Millions of people struggle with insomnia, but the sleep disorder is now a solvable problem – and the most effective therapy might involve your smartphone rather than sleeping pills
EOS Magazine October 2022 Issue:
Research over the past decade in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has offered surprising insights into the pulses of great earthquakes that generate dangerous, often long-distance tsunamis.
Dutton Books, 20 September 2022
The goal of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is to bridge the gap between popular-science treatments of modern physics and true expert knowledge. This is the real stuff — equations and all — presented in a way that presumes no prior knowledge other than high-school algebra. Readers will come up to speed about exactly what professional physicists are talking about, with an emphasis on established knowledge rather than speculation.
Volume One, Space, Time, and Motion, covers the domain of classical physics, from Newton to Einstein. We get introduced to Spherical Cow Philosophy, in which complications are stripped away to reveal the essence of a system, and the Laplacian Paradigm, in which the laws of physics take us from initial conditions into the future by marching through time. We learn the basic ideas of calculus, where we can calculate rates of change and how much of a quantity has accumulated. We think about the nature of space and time, separately and together. Finally we are introduced to the mysteries of non-Riemannian geometry and Einstein’s theory of curved spacetime, culminating into a dive into black holes.
Scientists identify a neuronal pathway in rats that drives ‘social grooming’, a behaviour that helps to hold animal communities together.
As high-level winds shift, heat and heavy rain can persist.
Crystalline device could be used to visualize voltages with high resolution, speed and stability.
The trees that provide the raw material for chocolate have a higher yield when the groves are accessible to certain species.
A family tree of sea cows suggests that the dugong traversed an ocean to reach its present habitat.
Ground-based robots have potential for helping in the construction industry, but they are limited by their height. In this week’s issue, Mirko Kovac, Robert Stuart-Smith and their colleagues introduce highly manoeuvrable aerial robots that can perform additive 3D construction tasks. Inspired by natural builders such as wasps and bees, the researchers created BuilDrones (as shown on the cover) that can work in an autonomous team to perform 3D printing tasks using foam- or cement-based materials. They also created ScanDrones to assess the quality of the structures
being built. The team hopes that this approach of ‘aerial additive manufacturing’ could help to build structures in difficult to access areas.
Deaths and sufferings are not a failure of technology or knowledge, but a failure of will.
But carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the global reservoir-building spree in the 1960s and 1970s are falling.
A fossilized pile of small bones is probably a meal that an animal heaved up 150 million years ago.
Surrounding an ion of curium with radiation-resistant clusters of other ions allows scientists to study the scarce substance.
Some female white-necked jacobins nab good feeding spots by adopting the flashy plumage of their bigger, brasher male counterparts.
A high-sugar diet unbalances the microbiome, so the body makes fewer of the gut immune cells that help to prevent metabolic disorders.
Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks
CHIPS act will fund microelectronics innovation and training through large partnerships
Scientists call for concerted effort to forecast points of no return for ice, weather patterns, and ecosystems
Move to phase out gas-powered cars will force progress toward faster charging batteries
Loved and hated, NIAID’s chief plots life after government
The cover shows an artist’s impression of Mbiresaurus raathi, a newly discovered species of herbivorous dinosaur found in Zimbabwe and dating to around 230 million years ago.
Archived data from Landsat 5, launched in 1984, and two newer sensors allow scientists to chart dangerous flows in Afghanistan.
Reptiles that perished during a severe drought 250 million years ago are preserved as spreadeagled and mummified fossils.
On this week’s show: The U.S. government is partnering with academics to speed up the search for more than 80,000 soldiers who went missing in action, and how humans create their own “oxidation zone” in the air around them.
First up on the podcast this week, Tess Joosse is a former news intern here at Science and is now a freelance science journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin. Tess talks with host Sarah Crespi about attempts to use environmental DNA—free-floating DNA in soil or water—to help locate the remains of soldiers lost at sea. Also featured in this segment:
University of Wisconsin, Madison, molecular biologist Bridget Ladell Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine biologist Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser
Also this week, Nora Zannoni, a postdoctoral researcher in the atmospheric chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, talks about people’s contributions to indoor chemistry. She chats with Sarah about why it’s important to go beyond studying the health effects of cleaning chemicals and gas stoves to explore how humans add their own bodies’ chemicals and reactions to the air we breathe. In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for Custom Publishing, interviews Benedetto Marelli, associate professor at MIT, about winning the BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation and how he became an entrepreneur.
The plan, to start at the end of 2025, is a blow to journal paywalls, but its impact on publishing is unclear
Webb telescope discovery offers clue to planet formation and promises insights on planetary habitability
Wider use of checkpoint inhibitor therapy spurs efforts to predict and treat immune complications
Decisions on boosters targeting subvariants will be based on limited data
Nearly complete specimen shows earliest dinosaurs needed a temperate climate
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