Scientific American - News

No Fire in the Hole!: Firefighters Use Flame-Retardant Grenades

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:10:00 EST

A new grenadelike gadget--designed to quickly extinguish flames in small quarters, thereby limiting injury to victims as well as firefighters--is becoming an important part of firemen's arsenals. [More]

Researchers Pinpoint Genes Linked to Childhood Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

Researchers have identified a pair of genes that increase a child's risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) before the age of 19--adding to a growing list of 30 known genetic factors for the malady.

Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic condition that affects an estimated 1.4 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) . Abnormal immune responses lead to inflammation in the digestive tract lining causing several disorders, the most common of which are Crohn's disease (usually affecting the small intestine) and ulcerative colitis (restricted to the colon). [More]

A Deep Thaw: How Much Will Vanishing Glaciers Raise Sea Levels?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:00:00 EST

Greenland, the world's largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet (seven meters). Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more than 200 feet (60 meters). Satellite measurements from space and speed measurements on land confirm that Greenland's glaciers are melting and on the move. And although the picture is less clear in Antarctica, the global warming seems to be having an impact there, too.

So the question is: How much--and how soon--will sea level rise?

[More]

Remember: Memory Record and Replay Handled by Same Cells

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:30:00 EST

Researchers have discovered that the same nerve cells involved in forming memories also are involved in replaying them. The finding, published today in the online edition of Science, provides new insight into how complex memories are laid down in a single neuron (nerve cell) and how neural firing, or communication, patterns created during memory formation are maintained during recall. [More]

Easy Cell: Mobile Phones for the Hearing Impaired

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:30:00 EST

The convenience and relatively low cost of cell phones in the U.S. has made them an indispensable part of life. Unless, of course, you are one of the 37 million or so hearing-impaired adults living in this country. But University of Washington (U.W.) in Seattle researchers are hoping to change that by developing software that lets callers communicate on their mobile phones using sign language via real-time video instead of being limited to text messaging. [More]

New Study: Measles Vaccine Doesn't Cause Autism

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:00:00 EST

You've probably heard the news: Measles, once banished, is back in a big way. [More]

Continent-Wide Telescope Brings Galactic Black Hole into Focus

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:00:00 EST

Researchers are closing in on ironclad evidence for the black hole believed to lurk at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. [More]

The Key to Smaller, More Powerful Gadgets

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:15:00 EST

Gadget buyers today can purchase PCs, cell phones and mp3 players with significantly more memory than their predecessors for just a few dollars more than they paid a few years ago. To wit: you can purchase an 80-gigabyte iPod today for the same price (around $250) you paid for one with just 30 gigabytes of memory two years ago. But consumers are in for a rude awakening if technology makers fail to find a way to shrink memory components enough to continue packing more of them into ever-tinier gadgets.

Computers and other electronic devices use different types of memory to perform different functions. PCs use a hard disk drive, for example, to store large amounts of data for the long term and Random Access Memory (RAM)--also called "solid state" memory--to retain data outside the hard drive, where it can be accessed quickly and repeatedly. In an attempt to ensure that memory is not sacrificed with size, however, device makers are eyeing an experimental approach called "universal memory," which not only takes up less space but is also faster than the RAM now available. Currently only a handful of companies are investing in the budding technology, but that could change as new forms of universal memory emerge, most notably IBM's "racetrack" memory and Nantero, Inc.'s nano RAM (NRAM).

[More]

Ancient Amazon Actually Highly Urbanized

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:00:00 EST

In 1925 British adventurer Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared into the wilds of the Amazon, never to be heard from again after going there in search of a lost city he called Z. But decades later, a city of sorts--actually a series of settlements connected by roads--has been found at the headwaters of the Xingu River where Fawcett went missing in an area previously buried beneath the dense foliage in what is now Xingu National Park.

View slideshow here. [More]

First Light from Space Telescope Reveals Gamma-Ray Sky

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EST

The first results from a powerful gamma-ray telescope launched into orbit earlier this summer show it is on track to unlock new secrets of the most energetic explosions in the universe. That was the message from NASA researchers speaking at a teleconference this afternoon to present the findings and to announce the mission's new name. [More]

On a Wing and Low Air: The Surprising Way Wind Turbines Kill Bats

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EST

Scientists have known since 2004 that wind farms kill bats, just as they kill birds, even though the flying mammals should be able to avoid them. Many biologists thought that the bats, like their avian counterparts, might be falling victim to the fast-spinning turbine blades. But an examination of 188 hoary and silver-haired bats killed at a wind farm in southwestern Alberta in Canada between July and September in 2007 showed that nearly half showed no external injuries--as would be expected if the giant blades had smashed the flying mammals to the ground. [More]

Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:00:00 EST

"Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes--all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains--a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. [More]

Moo North: Cattle and Deer May Sense Earth's Magnetic Field

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EST

Forget cow tipping--next time you want to mess with a bovine friend, try waving a magnet in its face. [More]

How Puzzling Stars Formed near Galactic Black Hole

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:00:00 EST

Researchers say they have figured out how a mysterious clutch of massive stars could have come into existence a few trillion miles from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. [More]

Could We Lose Weight by Injecting Fat into Our Bellies?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:00:00 EST

What if the best way to conquer obesity is to have fat injected into your stomach?

According to two studies in Nature, that may be the future of weight loss treatments--provided you use the right kind of fat.

[More]

Drilling for Hot Rocks: Google Sinks Cash into Advanced Geothermal Technology

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:00:00 EST

For $1 billion over the next 40 years, the U.S. could develop 100 gigawatts (a gigawatt equals one billion watts) of electricity generation that emits no air pollution and pumps out power to the grid even more reliably than coal-fired power plants, according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now Google.org--the charitable wing of the search engine giant--has chipped in nearly $11 million for this renewable resource: so-called geothermal power, or tapping the Earth's heat to make electricity. [More]

Like the Taste of Chalk? You're in Luck--Humans May Be Able to Taste Calcium

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:15:00 EST

Mice, and most likely humans, have the ability to taste calcium--and most do not like it, according to new research presented today at the American Chemical Society's semiannual national meeting, held this week in Philadelphia. Scientists say the findings could explain why, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 80 percent of Americans do not get enough calcium when it is so important for our health. [More]

Fewer April Showers for U.S. Southwest as Climate Changes

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:01:00 EST

The already parched U.S. Southwest is drying up even more, at least in early spring, because of climate change. A new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that since 1978, the jet stream that brings rainstorms from the Pacific over the western U.S. has been shifting northward--and so has the rain and snow. [More]

If You Use the Web, You May Have Already Been Enlisted as a Human Scanner

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EST

You're just about ready to buy a pair of tickets on Ticketmaster, but before you can take the next step, an annoying box with wavy letters and numbers shows up on your screen. You dutifully enter in what you see--and what a bot presumably can't--in the name of security.

But what you may not know is that you also have helped archivists decipher distorted characters in old books and newspapers so that they can be posted on the Web.

[More]

Body May Reject Transplanted Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EST

The much-ballyhooed human embryonic stem cell apparently may share a problem with transplanted organs: a high probability of rejection. [More]