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Science news and technology updates from Scientific American

Popular Opinion on Climate Change Traced to Political Elites

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:15:00 EST

It seems the general public just can't make up its mind about the existence of man-made climate change. Rather than steadily increasing or decreasing over the last decade, the U.S. public's concern over our warming planet has jumped up and down, according to Gallup polls. But what exactly is driving this seesawing of opinions on climate change?

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Visual Cues Encourage Vegetable Consumption

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:48:08 EST

Americans still fall short of the recommended daily portions of fruits and vegetables. And kids are notoriously averse to veggies at the school cafeteria. So researchers tested whether visual cues of healthful foods could increase consumption at a grade school with 800 students.

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This is what a scientist looks like.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:04:00 EST

I have talked a lot about the need for scientists to reach out. In fact, next week, I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Washington about why scientists need social media. There are lots of reasons for this, but one of the big ones is that people don’t know who scientists are.

Only 17% of Americans can name a living scientist. If you ask middle school students what a scientists looks like , they’ll tell you he’s a an old white guy with crazy hair, glasses and a lab coat. More often than not, he’s depicted inside and playing with chemicals. This stereotype is pervasive – and completely, totally wrong.

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Monday Music Video: Klebsiella, Salmonella, Legionella (ella, ella, ella)

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:51:00 EST

This week’s music video comes from Aryeh Rosenbaum, a medical student at the Albert Einstein College of medicine. [More]

Signal for Higgs Boson Particle Gains Strength

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:40:00 EST

Today the two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, submitted the results of their latest analyses. The  new   papers  boost the case for December’s announcement of a possible Higgs signal , but let’s not get too excited.

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Thinking About Mortality Changes How We Act

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

The thought of shuffling off our mortal coil can make all of us a little squeamish. But avoiding the idea of death entirely means ignoring the role it can play in determining our actions. Consider the following scenario:

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Parades Public Festivals, Public Spectacles

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:36:00 EST

Giants parade down the Canyon of Heroes after their victory in 2008. They will retrace their steps today. | Creative Commons, Photo by David Hodges. Click image for license and link.

Ed. Note: So the New York Giants won the super bowl, and there will be a parade not too far from my office today. I’m have no intention of leaving the office parade or no parade, I’m not a Giants fan and my football wounds are still a bit raw, and the crowds are a little intense but it seemed like a good time to revisit this post that I wrote following the parade for the New York Yankees in 2009 . (I’m not a fan of them either, but the parade was a novelty at the time.) Wondering how a New Yorker be a fan of anything but a New York team? I address that here .

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The Brain is one Awesomely Complicated Piece of Meat

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:29:00 EST

Image of the Week #29, February 6th, 2012:

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#SciAmBlogs Monday - Coelacanths, Lake Vostok, neuronal transplants, #scio12, San Diego Demonoid, and more....

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:10:00 EST

Welcome back from the weekend. Check out the new Image of the Week first! Then see what the bloggers have published lately:

- Lucas Brouwers – Coelacanths are not living fossils. Like the rest of us, they evolve

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Sticky bacteria and the benefits of staying still

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:19:00 EST

I’ve written before about the many ways that bacteria can move around. Considering that they’re just one cell long, micro-organisms have a whole range of ways to travel through their little world. Movement is useful for finding food and for changing your environment when all nearby resources have been exhausted. For bacteria that can’t move, however, or that don’t want to move, there is a second option; they can park themselves on a nearby surface and settle down to wait.

There are several advantages to this. For a start, other things like food and nutrients tend to accumulate at surfaces as well, bringing the bacteria a regular supply of food. A surface is a more stable environment, the bacteria that adhere to your teeth do so because to get swept away into the stomach is to be pulled down into a very literal lake of acid. For bacteria that form biofilms , sticking to a surface is the first stage in this process.

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Too Clean? Try Bacterial Wipes!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:27:00 EST

Last week, Rob Dunn posted a thought-provoking piece on the hygiene hypothesis that made me wonder… what will the shelves of the supermarket cleaning aisle look like in twenty years? How will Proctor & Gamble respond to the mounting research that says some bacteria in our lives is not only good, but necessary? Obviously, they will have a problem on their hands. [More]

The Evolving Truth about Fracking for Natural Gas [Updated]

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:20:00 EST

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Lake Vostok is (Almost) Breached After 20 Million Years

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:58:00 EST

Satellite composite showing location of Vostok within the Antarctic continent (NASA)

Two and a half miles beneath the surface of Antarctica’s central Eastern ice sheet is a body of water 160 miles by 30 miles across known as Lake Vostok , after the Vostok research station above it, built by the former Soviet Union in 1957 and now operated by Russia.

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Self Defense

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:22:00 EST

I recently saw a really fun talk by Amisha Gadani , an artist in residence here at UCLA in the Alfaro Lab . Her recent work is a playful exploration of animal self-defense mechanisms incorporated into fashionable cocktail dresses.

The Blowfish Dress inflates when she’s startled, creating a bright and threatening silhouette that can intimidate an attacker: [More]

Russian Team Has Reached Buried Antarctic Lake, Reports Say

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:10:00 EST

Several Russian news outlets are reporting that Russian scientists have successfully drilled to Antarctica's Lake Vostok , a massive liquid lake cut off from daylight for 14 million years and buried beneath 2 miles (3.7 kilometers) of ice.

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Frauds, Fakes and Fossils

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:15:00 EST

“ What are they? Creations of mind?- The mind can make Substance, [More]

Anthrax Toxicity Depends on Human Genetics

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:06:00 EST

Anthrax courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Marcus007

The white powder that arrived in envelopes addressed to lawmakers and journalists in 2001 proved to be a deadly delivery for several people. The lethal substance spores commonly known as Anthrax (from the bacterium Bactillus anthracis ) can cause a toxic reaction in a host’s blood stream , killing cells and leading to tissue damage, bleeding and death.

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The Quantum Physics of Free Will

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST

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ScienceOnline2012 - thoughts about present and future

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

On your way to ScienceOnline2012 , your plane finally lands at Raleigh-Durham International airport. While you slowly taxi to the gate, what do you do? Naturally, you turn on your smart-phone, open up your favorite Twitter app, and announce to the world: “#scio12 – I have landed at RDU. Anyone else here? Want to share a ride to the hotel?”.

If you are lucky, you’ll find a couple of other attendees have landed at about the same time, so you meet them at the baggage claim (fortunately, Terminal 1 is under renovation so everyone had to land at the same over-crowded Terminal 2), and share a shuttle or cab into town.

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Baby-Led Weaning Leads to Leaner Kids

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/lisegagne

Those little pursed lips and that tiny crinkled nose might not just mean that your baby isn’t a fan of pureed peas or mashed sweet potatoes. Some of the refusals to all of those “here-comes-the-airplane” attempts to feed a weaning infant might also be the child s way of saying that she or he is just not hungry.

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