Vol. 2, No. 19
THIS WEEK: Archaeologists find an ancient Maya wall calendar, Antarctica’s ice approaches a tipping point, chimps display signs of culture and Tom Siegfried charts the frontiers of bioferroelectrophysics.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Lessons from physics help reveal evidence for the body ferroelectric
Life is always defying the boundaries of biology, or at least of biology textbooks. You don’t have to look far to find instances where books from other fields become relevant. Flip open a physics book, say, and you might find some especially pertinent examples in the chapter on magnetism. . .
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Vol. 2, No. 18
THIS WEEK: A cricket with impressive acoustic range, a black hole’s multi-course meal, ancient Egyptians’ lucky star and Alexandra Witze on James Cameron’s obsession with the abyss.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Director’s exploration of the abyss goes deeper than Hollywood glitz
James Cameron has finally made it to The Abyss.
In the director’s 1989 movie of that name, Ed Harris endured one submersible malfunction after another on his way down to the ocean’s bottom. But at least when he got there, he found some friendly glowing aliens. Cameron saw nothing so exciting on March 25, when in real life he descended to the ocean’s deepest point, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 17
THIS WEEK: Billions of years of abuse for early Earth, antidepressant activity in yeast, mapping the G-spot, DNA reveals migration of ancient farmers from Mediterranean to Scandinavia and Rachel Ehrenberg on what makes memorable quotes memorable.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
Here’s looking at how the usual suspect film quotes go ahead and make your day
Google the phrase “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse” and you’ll get more than 300,000 hits. Uttered by mob boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather, it’s the second most memorable quote in movie history, as rated by the American Film Institute. Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you’ve probably heard the phrase and perhaps even said it. Why is that? What makes some movie quotes so memorable? . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 16
THIS WEEK: Move over DNA, here comes XNA; digital photography goes sci-fi; a deeper history for polar bears; no-show neutrinos; bees with jet lag and Laura Sanders on depression clues from rats.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: LAURA SANDERS | FRAME OF MIND
Rats avoiding mental workloads offer clues to lower motivation in depression
FSometimes, hard work can be measured in sweat. Weeding a garden, painting the house or hooking golf balls out of the woods to win the Masters can leave a person physically wrung out. . .
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Vol. 2, No. 15
THIS WEEK: Health secrets from spit, baboons tell words from nonwords, what a clean dust ring says about nearby planets, obesity during pregnancy linked to autism and Tom Siegfried on the hard math problem of describing nature.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Computers’ inability to find physical laws is a clue to math’s relationship to reality
For some people, all math problems are difficult.
But for computer scientists, most math problems are easy. The computer does all the work.
Sometimes, though, problems come along that even computers can’t handle. Even the most powerful supercomputers on the planet can gag on certain types of mathematical puzzles. . .
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Vol. 2, No. 14
THIS WEEK: Predicting who will choke under pressure; a well-plumed, meat-eating dino; more support for dark energy as cause of cosmic acceleration; brain stimulation for stroke patients; and Alexandra Witze’s column on the coming solar storms.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
When solar storms pummel Earth, there’s usually no need to panic
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the solar system.
The sun is just getting warmed up. That big thermonuclear ball is powering toward the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity, which should occur late next year. Solar storms are already starting to barrel in this direction, like those in February and March that lit up space weather warning systems across the planet . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 13
THIS WEEK: The science of 3-D TV, the oldest tunnel makers, why Vesta reminds scientists of a planet, a sinking feeling in Venice and Rachel Ehrenberg on how a leech scientist helped rabbis make a call on what’s kosher.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
When it comes to food, it’s kosher for science and religion to mix
From the forces behind devastating natural disasters to what’s best for women’s health, religion is frequently called upon to answer questions better left to science. But in a refreshing turnabout, some religious leaders are seeking advice from scientists. Three rabbinical experts from the Orthodox Union recently asked researchers from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for help with a problem: Are the parasitic worms that turn up in fish roe and canned sardines kosher?. . .*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 2, No. 12
THIS WEEK: The 90th anniversary of Science News, humans’ ice age roots, how sea sponges see, the toxic effects of nanopollution and Tom Siegfried on the link between quantum theory and the second law of thermodynamics.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Time’s arrow and reality’s randomness succumb to quantum thermodynamics
Randomness and reality go together like pizza and beer. March and madness. Ice and cream.
It didn’t used to be that way. Isaac Newton supposedly established that reality wasn’t random at all. It was “deterministic” — as regular as clockwork. Tock always followed tick. If you knew where everything was and how it was moving, you could figure out what everything would be doing at any time in the future. . .
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Vol. 2, No. 11
THIS WEEK: Why some carnivores have lost their sweet tooth, the Epstein-Barr virus’s surprising anticancer gene, astronomical romance and Alexandra Witze’s Earth in Action column on the hazards of flying in ashen skies.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Volcanoes’ message to airplanes: Ash-filled skies are not so friendly
In a matchup of Newt versus the volcano, it’s hard to tell who would win. Volatile, unpredictable, prone to outbursts at any moment — this might mean Gingrich or Grímsvötn. . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 10
THIS WEEK: Bold bees, putting the squeeze on hydrogen, dark matter enigma, how old memories fight new ones and Tom Siegfried’s Randomness column on why you shouldn’t trust everything you read in textbooks.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
When evaluating textbook dogmas about the brain, keep an open mind
Scientific textbooks are repositories of accumulated wisdom, gathered by painstaking investigation and verification producing the distilled essence of humankind’s knowledge of nature. They’re also loaded with undocumented dogma . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 9
THIS WEEK: Coral clones, a steamy exoplanet, lessons from Japan’s deadly tsunami, decision-making neurons and Alexandra Witze on the latest climate–tree ring brouhaha.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Tree rings’ lack of volcanic signature
confuses climate calculations
Call it the curious incident of the trees in the volcano-time.
Like the dog in the night-time, which Sherlock Holmes realized did not bark during a horse theft, so too are these trees mute on a big happening right under their nose. Their bark doesn’t reveal evidence . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 8
THIS WEEK: Tracking terrorists online, the dawn of home ownership, a dystopian glimpse at sea life’s future and Rachel Ehrenberg on the costs and benefits of playing video games.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
When video games mess with brains, something good happens, sometimes
SECOND OF TWO PARTS — Ever since some kid shunned fresh air for a game of Pong — one of the first home video games — back in 1975, scientists (and parents) have been debating the merits and malignancies of such play. And as the video game landscape has become richer, so has the research. But despite decades of study, scientists are still asking the 64 kilobyte question: Do video games boost brain power or damage it? The answer is simple: It’s complicated . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 7
THIS WEEK: Time crystals, the international water trade, why antibiotics do little good against sinus infections and Rachel Ehrenberg on how math explains the addictiveness of some video games.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
In figuring out what makes video games fun, the mystery is in the math
FIRST OF TWO PARTS — Most people don’t associate math with fun. Video games, on the other hand — whether Angry Birds, World of Warcraft or good old Pac-Man — send the fun meter berserk. U.S. video game sales topped $16 billion in 2011. Yet it turns out that math — not those sales numbers, but hardcore abstract mathematics — can tell us something about the fun of playing video games . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 6
THIS WEEK: A glimpse at the sun’s innards, the most hospitable exoplanet yet, good news in the fight against Alzheimer’s and Matt Crenson on the deep roots of economic inequality.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
Rich caveman, poor caveman: Economic inequality wasn’t born last election cycle
Any serious assessment of America’s rising economic inequality must consider the decline of manufacturing, globalization in labor markets and tax policies that allow rich people to keep more of their investment winnings. . .
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Vol. 2, No. 5
THIS WEEK: Bird flu in the brain, Asian snakes in the Everglades, the benefits of massage and Tom Siegfried on what happens when networks link up with each other.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Networks of networks are all around you — and you are one
Unless you’re totally disconnected from the world around you, you’ve noticed by now that everything in the world around you is connected — in a network . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 4
THIS WEEK: Stress and inflammation, the Amazon’s latest perils, the Sex Pistols’ scribbles and Alex Witze on humanity’s postponement of the next ice age.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Humans’ greenhouse gas emissions throw next ice age off schedule
In The World Without Us, writer Alan Weisman speculates on what might happen to the Earth if people disappeared tomorrow. Much of the change is predictable: Cities crumble, plants proliferate and nobody has to worry about election-year politics anymore . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 3
THIS WEEK: Dark matter megamaps, biofuels from seaweed, snakes that take the pulse of their prey and Rachel Ehrenberg on scientists’ warm-and-fuzzy feelings for rats.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
In many fields of science, it’s always the year of the rat
On the Chinese zodiac calendar, 2011 was the Year of the Rabbit. For scientists it was more like the year of the rat. A seminal study published in Science demonstrated that rats aren’t the conniving, selfish creatures that popular culture has long made them out to be. Rats will liberate another rat from a locked cage, researchers found, even when given a choice to gorge on chocolates instead . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 2
THIS WEEK: Rats with superhuman alcohol tolerance, tracking cholera online, Matt Crenson on history’s most mysterious epidemic and what made the 2010 Gulf oil spill so elusive.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
Today’s information revolution illuminates diseases spread in the age of discovery
IAfter European diseases arrived on American shores, chroniclers wrote graphic descriptions of depopulated villages, great leaders felled by illness and whole tribes wiped out by smallpox. Yet apart from such accounts almost nothing is known about the wave of disease that hit the Americas 500 years ago . . .
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Vol. 2, No. 1
THIS WEEK: The top science news of 2011, from (maybe) faster-than-light neutrinos to electronics that stick on your skin and tadpoles that grow extra eyeballs.
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Vol. 1, No. 25
THIS WEEK: Lumbering lungfish, gene therapy for hemophilia, the beginning of the end of the hunt for the Higgs and Tom Siegfried on a better way to measure evidence.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Medicine needs a sensible way to measure weight of the evidence
Let’s talk about evidence-based medicine.
Suppose you’re in the hospital and a nurse takes your temperature to find out whether you have a fever. Providing that the thermometer is working properly, it will give you a number that answers the question. It’s all the evidence you need. It doesn’t matter how many other patients in the hospital have had their temperature taken lately . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 24
THIS WEEK: Rats show empathy for trapped friends, a newly discovered planet sits within its star’s habitable zone, the Arctic’s climate has changed substantially in the last five years, and researchers debate the magnitude of the earthquakes centered on New Madrid, Mo., 200 years ago.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Antarctica’s concealed mountains tell of wonders revealed by pure science
In the desolation of East Antarctica lies a mountain range like no other: phantom peaks buried from view beneath thousands of meters of ice.
H.P. Lovecraft, the fantasy and horror writer, might well have been describing this range in his 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness. In it, a geology professor leads an Antarctic expedition to mountains higher than the Himalayas, only to find insanity and death lurking beyond. . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 23
THIS WEEK: Stormy weather on Saturn, the monarch butterfly genome, CT scans as autopsy substitutes and Rachel Ehrenberg on TV’s surprisingly positive portrayal of scientists.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
Scientists’ TV image isn’t really as diabolical as they sometimes worry
High school chemistry teacher Walter White has terminal cancer. Concerned about leaving his family with mountains of medical bills, he begins cooking up and selling primo crystal meth. He also uses his chemistry skills to dissolve dead bodies, burn through locks and make undetectable poison.. . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 22
THIS WEEK: Great lakes may lie beneath Europa’s surface, sleep doesn’t help elderly people remember, meek voles do stand a chance against macho bullies and Matt Crenson on how the residents of Sunset Crater rebuilt after an 11th century eruption.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
Aftermath of ancient eruption offers lessons in adapting to disaster
It had to be an awesome sight. The fountain of fire would have been visible for dozens of miles around; the pillar of smoke could have been seen for hundreds of miles. Ash and steam would have generated fearsome thunder and lightning. Forests would have been set ablaze. Anybody in the Southwest who didn’t directly witness the Sunset Crater eruption definitely would have heard about it. . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 21
THIS WEEK: The call of the giant beaver, a pituitary gland made from scratch, four-wheeling in nanoland and columnist Julie Rehmeyer on the math of how oranges stack up.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: JULIE REHMEYER | MATH TREK
Grocers stacking oranges demonstrate intuitive grasp of sphere-packing math
They may not know it, but grocers face some of the most difficult questions in mathematics when stacking produce each day.
Four centuries ago, the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler guessed that the standard grocers’ method of piling oranges packs the most fruit into the least space. Confirming he was right had to wait until 1998, when mathematician Thomas Hales of the University of Pittsburgh, working with his student Samuel Ferguson, proved Kepler’s conjecture with the aid of 180,000 lines of computer code . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 20
THIS WEEK: Furry little mammals with big pointy fangs, a tree that causes headaches, Tom Siegfried on how scientists abuse statistics and an interview with astronomer Frank Drake on the 50th anniversary of the equation that bears his name.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Love affair with statistics gives science a significant problem
Scientists love statistical significance. It offers a way to test hypotheses. It’s a ticket to publishing, to media coverage, to tenure.
It’s also a crock — statistically speaking, anyway.
You know the idea. When scientists perform an experiment and their data suggest an important result — say, that watching TV causes influenza — there’s always the nagging concern that the finding was a fluke. Maybe some of the college sophomores selected for the study had been recently exposed to the flu via some other medium . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 19
THIS WEEK: Alaska falls into the sea, econophysicists put a price on Facebook, a snake oil that really works and Alexandra Witze on what global warming can and can’t be blamed for.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Climate’s effect on extreme weather is no game of chance
Climate change is supposed to be about climate, you’d think — not weather. After all, climate is what you expect in the long term, like how bad the average winter will be; weather is what you get day to day, like whether there will be frost on Halloween night. Predicting even next week’s weather often seems like a crapshoot.
But seasoned gamblers know not to fold. All the cards in play suggest that climate change isn’t only about the long-term future, but can noticeably alter the planet’s day-to-day weather as well — to the extreme . . .
*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 1, No. 18
THIS WEEK: Teens’ fluctuating IQs, a 115-year-old woman’s genome, faster-than-light neutrinos don’t pass go and columnist Rachel Ehrenberg explores why it’s so fun to be scared.
COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
In modern circumstances, horror can be downright enjoyable
Most horror movie fans recall unforgettable scenes of spine-chilling thrill with glee. Whether it’s the creepy twins beckoning Danny in The Shining or the dark shadow approaching the shower curtain in Psycho, everyone has a favorite, most terrifying cinematic moment. Which if you think about it, is kind of odd. Favorite and terrifying should not go together. Yet from children possessed by the devil to deranged writers to chainsaw-wielding killers, our appetite for horror seems endless. Clearly, many people love being scared.
*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 1, No. 17
THIS WEEK: Going deeper with flat carbon, a North Pole ozone hole, sorting good smells from bad in the nose, and Matt Crenson’s Reconstructions column traces the evolutionary roots of overconfidence.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
Too smart to fail: Why people think they’re so great
A lot of the world’s biggest problems are what you might call crises of overconfidence.
Big, powerful nations conquer small, unstable ones expecting that invading troops will be greeted as liberators. On Wall Street, people who should know better buy dubious investments under the assumption that they’ll be able to unload them before the bubble bursts. And on Main Street, people already deep in debt purchase houses they can’t afford, reassuring themselves that prices can only go up. Meanwhile, the 7 billion humans on Earth keep pumping heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without seriously considering how their children and grandchildren will deal with the resulting climate disruption . . .
*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 1, No. 16
THIS WEEK: Microbes ’R’ Us, breaking the speed (of light) limit, the ultimate fruit fly aphrodisiac, flavor-tripping secrets and Julie Rehmeyer’s Math Trek column on what shape-studying mathematicians can tell us about disease.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: JULIE REHMEYER | MATH TREK
Turning numbers into shapes offers potential medical benefits
Until recently, topology was seen as being among the most abstract fields of mathematics, one that bore out Henry John Stephen Smith’s 19th century toast: “Pure mathematics — may it never be of use to anyone!” But now the field, which deals with the shape of many-dimensional objects, has unexpectedly proved its usefulness in, of all places, medicine. Researchers have used topology to discover a new subgroup of breast cancer patients with a 100 percent survival rate. More generally, the method may prove powerful for making sense of the massive, high-dimensional, noisy datasets modern science is producing. . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 15
THIS WEEK: Controlling prosthetics with only the brain, how DEET mixes up mozzies, the ringing in your ears is actually in your head and Tom Siegfried’s Randomness column explores the re-emergence of Bayesian statistics.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
For what you want to know, Bayes offers superior stats
It turns out that the old adage about statistics and damned lies wasn’t a joke. Sticks and stones may be bonebreakers, and words inflict no (physical) pain, but numbers can kill.
In 2004, for instance, a statistical analysis suggested that anti¬depressant drugs raised the risk of suicide in youngsters and adolescents, leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to require a “black box” warning label. And guess what happened? Suicide rates among kids went up. It seems likely that the dramatic warning discouraged some kids from taking the drugs they needed, later studies suggested. Not only that, but the original statistical evidence was not as conclusive as the FDA had portrayed it, a subsequent statistical analysis showed . . .
*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 1, No. 14
THIS WEEK: Quakes foretell Africa’s future big break, a search for Earthlike planets comes closer to finding some, bits of amber contain a trove of dino-era feathers and a new technique sneaks drugs though the blood-brain barrier.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Loss of eyes in the sky hurts science on the ground
In a clean room at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California sits the next great hope of the United States’ Earth-monitoring program. About the size of a minibus, it is covered in gold foil, riddled with electrical wires, and very clean.
This $1.5-billion satellite is state-of-the-art, carrying five advanced instruments to measure everything from sea-surface temperature to atmospheric winds. NASA plans to launch the satellite in October, as the bridge between the current and next generation of operational environmental satellites.
In true bureaucratic form, its name is an acronym nested within an acronym: NPP, for NPOESS Preparatory Project — in which NPOESS stands for National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System, a project that no longer exists . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 13
THIS WEEK: Objectifying helps the brain see some scenes, TNT adds stability to a sensitive explosive, distant planets can be fluffy or dense and Rachel Ehrenberg’s column explains how a few simple words can give away fake online consumer reviews.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
In online reviews, patterns in vocabulary can betray deceit
My room at the Hotel Monaco in Chicago was small, but not cramped. There’s a decent attached restaurant and a free evening wine hour in the ornate — yet cozy, thanks to the working fireplace — lobby. The hotel is a few blocks from the convention center, ideal for a reporter covering a scientific conference. I know, because I was there. But how do you know I was there?
Look closely at my review. Online reviews are littered with linguistic clues that separate legitimate reviews from the fakes, new research reveals. And we should thank the academics who are looking into it (I was not paid to review them favorably), because there’s a huge financial incentive and little cost for businesses to get into the fraudulent review game . . .
*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 1, No. 12
THIS WEEK: Detecting counterfeit drugs, how cooking changed human evolution, fireproofing made greener with nanomaterials, the oldest woolly rhino fossils and Matt Crenson’s Reconstructions column looks at where the Homo genus first emerged.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
Tools tell a more complicated tale of the origin of the human genus
The first animals that could arguably be called “human” made the evolutionary scene a little less than 2 million years ago.
These aren’t folks you’d mistake for modern-day Homo sapiens, or even the GEICO caveman. But they were clearly distinct from their more apelike predecessors. They had bigger brains, for one thing, and walked fully upright — presumably an adaptation to life out in the open rather than up in the trees. They hunted at least some of their food, tamed fire and may have spoken some form of language.
Paleoanthropologists have long been convinced that this revolutionary species, Homo erectus, was born on the African savanna almost 2 million years ago and spread over the next million years or so into Europe and Asia. Presumably its anatomical innovations and cultural sophistication made it the first species in the human evolutionary lineage that could survive outside Africa . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 11
THIS WEEK: Strange stars, a quake on the eastern seaboard, who gets the flu (and who doesn’t) and a Math Trek column that explores how the Leafsnap app IDs the tree outside your door.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: JULIE REHMEYER | MATH TREK
App for analyzing leafy curves lets amateur botanists identify trees
Peter Belhumeur just wanted to know what type of tree was outside his apartment. He scanned field guides, looking for willowlike leaves with a wavy, spiked edge, but he couldn’t find the right one. Neither could his neighbors.
As it happened, though, he was building a tool designed to address just this problem. Belhumeur is a computer scientist at Columbia University who has worked on face recognition, and he and David Jacobs of the University of Maryland in College Park had dreamed up an iPhone app that would use similar mathematical methods to recognize trees. Leafsnap (www.leafsnap.com) allows a person to pick a leaf from the U.S. Northeast, snap a picture of it against a white background, and find out which tree species it is most likely to have come from . . .
*Read the full column by downloading the free app and purchasing this issue, or if you are a print subscriber you can read the full column here on our website.
Vol. 1, No. 10
THIS WEEK: What the brain doesn’t see, efforts to find a molecular fountain of youth, white dwarfs polluted by Earthlike exoplanets and evidence that no-take marine reserves boost fish populations.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
If bird brains grasp statistical mechanics, there’s hope for predicting human behavior
Birds of a feather flock together, without knowing anything about the mathematics of pattern formation.
Or maybe they do. Who knows what goes on in bird brains? A more interesting question, though, is not whether birds understand the math behind their flocking but whether physicists do . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 9
THIS WEEK: How investors gain when they go with their gut, an electronic circuit that sticks to your skin, signs of neutrino shape-shifting and unraveling a system of reward and punishment in the underground trades between plants and fungi.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
A prescription for complexity: public health and climate change
Combine two of the biggest planetary chal- lenges — climate change and public health — and you’ve got a problem as huge as Rupert Murdoch’s.
Most scientists would find either climate or health a challenging career on its own. But a few brave souls have recently ventured into the realm in between, a place where discerning the truth is harder than tracing a phone-hacking scandal to Scotland Yard . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 8
THIS WEEK: Signs of saltwater on Mars, radio waves get a twist and why anesthesia is more like a light coma than a deep sleep — plus, the Culture Beaker column on why it’s OK not to worry about zombies.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
You’re fast enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, you can kill zombies
In the event of a zombie apocalypse, you might want to befriend a Frisbee golf pro — the skills may transfer to record-slinging, a decapitation technique favored in Shaun of the Dead. Or if you prefer a traditional zombie-slaying approach, recruit a baseball player . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 7
THIS WEEK: Why we yawn, electro-sensing dolphins, the sighting of a predicted baryon and a Reconstructions column that takes the long view of the droughts plaguing the Southwest.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
In ancient Southwest droughts, a warning of dry times to come
Anything but lush, the U.S. Southwest has been especially parched lately. About a decade ago a cycle of droughts began; the latest one has dried much of the region to a degree that meteorologists expect only twice a century.
But look back a millennium or more, and you’ll find signs that today’s conditions are not all that unusual. Studies of ancient climate suggest that the last decade’s water crisis, and even the 1930s Dust Bowl, pale in comparison to a series of droughts that struck the Southwest 700 to 1,100 years ago . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 6
THIS WEEK: The dawn of the dinosaurs, an invisibility cloak for time, how volcanoes kept things cool and a Math Trek column on a way to defeat even quantum computers’ challenge to encryption.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: JULIE REHMEYER | MATH TREK
New system offers way to defeat decryption by quantum computers
Quantum computers elicit dreams of great computational feats to come. But they also promise a nightmare: They could break today’s security codes, rendering them no more secure than a TSA-approved luggage lock.
Now, for the first time, researchers have shown a security method to be immune to the type of attack that could bring down RSA, the cryptosystem in almost universal current use . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 5
THIS WEEK: The quantum behaviors of exotic matter, lizards who think, using math to reveal the best way to fight HIV and Tom Siegfried on the link between intelligence and the way that bacteria seek food.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: TOM SIEGFRIED | RANDOMNESS
Whether for brains or bacteria, intelligence is all about food
If you wanted to write a computer program to simulate intelligence, you could start with two simple commands.
Get food: Yes. Be food: No.
Intelligence is all about enhancing your ability to survive, and getting food while avoiding being eaten are essential ingredients in any survival recipe. Evolution built brains to get food to the gut and keep bad things away . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 4
THIS WEEK: Groupers gobble lionfish, Tasmanian devil DNA, new Alzheimer’s insights and a chemically-induced identity crisis for male mice.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: ALEXANDRA WITZE | EARTH IN ACTION
Surviving tornadoes mostly depends on a lot of luck and the right attitude
The pathway to Oz has been open a lot this spring. Tornadoes have pummeled much of the U.S. Southeast and Midwest, with many more victims than the Wicked Witch of the East. 2011 is already one of the deadliest tornado seasons in U.S. history.
Even meteorologists are taken aback. Nearly 1,500 tornadoes have killed at least 536 people, notably in Alabama in April and Joplin, Mo., in May. The last year this many Americans died from tornadoes, Franklin Roosevelt was president . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 3
THIS WEEK: Taking dinosaurs’ temperatures, the search for honeybee pinch hitters, revising theories on static electricity and rescuing the spaceship that crashed to Earth.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: RACHEL EHRENBERG | CULTURE BEAKER
Bieber fever and other contagions reveal some things about fame, money, and us
Teenage girls aren’t the only ones with Justin Bieber fever.
In April a sneaker autographed by the pop star sold for $1,425 on eBay. The buyer? A 52-year-old man from Ontario. That might seem like a lot for a used shoe, but it’s small change compared with the more than $40,000 brought in by Bieber’s auctioned hair clippings. That’s right, hair. As in, all mammals have it . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 2
THIS WEEK: The first living laser, genes that make her cheat, the peril of reruns and the quieting sun.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: MATT CRENSON | RECONSTRUCTIONS
Numbers suggest mating with humans might have led to Neandertals’ demise
Scholars are turning the disappearance of humans’ closest cousins into a numbers game.
More than 150 years ago, German schoolteacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott realized that fossils from a local limestone quarry were almost, but not quite, human. More recently, scholars have expanded their research beyond bones and stones to figure out what became of the Neandertals. And a Danish physicist is taking an actuarial approach to the puzzle: Bent Sørensen of Roskilde University thinks numbers may explain why humans sit around today puzzling over the Neandertals’ fate, and not the other way around . . .
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Vol. 1, No. 1
THIS WEEK: The first living laser, genes that make her cheat, the peril of reruns and the quieting sun.
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COLUMN SNEAK PEEK: JULIE REHMEYER | MATH TREK
Beer bubble math helps to unravel some mysteries in materials science
Before downing your next beer, pause to contemplate the bubbles. You’ll find that they grow and shrink in odd, hard-to-predict ways. A mathematician and an engineer have found a simple and surprising equation to describe this process, using a field of mathematics no one expected to be relevant. . .
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Current issue
Issue contents
May 14, 2012
May 7, 2012
April 30, 2012
April 23, 2012
April 16, 2012
April 9, 2012
April 2, 2012
March 26, 2012
March 19, 2012
March 12, 2012
March 5, 2012
February 27, 2012
February 20, 2012
February 13, 2012
February 6, 2012
January 30, 2012
January 23, 2012
January 16, 2012
January 2 & 9, 2012
December 19 & 26, 2011
December 12, 2011
December 5, 2011
November 21 & 28, 2011
November 14, 2011
November 7, 2011
October 31, 2011
October 24, 2011
October 10 & 17, 2011
October 3, 2011
September 26, 2011
September 19, 2011
September 12, 2011
September 5, 2011
August 29, 2011
August 22, 2011
August 15, 2011
August 8, 2011
August 1, 2011
July 25, 2011
July 15, 2011
July 1, 2011
June 24, 2011
June 17, 2011
June 10, 2011
