Wendy Science

Everyone with HIV should be given antiretroviral drugs as soon as possible after diagnosis, meaning 37 million people worldwide should be on treatment, the WHO said September 30, 2015 | By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Everyone with HIV should be given antiretroviral drugs as soon as possible after diagnosis, meaning 37 million people worldwide should be on treatment, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. Recent clinical trials have confirmed that early drug use extends the lives of those with HIV and cuts the risk of disease transmission to partners, the WHO said in a statement setting out the new goal for its 194 member states. Under previous WHO guidelines, which limited treatment to those whose immune cell counts had fallen below a certain threshold, 28 million people were deemed eligible for antiretroviral therapy (ART). All people at "substantial" risk of contracting HIV should also be given preventive ART, not just men who have sex with ...

From jellyfish to ants, all life is beautiful in the eyes of Elizabeth Blackburn, co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She talks about her fascination with living things and the discovery of telomerase and telomeres. Recorded at the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and produced with support from Mars, Inc.

From jellyfish to ants, all life is beautiful in the eyes of Elizabeth Blackburn, co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. She talks about her fascination with living things and the discovery of telomerase and telomeres. Recorded at the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and produced with support from Mars, Incorporated.

The Sentinel space telescope (artist's impression), in development by a private foundation, has lost NASA's support. NASA has cut ties with a   that intends to launch an asteroid-survey mission. The decision clouds the prospects of the only large-scale space telescope being developed to seek space objects that have the potential to wreak havoc on Earth. NASA said Tuesday that it has ended its commitment to provide analytical and data-downlink support to Sentinel, a US$450-million satellite designed to spot 90% of near-Earth objects (NEOs) larger than 140 metres. NASA said the decision was made because the project has missed its development deadlines, and the money held in reserve for Sentinel operations is needed elsewhere.  The Sentinel team vows to continue, but it is unclear whether the project can overcome perennial cash-flow problems and NASA’s vote of no confidence. Money for the spacecraft’s development was supposed to come from private donors, but fund-raising...

When the digital currency Bitcoin came to life in January 2009, it was noticed by almost no one apart from the handful of programmers who followed cryptography discussion groups. Its origins were shadowy: it had been conceived the previous year by a still-mysterious person or group known only by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. And its purpose seemed quixotic:  , in which strong encryption algorithms were exploited in a new way to secure transactions. Users' identities would be shielded by pseudonyms. Records would be completely decentralized. And no one would be in charge—not governments, not banks, not even Nakamoto. Yet the idea caught on. Today, there are some 14.6 million Bitcoin units in circulation. Called bitcoins with a lowercase 'b', they have a collective market value of around US$3.4 billion. Some of this growth is attributable to criminals taking advantage of the anonymity for drug trafficking and worse. But the system is also drawing interest from financial instit...

Countries have not pledged to cut enough to restrain global warming By | | The Paris climate talks are a little more than two months away and most of the world’s big carbon emitters have submitted their climate pledges. That’s the good news. The bad news is that despite many countries pledging to cut carbon emissions in the coming decades, the current commitments may not be enough to limit warming to the world’s agreed upon goal of 2°C (3.6°F). The pledges have been rolling in all year. On Monday, Brazil said it would cut emissions to 43 percent of 2005 levels in the next 15 years, stop illegal deforestation and reforest 30 million acres of land. Deforestation is a major source of Brazil’s carbon emissions. The pledge puts Brazil in the company of 82 other countries — including the U.S., China, and other large carbon polluters in the European Union — that have submitted their climate pledges to the United Nations. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed emissions cuts, the ...

Tesla Motors Inc. frontman Elon Musk unveiled the company’s Model X sport utility vehicle in California last night. The midsized crossover and newest option in the electric automaker’s lineup has several new selling points—a HEPA filter, blazing acceleration, agile “falcon wing” doors, a low center of gravity that reduces rollover risk, a panoramic windshield and the highest crash safety rating federal regulators can give—as well as an old marketing problem: price. The high-end Model X, the Signature version, which Musk rolled out last night, is expected to cost between $132,000 and $144,000, well outside most buyers’ range. The company has said it will eventually produce a less-expensive version. Tesla will reveal the Model 3, the $35,000 baseline sedan, in March 2016, at which point customers will be able to pre-order the cars, Musk announced earlier this month. Production on the Model 3 will begin in 2017, he said. “The mission of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of sustainable...

The toy company WowWee brings expensive university bots to store shelves By | | The robotic butlers and sentries of sci-fi fantasies already roam our planet, but you can't have them—not yet. The fate of most would-be home robots breaks in one of two ways: Bots such as Honda's Asimo, a bipedal assistant, exist only as demonstrations from multimillion-dollar research and development laboratories. Robots that consumers could purchase, such as the $1,600 Pepper companion robot, are unaffordable for most. Toy company WowWee aims to change all that when it delivers the first sub-$600 multifunction home-service robot. The freestanding, self-navigating Switchbot—part concierge, part security guard—will roll out in 2016. Hong Kong–based WowWee's success stems from bringing university research projects to life that might otherwise languish in the prototype stage. A licensing agreement with the Flow Control and Coordinated Robotics Labs at the University of California, San Diego, f...

Long-sought method could turn super-thin material into usuable computer components By and | | Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-shaped lattice, exhibits a range of superlative properties. Since it was discovered in 2003, it has been found to have exceptional strength, thermal conductivity and electric conductivity. The last property makes the material ideal for the tiny contacts in electronic circuits, but ideally it would also make up the components—particularly transistors—themselves. To do so, graphene would need to behave not just as a conductor but as a semiconductor, which is the key to the on–off switching operations performed by electronic components. Semiconductors are defined by their band gap: the energy required to excite an electron stuck in the valence band, where it cannot conduct electricity, to the conduction band, where it can. The band gap needs to be large enough so that there is a clear contrast between a transistor’s on and off ...

This week, we’ll wrap up our three-part series on toxic habits. Our third toxic habit? Call it overthinking, obsessing, brooding, or wallowing, or, call it the official term: rumination. In this episode of the Savvy Psychologist, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen offers 4 tips to stop the mental hamster wheel By | | Scientific American Quick & Dirty TipsScientific American  Rumination is thinking (and thinking and thinking) about something upsetting, but in a passive way, without actually taking action. Now, I bet you never thought you’d learn about taxonomy in a psychology podcast, but I promise I’ll connect the dots: animals like cows, deer, goats, and sheep belong to the suborder Ruminantia. These multi-stomached ruminants regurgitate their partially digested food and chew it again.   Likewise, ruminators chew on their thoughts, as it were, over and over and over again. Very different, but essentially the same concept. How’s that for a mental image? What’s So Bad About Ruminat...

Violence is a big problem in modern society and in cities in particular. Homicides were rampant in my hometown of Cali, Colombia, when I became mayor in 1992. Few people saw murder as a pressing health problem, but I did—probably because I had earned a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. I decided to apply the statistical methods used by public health experts to identify the sources of homicide and to reveal social and policy changes that might make a difference. At the beginning of my first term, the people of Cali and all of Colombia generally believed, mistakenly, that little could be done because we Colombians were “genetically violent.” Other skeptics maintained that violent crime would not diminish unless profound changes were made on socioeconomic issues such as unemployment and educational levels. My administration and I proved all these people wrong. We developed an epidemiological database about the many societal factors that significantly raised t...

Courtesy of BRAND X PICTURES (MARS) Of all the personal data that cybercriminals can steal, your biometric information is the most unsettling. Purloined passwords, credit cards and even can be changed to guard against identify theft and fraud. Fingerprints, however, cannot. At least, not permanently. Perhaps the only silver lining to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s that criminals had stolen 5.6 million fingerprint files, up from the 1.1 million files originally reported missing, is that it would be extremely difficult to use such biometric data to commit fraud or theft. Movies and television shows often concoct identity-theft plots involving fingerprints discretely lifted from, say, a drinking glass and transferred to latex gloves. Misuse of stolen digital fingerprint files is hardly that straightforward and would involve cracking encryption codes, reverse-engineering data files and several other complicated procedures that are probably not worth the effort. The raid on O...

It’s good to learn something new every day. The Internet makes that easy, placing knowledge at our fingertips. Learning doesn’t require consulting experts. We can enlighten each other. crowdsources knowledge by asking everyone, as Michael Feldman does on the radio, I learn something from you; you learn something from me. With a slight tweak, this type of crowdsourcing can also be used to learn something that . Crowdsourcing for scientific discovery, known as “citizen science,” involves asking everyone, “Whad’Ya observe, experience, find or ponder?” Assemble contributions together in the appropriate way and voila! New knowledge. With a “more heads are better than one” approach, citizen science leads to discoveries that would not be possible with scientists working alone. To bring heads together, over 40 U.S. federal agencies have joined the . Some already make elaborate use of citizen science, like the U.S. Geological Survey relying on people who watch birds ( ), notice when flower...

Environmental engineer Kartik Chandran of Columbia University won a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on extracting nutrients and energy from wastewater and sewage. By | | “ itself traditionally has been viewed as something negative, it has been viewed as something that we need to get rid of.” Environmental engineer Kartik Chandran of Columbia University. On September 29 th he was named one of this year’s , often referred to as recipients of the “genius grants.” Where most people see sewage, Chandran sees a resource. “To me these are not just waste streams, there are enriched streams. These are enriched in nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, these are enriched in carbon, organic carbon. These are also enriched in energy. And so if you now start to think about these as enriched streams, these now contain resources that we could extract and recover and use. “Using alternate biological processes we can convert the carbon present in these waste streams to methane, and methane can b...

Cutting-edge gene-editing techniques have produced an unexpected byproduct — tiny pigs that a leading Chinese genomics institute will soon sell as pets. BGI in Shenzhen, the genomics institute that is famous for a  , originally created the micropigs as models for human disease, by  . On September 23, at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit in China, BGI revealed that it would start selling the pigs as pets. The animals weigh about 15 kilograms when mature, or about the same as a medium-sized dog. At the summit, the institute quoted a price tag of 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) for the micropigs, but that was just to "help us better evaluate the market”, says Yong Li, technical director of BGI’s animal-science platform. In future, customers will be offered pigs with different coat colours and patterns, which BGI says it can also set through gene editing. With  , the field's pioneers say that the application to pets was no big surprise. Some also caution against it....

Scientists and engineers remain skeptical of high pollution claims By | | Volkswagen’s ruse to circumvent U.S. auto emissions standards has left many wondering about the precise environmental impact of its cars, which emitted more pollutants than regulations allow. Although the extra pollution is impossible to quantify so soon, experts agree that although the amount is globally insignificant, it might add to Europe’s regional health concerns. On September 18 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that four Volkswagen vehicles from model years 2009 to 2015 had been with illegal software. They used a sophisticated algorithm that would make the cars run cleanly during emissions tests but then stop so the cars would get better fuel economy and driving ability. As such, the unrestricted vehicles released higher-than-acceptable emissions in everyday driving situations. The German automaker quickly recalled 482,000 VW and Audi brand cars in the U.S. alone, and later admitted t...

Nine US scientists and social scientists working on nano wires, stem-cells transplants and wastewater treatment were among the 24 winners By and | | Peidong Yang, a chemist who is building nanowires into commercial applications—such as devices that generate fuel from solar energy, or convert waste heat into electricity—is one of nine US scientists and social scientists to win a so-called ‘genius grant’ this year from the philanthropic MacArthur Foundation, based in Chicago, Illinois. The awards, announced on September 29, give $625,000 of “no-strings-attached” funding to creative and inspiring individuals in any field, paid out over five years. Yang, at the University of California, Berkeley, recently helped build a device that uses nanowires and bacteria to absorb solar energy and convert carbon dioxide and water into fuel. His nanowire research has also been used to make chemical sensors and optical switches. Other science and social science-related   of this year’s f...

The Department of Energy has awarded around a half-million dollars to New York, Maine, Rhode Island and Massachusetts state organizations to cooperate on scaling up the offshore wind industry in the region. Under the leadership of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the group will lay out a collaborative road map by the end of the year on how to build up the new industry. The project largely aims to reduce the cost of offshore wind projects, which has been a barrier to development, and establish a regional supply chain. Industry and state representatives learned about the federal grant at the first-ever offshore wind summit hosted by the White House yesterday. Offshore wind has struggled to take off in the United States. Europe, meanwhile, has more than 80 offshore wind farms with more than 10,000 megawatts of capacity. The White House summit marks a renewed effort to get the industry going in the United States, said various attendees. “There’s a...

Officials say the new cases are not related to the city’s summertime Legionnaires outbreak, the largest in the city’s history, which sickened 120 people in the South Bronx By and | | This electron micrograph depicts an amoeba, Hartmannella vermiformis (orange) as it entraps a Legionella pneumophila bacterium (green) with an extended pseudopod. More people in New York City are sick with Legionnaires’ disease in what appears to be a new cluster of cases, health officials say. So far, seven people who live or work in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx have been hospitalized recently with Legionnaires’ disease, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Officials were notified of these cases last week. The new cases are not related to the   that occurred in New York City over the summer, which was the largest in the city’s history, and sickened 120 people in the South Bronx. Officials traced that outbreak to a cooling tower at the Opera H...

Newton was wrong. Einstein was wrong. Black holes do not exist. The big bang never happened. Dark energy and dark matter are unsubstantiated conjectures. Stars are electrically charged plasma masses. Venus was once a comet. The massive Valles Marineris canyon on Mars was carved out in a few minutes by a giant electric arc sweeping across the Red Planet. The “thunderbolt” icons found in ancient art and petroglyphs are not the iconography of imagined gods but realistic representations of spectacular electrical activity in space. These are just a few of the things I learned at the Electric Universe conference (EU2015) in June in Phoenix. The Electric Universe community is a loose confederation of people who, according to the host organization's Web site (thunderbolts.info), believe that “a new way of seeing the physical universe is emerging. The new vantage point emphasizes the role of electricity in space and shows the negligible contribution of gravity in cosmic events.” This inclu...

The Department of Energy has awarded around a half-million dollars to New York, Maine, Rhode Island and Massachusetts state organizations to cooperate on scaling up the offshore wind industry in the region. Under the leadership of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the group will lay out a collaborative road map by the end of the year on how to build up the new industry. The project largely aims to reduce the cost of offshore wind projects, which has been a barrier to development, and establish a regional supply chain. Industry and state representatives learned about the federal grant at the first-ever offshore wind summit hosted by the White House yesterday. Offshore wind has struggled to take off in the United States. Europe, meanwhile, has more than 80 offshore wind farms with more than 10,000 megawatts of capacity. The White House summit marks a renewed effort to get the industry going in the United States, said various attendees. “There’s a...