greenwich Village apartment at the age of 82. Sacks practiced and revived an almost extinct form of medicine that consisted of literary case studies focusing on the singular neurological patient hidden underneath the dry diagnostic labels of autism, ocular cancer, amnesia, Tourette’s syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, achromatism, blindness and so on. Sacks excelled at bringing the individual to life, describing with a riot of coruscated imagery and an exuberance of words what it was to be so afflicted and how it affected the patient’s life. Through his many books, and the movies and documentaries they inspired, Sacks brought the mind–brain connection to the reading public. He educating those ...

Jimmy Carter talks about his public health efforts to eradicate guinea worm and improve global mental health and women's health. Plus, magazine collector Steven Lomazow brings part of his collection to the 170th birthday party.  

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano and Vice President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ali Akhbar Salehi at the signing of a roadmap for the clarification of past and present issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna. Coburg Palace, Vienna, Austria, 14 July 2015. As a scientist I am acutely aware of the perils associated with predicting the future. On a professional level, like many of my colleagues, I write grant proposals describing my planned research over the coming three to five years.  However, even as I write, I know that the plans are in part fiction. As new and unexpected experimental or theoretical discoveries are made, my research focus changes in response. The world of science evolves at a lightning pace. Thus, as I often tell my students, no active researcher is likely to accurately know what they will be working on three years from now. What is true for science is certainly also true for world affairs, and in particular when it comes to national security. To...

The prolific author–neurologist gave the world empathetic insights into disorders of the brain while also inspiring films, plays, an opera and likely many careers in medicine and brain science By | | “I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms and extreme immoderation in all my passions,” wrote Oliver Sacks six months ago in a in which he told the world that he was dying of cancer. And although he admitted to feeling an incipient sense of detachment from the transient events of the day, the renowned neurologist and peerless chronicler of the quirks and intricacies of the human brain said he was doubling down on life: “I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.” And that’s exactly what Sacks, 82, did before dying August 30 from melanoma that had spread to his liver. In a final flurry he completed a revelatory autobiography, , published to rhapsodic reviews in May; wrote a children’s book about the periodical table of elements (chemistry rank...

Luiz Rocha swims through a mixed school of triggerfish, chromis, and jacks off the coast of Ascension Island. “Let the games begin,” says, as we each heft 40-plus pounds of gear onto our shoulders and begin the long trudge over volcanic boulders and through deep sand, zig-zagging around enormous craters left by nesting sea turtles during their latest bout of egg-laying. Rocha, a curator of ichthyology at the , and his Brazilian collaborators, and , have waited 20 years for this moment. Although they have all studied from afar and have published several papers about this 88-square-kilometer volcanic rock’s place in Atlantic Ocean biogeography, they’ve never actually set foot on its shores. Now, for the first time, they’re about to plunge into the clear, blue water of Ascension’s English Bay to witness this elegant natural experiment for themselves. The team prepares for a beach-entry shore dive on the north coast of Ascension. (Photo by Steven Bedard) On this, their first day ...

New study shows the sun may have snatched Sedna, Biden and other objects away from a neighbor By | | Sedna () and 2012 VP 113 () never come close to the orbits of the four giant planets () or even to Pluto's home in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt (). At the time of Sedna's discovery in 2003, it was the farthest body ever seen in our planetary club. Its peculiar path—it never ventures near the giant planets—suggested an equally peculiar history. How did it get there? The sun may have snatched Sedna away from another star, new computer simulations show. A clue to Sedna's past came in 2012, when observers spotted a second and even smaller object with a similarly elongated and remote orbit. Astronomers Lucie Jílková and Simon Portegies Zwart of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and their colleagues decided to investigate whether interstellar robbery could produce the orbits of both Sedna and its sidekick, 2012 VP 113 . “We show that it's possible,” Jílková says. Moreove...

Scientific papers with shorter titles receive more citations than those with long-winded headings By | | When it comes to communicating ideas, brevity is all the rage. which allows just 140 characters to speak your piece. Now scientists, it seems, could learn a lesson from the power of the tweet. Because a new study shows that scientific papers with shorter titles receive more citations. The article, tidily entitled ‘The advantage of short paper titles,’ is in the Royal Society journal . [Adrian Letchford, Helen Susannah Moat, Tobias Preis, ] . And the success of individual articles is often determined by how frequently those papers are referenced in other publications. But what makes a paper popular? Previous studies of the length of an article’s title have yielded mixed findings, perhaps due to relatively small sample sizes. So researchers decided to cast a wider net. Fishing in an academic database called Scopus, they pulled out the most highly cited 20,000 papers for each of ...

What do you do when you've flown 3 billion miles through interplanetary space? You keep going. Although NASA's has only just begun to transmit the bulk of the from its with the Pluto-Charon system (at an excruciatingly slow 2 kilobits per second) the spacecraft team has been hard at work on a critical, and time-sensitive, decision. It had long been hoped that New Horizons would be able to deploy its instruments to study further objects in the Kuiper belt. But back in early 2014 it wasn't clear that astronomers and planetary scientists were going to be able to find any suitable candidates within the range of trajectories that the mission - with its limited on-board fuel resources - could reasonably adjust to. Despite searching with Earth-bound telescopes it was clear that our understanding of the number of objects smaller than Pluto (but still large enough to study) was incomplete, as candidates were in short supply. Using the in what was a bit of a last-ditch attemp...

The standardized test undergoes its first redesign in more than a decade By | | “Fortune favors the prepared mind,” as Louis Pasteur once said. So as school revs up this month, so do SAT prep classes. Students might be surprised, however, at the amount of time dedicated to visual literacy skills. The increased focus on graphics is designed to prepare an estimated 1.6 million college-bound pupils for the first redesign of the standardized college admissions test in more than a decade. Along with other updates, test takers of the March 2016 exam will encounter graphics not only in the math section as in past years but also in the reading and writing and language portions. Students will be asked to interpret information presented in tables, charts and graphs and to correct text so it accurately describes data found in accompanying figures. Mounting evidence indicates that such literacy is a key skill for success in college, careers and daily life in general. In an increasingly data-ric...

The Road to Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s “The Foundation of General Relativity” Princeton University Press, 2015 (($35)) Any devotee of Einstein will relish the chance to parse this annotated facsimile of the physicist's original manuscript on general relativity. The authors provide a full English translation and painstakingly explain, page by page, Einstein's text and equations, which lay out his theory and the path he took to derive it. Their cogent descriptions and the accompanying illustrations and documents open a fascinating window onto Einstein's otherwise inaccessible opus. see also:

Start your weekend with some data-driven eye candy. Artists Turn Tectonic Activity Into Surprisingly Soothing Data Visualizations with Bloom . "The horizontal position of each of the blooms is based on time, while its vertical position is based on the magnitude of the rate of change of motion detected at the seismograph. Large tectonic tremors create big blooms, small jitters are tiny buds."  Stephen Hawking made headlines yet again when he gave a talk this week at a Nordita ( Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics ) conference ( held at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Switzerland to better accommodate his accessibility needs) exploring his black hole information paradox, announcing that he had solved the mystery. Eureka ! Specifically, he has figured out a possible mechanism for how information might eventually escape ( sort of ) a black hole. (The Backreaction blog was there live-tweeting the discussion.) He's building on prior work positing that the infor...

Kathleeen Cullen jokes that when she was studying electrical engineering at Brown University during the 1980s, she heard a rumor that neurons use electricity. That prompted her to take a course on the brain that convinced her to major in neuroscience as well as electrical engineering. Cullen arrived at the University of Chicago—and later at McGill for a postdoc—at a time that researchers were starting to explore how neurons in the brain react to inputs from the senses when making voluntary movements. Many earlier observations were conducted by looking at the activity of the cells in stationary animals. In the ensuing years, Cullen’s work as a has specialized in studying the vestibular system that allows us to maintain our balance. Cullen has retained a fasciation with the vestibular system because of its elegant simplicity. Vestibular neurons both receive sensory input and send commands to peripheral nerves to initiate movement. In recent weeks, Cullen and colleagues online  in t...

Reviews and recommendations from | On the Move: A Life Knopf, 2015 ($27.95) In his new book, neurologist and bestselling author Sacks takes readers on a journey across decades and continents. His scientific proclivities are in evidence throughout—in his childhood chemistry experiments, his studies of the brain and even his dabbling in psychoactive drugs. But it is the stories of human triumphs and losses, whether intimate romantic encounters or the deaths of great friends, that will likely remain with his readers longest. The Small Big: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence Grand Central Publishing, 2015 ($28.00) Knopf, 2015 ($27.95) How can we persuade people to donate to charity, recycle or obey the law? Martin, Goldstein and Cialdini give answers that are subtler than one might think. In their entertaining new book, the authors break down the persuasion literature into 52 mini chapters, offering surprisingly simple techniques to help us influence our peers. Thinking in Number...

It’s a bad day both for Albert Einstein and for hackers. The most rigorous test of quantum theory ever carried out has confirmed that the ‘spooky action at a distance’ that the German physicist famously hated — in which manipulating one object instantaneously seems to affect another, far away one — is an inherent part of the quantum world. The experiment, performed in the Netherlands, could be the final nail in the coffin for models of the atomic world that are more intuitive than standard quantum mechanics, say some physicists. It could also enable quantum engineers to develop a new suite of ultrasecure cryptographic devices. “From a fundamental point of view, this is truly history-making,” says Nicolas Gisin, a quantum physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Einstein’s annoyance This idea galled Einstein because it seemed that this ghostly influence would be transmitted instantaneously between even vastly separated but entangled particles — implying that it could co...

’s first issue appeared exactly 170 years ago today. The four-page, black and white broadsheet was published every Thursday morning, with the promise to serve as an advocate of industry and enterprise. Over the decades, from to Carl Sagan have filled its pages. On the evening of August 26, current and former staffers joined other influential science communicators at the publication’s new office in Lower Manhattan to celebrate a long legacy of science communication— is the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S. after all. The night featured an exhibit of memorabilia from company archives and personal holdings, as well as a short, verbal walk through the magazine’s history, delivered by Mariette DiChristina, the current editor-in-chief. Mariette DiChristina, current editor-in-chief Items on display included original copies of the publication from the 1800s, dummy issues from its major redesign in 1948, and copper printing plates that were once used to print issues. Cop...

The vast majority of U.S. kindergarten-age children are vaccinated against preventable diseases but sizable pockets of unprotected children still exist, posing a public health threat August 28, 2015 | By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - The vast majority of U.S. kindergarten-age children are vaccinated against preventable diseases but sizable pockets of unprotected children still exist, posing a public health threat, according to a government study. Only 1.7% of U.S. parents of kindergartners sought exemptions in 2014 from laws requiring children be vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published August 28 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Rates vary nationwide, however, with at least one state reporting over 6% of parents seeking exemptions, the study found. "Pockets of children who miss vaccinations exist in our communities and they leave these communities vulnerable to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease...

The new drug, Repatha (evolocumab), is approved for patients with hereditary forms of high cholesterol and those with cardiovascular disease August 28, 2015 | By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Amgen Inc's Repatha (evolocumab) drug for patients with hereditary forms of high cholesterol and those with cardiovascular disease. Last month the FDA approved a similar drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Sanofi SA. The drugs belong to a potent new class of injectable LDL-lowering drugs known as PCSK9 inhibitors. Repatha was approved to treat patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH) and patients with the rarer homozygous (HoFH) form of the disease. It was also approved for patients with cardiovascular disease including heart attack or stroke, who require additional cholesterol lowering. The scope of the approval was similar to the approval given to the Regeneron drug, Praluent (alirocumab), ...

The view from 1 New York Plaza We have a grand view of the bustling New York Harbor from our new offices high above Battery Park. It took us 170 years to get here, and we have made a few stops along the way. Our first office was described as “a little ‘7 by 9’ office” that founder Rufus Porter rented on 11 Spruce Street, in a building that appears on insurance maps but for which no photograph seems to exist. This building was probably five floors of light manufacturing, including, unfortunately, “the cellar, in which a large quantity of liquors were stored, and in which a man was employed with fire and kettles (a circumstance of which we were not aware) in the manufacture of spirituous bitters” [November 13, 1845]. On October 20 the whole building went up in flames. There is a four-week gap between issue number 8, on October 16 and issue number 9, on November 13, so I leave it up to the more nit-picky of you to determine if we have really been continuously published since August 28,...

The produce aisle goes undersea in a new approach to farming By | | In transparent plastic bubbles 20 feet beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, an experimental garden grows. The strawberries, basil, beans and tomatoes within these air-filled biospheres thrive in their submerged homes. Surrounding water provides the constant temperature and humidity elusive at most terrestrial farms, and freshwater trickles down the spheres' interiors after the seawater below evaporates and then condenses. These marine greenhouses, located off the coast of Italy, represent a foray into underwater farming by Ocean Reef Group, a diving and scuba gear company. Company president Sergio Gamberini chose to grow his crops hydroponically after noticing, during an early trial, that soil brought along stowaway insect pests. He hopes to introduce this gardening approach to coastal developing countries with arid lands. In fact, Gamberini has received requests for biospheres from nations ranging from...

Russia has developed an "anti-access" presence in the Arctic in the past year with a stronger military presence, a push for more territory, and nationalist rhetoric, a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes. While not focused entirely on climate change, the analysis offers a preview of ongoing geopolitical tensions — and legal issues — likely to be exacerbated by ice loss. It urges Arctic nations to negotiate a "declaration on military conduct" requiring nations to give a 21-day advance notice of major military exercises — which could prevent actions like the unannounced Russian Arctic military exercises this year involving more than 45,000 forces. NATO has reported that Russia has increasingly been turning off aircraft tracking devices when flying over Northern Europe, and the country has announced the reopening of dozens of previously closed military bases in the Arctic. "The Arctic is beginning to become militarized and there...