Erik Klemetti, Wired
Italy has some of the most potentially hazardous volcanoes on Earth. The pair of Vesuvius and the Campi Flegrei around the Bay of Naples are a looming danger for over 3 million people when either of those volcanoes reawakens.
Andy Extance, The Atlantic
Had there been a male contraceptive pill in 1976, I probably wouldnt be here to write this. That was the year when, after my mommay she rest in peacehad been on the pill for 12 years, health worries made her doctor tell her to come off it. She said to the doctor, Ill get pregnant, my dad recalls. And within a very short while, she was.
Ethan Siegel, Forbes
When the Universe began from its hot, dense, rapidly expanding state — from the hot Big Bang — there was no way of knowing it would have turned out this way. The Universe could have recollapsed almost immediately, or it could have rapidly expanded away into oblivion before a single atom formed.
A. Martinez, Chronicle
It’s not every day that the president of the United States publishes an article in an academic journal.But on Monday an article by "Barack Obama, JD," titled "United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps," was published online in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Tommaso Dorigo, Sci 2.0
Gavin Salam's talk at the "Altarelli Memorial" session of the ICNFP 2016 conference, which is presently taking place in Kolimbari (Crete), was very interesting and I wish to report here about it. As this was a session focused on remembering Guido Altarelli and his contributions to theoretical high-energy physics, Salam started his talk by showing in quantitative terms just how big was the impact of Altarelli on the research that is done nowadays at the LHC.
Jackson Landers, S'sonian
The idea of arguing over real estate on the moon may seem silly—like a con man trying to sell a tourist the Brooklyn Bridge. But in a new paper, co-author Martin Elvis, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, makes the case for society to start thinking carefully about lunar real estate before a crisis is thrust on us.
Michael Price, Science News
The blind comic book star Daredevil has a highly developed sense of hearing that allows him to “see” his environment with his ears. But you don’t need to be a superhero to pull a similar stunt, according to a new study. Researchers have identified the neural architecture used by the brain to turn subtle sounds into a mind’s-eye map of your surroundings.
NPR
Kanyes, Kims, and Donalds—oh my! Narcissism is all around us, and research shows it's on the rise. Millennials are more likely than their parents to claim they're above average in just about every way, from their leadership skills to their academic achievements to their drive to succeed.
V. Greenwood, Atlantic
The brain plays a strange trick in low light—and when people take Viagra.
Joshua Learn, National Geographic
A huge new survey shows that a historic Jewish cemetery in Berlin is now a haven for hundreds of creatures normally found in the deep woods.
Conor Gearin, NewScientist
A morbid market. Staffers at the Louisiana Department of Justice in Baton Rouge tracked the sale of human skulls on eBay for seven months. During that period, 237 people listed 454 skulls for sale, with opening bids ranging from one cent to 00.
Akhilesh Pathipati, Stat
Like many aspects of health care, medical education evolves slowly. The modern curriculum is based on the Flexner Report — a review published in 1910. It hasn’t changed much since then.
Jane Qiu, Nature News
Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives.
C. Nierenberg, LS
Users of increasingly popular street drugs called K2 or spice, which are made from mixtures of herbs laced with synthetic cannabinoids and other chemicals, are showing some incredibly strange behaviors.
Ross Pomeroy, RealClearScience
How do we know if something is true?It seems like a simple enough question. We know something is true if it is in accordance with measurable reality. But just five hundred years ago, this seemingly self-evident premise was not common thinking.
CBC News
As tempting as it may be to sample freshly beaten cake mix or cookie dough, your stomach could regret it, depending on where the ingredients came from and how they were produced.
