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Wall Street Journal: neutrinos show climate change isn’t real | Bad Astronomy

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:06:48 -0700

Discover Magazine - Oct. 06 - Antiscience | climate change | OpEds -- editorials expressing opinions in newspapers -- are sometimes a source of wry amusement. Especially when they tackle subjects where politics impact sci

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The Math Behind the Physics Behind the Universe

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Discover Magazine - By Pamela Weintraub - May. 25 (Interview) - Shing-Tung Yau is a force of nature. He is best known for conceiving the math behind string theory—which holds that, at the deepest level of reality, our universe is built out of 10-dimensional, subatomic vibrating strings. But Yau’s genius runs much deeper and wider: He has also spawned the modern synergy between geometry and physics

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Obese, gluttonous, and cannibalistic is no way to go through life, son

Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Discover Magazine - By Phil Plait - May. 17 (News Report) - The Milky Way is considered a big galaxy, and has maybe 400 billion times the mass of the Sun in total, but 146-IG is hugely bigger, swollen and ginormous. It’s far more massive than any other galaxy we’ve seen out to that distance. That glow you see in the center of the cluster is just from 146-IG all by its lone self, and it dominates the entire core of the cluster.

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I For One Welcome Our Microbial Overlords

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - By Carl Zimmer - Mar. 05 (Special Report) - Can the bacteria in our bodies control our behavior in the same way a puppetmaster pulls the strings of a marionette? I tremble to report that this wonderfully creepy possibility may be true.

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8 Big Ideas That Could Pave the Road to Clean Energy

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - Jan. 19 (Editorial) - Leading thinkers offer visions of how to make our energy supply cleaner, more efficient, and more abundant. Some crises hit unexpectedly—for instance, hurricane Katrina or the Indian Ocean tsunami. The energy crisis is something very different: a slow-motion problem unfolding in fits and starts right before our eyes, often in foreseeable ways. We know that the population of the world (and of the United States) will grow, and that people will expect an ever-rising standard of living. We know that fossil fuel resources are finite. We also know that our current methods of energy generation have significant environmental drawbacks. In short, we have the luxury of preparing for the future now.

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Which Brain Games Will Help Your Brain the Most?

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Discover Magazine - By Adam T. Hadhazy - Mar. 29 (Review) - The latest fitness fad has an unusual goal: bulking up the three pounds of mush between your ears. Sales of “brain fitness” software increased from a few million dollars in 2005 to $80 million in 2007, according to an estimate from the consulting firm Sharpbrains. Plenty more products are available on the Web. Computerized cognitive training includes games that test memory, attention, and problem-solving skills, plus good old arithmetic and linguistic ability. Brain-training Web sites promise improved mental stamina, the ability to concentrate for longer periods, and a better memory for directions and names—even heightened mood.

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Unlocking the Secrets and Powers of the Brain

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - Mar. 01 (Review) - DISCOVER and the National Science Foundation launched a series of events to explore the biggest questions in science today. In the first event, “Unlocking the Secrets and Powers of the Brain,” four leading psychologists and neuroscientists discussed the hottest issues in brain research, from predicting human behavior to manipulating memory to pinpointing consciousness.

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Is Patriotism a Subconscious Way for Humans to Avoid Disease?

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - By Carl Zimmer - Feb. 22 (Special Report) - The long battle between humans and infectious microbes has left its marks all over us. It shows up most obviously in the way our bodies are constructed. The thousands of species of bacteria that swarm over us cannot penetrate our multilayered skin. Entry points, such as the eyes and nose, are bathed in moisture to help flush out pathogens. The lining of our lungs releases bacteria-killing compounds. Viruses that manage to infect cells are greeted by proteins that attempt to shred them into genetic confetti. Any pathogen that sneaks past all these defenses then faces an army of immune cells, which can devour and destroy the invaders. Immune cells can also manufacture antibodies, which allow them to launch swift attacks if they encounter the same infection elsewhere in the body.

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What Makes You Uniquely "You"?

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - By Susan Kruglinski - Jan. 16 (Interview) - Some of the most profound questions in science are also the least tangible. What does it mean to be sentient? What is the self? When issues become imponderable, many researchers demur, but neuroscientist Gerald Edelman dives right in. A physician and cell biologist who won a 1972 Nobel Prize for his work describing the structure of antibodies, Edelman is now obsessed with the enigma of human consciousness—except that he does not see it as an enigma. In Edelman’s grand theory of the mind, consciousness is a biological phenomenon and the brain develops through a process similar to natural selection. Neurons proliferate and form connections in infancy; then experience weeds out the useless from the useful, molding the adult brain in sync with its environment.

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Memory Training Can Make You Smarter

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - Dec. 11 (Review) - For years researchers thought that IQ, or fluid intelligence—the ability to solve new problems and reason well—could not be changed. You had the smarts you were born with, period. No one believed that a few brain exercises, if done often enough, could boost native intelligence. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences shatters that dogma.

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Carbon Trading: Environmental Godsend or Giant Shell Game?

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Discover Magazine - By Jennifer Barone - Dec. 04 (Special Report) - Mainstream financial institutions including Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs are joining the booming carbon market, which continues even through the current economic jitters. According to the World Bank, global trades in this market in 2007 were valued at more than $64 billion, more than doubling since 2006.

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World's First Really Clean Coal Plant Gets a Try-Out in Germany

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Discover Magazine - By Eliza Strickland - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - Next week, German officials will flip the switch and turn on the world's first coal-fired power plant to use carbon capture and storage technology, in which carbon dioxide is stripped out the plant's emissions and pumped deep underground. This "clean coal" technology has been hailed as a possible way to get cheap energy without further contributing to global warming.

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Ocean Acidification: A Global Case of Osteoporosis

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Discover Magazine - By Kathleen McAuliffe - Jul. 21 (Special Report) - "It's the most profound environmental change I've seen in my entire career, and nobody saw it coming," says Thomas E. Lovejoy, a biologist and president of the H. J. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, D.C.

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