Julie Rehmeyer, Stat
If your doctor diagnoses you with chronic fatigue syndrome, youll probably get two pieces of advice: Go to a psychotherapist and get some exercise. Your doctor might tell you that either of those treatments will give you a 60 percent chance of getting better and a 20 percent chance of recovering outright.
Freeland, Stephens, & Jakhu, Conv
When the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, was launched on October 4, 1957, it heralded the need for legal regulation of the exploration and use of outer space.Since then international law has been developed to facilitate the use of technologies such as satellite telecommunications, global positioning systems, remote sensing technology for weather forecasting and disaster management, and television broadcast from satellites.
Neuroskeptic, Discover
What sex is your brain?Well? This is the question asked by an exhibit at London’s Science Museum which created a bit of a hoo-ha this week. As the Guardian puts it:
Kjærgaard & Blancke, Scientific American
“This is outrageous!” Red-faced and visibly agitated, the 60-something was darting toward a hyperrealistic silicone reconstruction of Lucy, the world-famous, 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis. After a highly confused couple of minutes it emerged that the man was operating within a 6,000-year biblical time frame.
Gibbons & Culotta, Science
Australian Aborigines have long been cast as a people apart. Although Australia is halfway around the world from our species’s accepted birthplace in Africa, the continent is nevertheless home to some of the earliest undisputed signs of modern humans outside Africa, and Aborigines have unique languages and cultural adaptations.
Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
Getting stuff right is normally regarded as science’s central aim. But a new analysis has raised the existential spectre that universities, laboratory chiefs and academic journals are contributing to the “natural selection of bad science”.
Ethan Siegel, SWaB!
A look out into the night sky raises a slew of question that any intelligent, curious person might wonder about...
E. Tennenhouse, Discover
Birds are rapidly building their reputation as a brainy bunch, and the latest credit goes to four pigeons who can visually recognize written words.These pigeons were living in a lab in New Zealand where, over a span of two years, they learned to distinguish four-letter English words from nonsense words. For their training, a computer screen would flash words like DOWN or GAME, and non-words like TWOR or NELD, along with a star symbol. Each time the pigeons... Читать дальше...
R. Saxena, Ars Technica
Adolescent behavior is notoriously difficult to change because teens are very sensitive to anything they perceive as a threat to their autonomy. And, as many parents know, many problematic behaviors come about because teens arent particularly motivated by thinking about long-term consequences. Combine those two, and you get teens doing stupid thingsand not being willing to listen when that's pointed out to them.
K. Hartnett, Quanta
In the summer of 2015 a team of hackers attempted to take control of an unmanned military helicopter known as Little Bird. The helicopter, which is similar to the piloted version long-favored for U.S. special operations missions, was stationed at a Boeing facility in Arizona. The hackers had a head start: At the time they began the operation, they already had access to one part of the drones computer system. From there, all they needed to do was hack into Little Birds onboard flight-control computer... Читать дальше...
A. Doyle, Space.com
Evidence suggests that microbes existed on Earth as far back as 3.7 billion years ago, a billion years after the planet formed. Animal remains, however, don't appear in the fossil record until 600 million years ago during the Ediacaran period, though there are indirect signs that animal life may have gotten started much earlier.
Yale University
What’s the secret behind the tardigrade’s characteristic pluck? Protein-coated DNA.Tardigrades, also known as “water bears” or “moss piglets,” are renowned for their Herculean durability. Boiling water, subzero temperatures, even the vacuum of space – you name it, and these aquatic micro-animals can survive it. But until now, scientists weren’t exactly sure how that was possible.
E. Callaway, Sci Am
Thousands of years before cats came to dominate Internet culture, they swept through ancient Eurasia and Africa carried by early farmers, ancient mariners and even Vikings, finds the first large-scale look at ancient-cat DNA.The study, presented at a conference on September 15, sequenced DNA from more than 200 cats that lived between about 15,000 years ago and the eighteenth century A.D.
A. Witze, Nature News
In the fight to protect Earth from solar storms, the battle lines are drawn in space at a point 1.6 million kilometres away. There, a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite waits for electrons and protons to wash over it, a sign that the Sun has burped a flood of charged particles in our direction.
Seeker
New close-up photos of Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, show its mysterious and massive dunes in more detail than ever before.NASA's Cassini orbiter obtained these images when it flew by Titan for the 122nd time on July 25, 2016. The spacecraft was just 607 miles (976 kilometers) above the alien moon's southern hemisphere, according to NASA officials.
Astronomy Now
A team of researchers has clarified the origin of the rings recently discovered around two minor planets known as centaurs, and their results suggest the existence of rings around other centaurs. These findings were published on 29 August in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
