Scientific American

Is Football to Blame for Players' Suicides?

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:49:00 EST

High-profile suicides of professional football players have mounted in the past several years Terry Long (2005), Andre Waters (2006), Dave Duerson (2011) and Ray Easterling (2012) all killed themselves following retirement and bouts with diagnoses likely related to the thousands of hits they fearlessly underwent as players. The conditions vary but have overlapping qualities: post-concussion syndrome, depression, other mood disorders, personality changes, memory problems and dementia. Now with the loss of Pro Bowler Junior Seau, dead at 43 earlier this month by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his chest, a suicide has occurred in a Hall of Fame-bound player who reportedly never exhibited emotional pain. His body will be examined for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition proposed to explain the football suicides and underlying mental illness.

The issue of professional football’s responsibility for these conditions and player suicides is explored in Headstrong , a play running this month at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan. The theater has a long-standing sponsorship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to produce shows that deal with science. (Last year with this funding, EST mounted Photograph 51 , which explored the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the structure of DNA .)

[More]

Self-Worth Shattering: A Single Bomb Blast Can Saddle Soldiers with Debilitating Brain Trauma

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:40:00 EST

The stress and suffering of combat are known to leave a lasting impact on military veterans, in some cases triggering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . Researchers have now found an even more serious and debilitating mental condition, known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) , in veterans, particularly those injured by the concussive force of bomb blasts. [More]

Soot May Help Shift Tropics North

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:01:00 EST

Soot may be responsible for the tropics expanding north , according to an analysis involving multiple computer models of the climate. By absorbing sunlight and trapping extra heat in the atmosphere, the tiny, black particles may be helping the poleward march of tropical conditions.

The research will be published in Nature on May 17. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

[More]

China Is Developing a Grid Better for Coal than Renewables

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:00:00 EST

China will fail to meet its carbon and energy intensity targets unless it makes dramatic changes to its electricity grid, a groundbreaking new report finds.

[More]

Animal Tracks: Music about Unusual Creatures Features Some Unusual Instruments [Video]

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:27:00 EST

The dugong, one of Michael Hearst's "unusual creatures." Credit: Julien Willem/Creative Commons

Michael Hearst seems to enjoy making music with a purpose. About five years ago the Brooklyn, N.Y., musician made headlines with a pretty self-explanatory record called Songs for Ice Cream Trucks . Since then, he and his band One Ring Zero have released an album-long ode to the planets (including Pluto), as well as a record of recipes from Mario Batali, David Chang and other celebrity chefs set to music.

[More]

How Large Stars Die [Animation]

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:00 EST

[More]

Know Your Neurons: How to Classify Different Types of Neurons in the Brain's Forest

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:40:00 EST

Previously, on Know Your Neurons: Chapter 1: The Discovery and Naming of the Neuron

[More]

10 Things Exome Sequencing Can t Do-but Why It s Still Powerful

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:53:00 EST

Sequencing of the exome the protein-encoding parts of all the genes is beginning to dominate the genetics journals as well as headlines, thanks to its ability to diagnose the formerly undiagnosable.

The 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting honored the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel s coverage of a 4-year-old whose intestinal disorder was finally diagnosed after sequencing his exome. Once investigators assigned a gene to his symptoms, a bone marrow transplant saved his life. And a just-published study compared the exomes of 12 children with combinations of developmental delay, intellectual disability, and birth defects at the Duke University genetics clinic to reference exomes, revealing 7 mutations, 2 in genes not known to be associated with disease.

[More]

Beep on the Cheap: A Hack to Cut Cell Phone Charges

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:30:00 EST

In this month's Scientific American column I drafted a "Cellular Bill of Rights." It documents all the ridiculous ways that cell phone carriers gouge, cheat and double-bill us.

[More]

Down with Double Data Fees!

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:00:00 EST

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Lifestyle, establish Fairness, ensure blood pressure Tranquility, provide for the common Text Messager, promote less Outrage and secure Cell phone Service that’s anywhere near as good as it is in Other Countries, do ordain and establish this Cellular Bill of Rights.

[More]

Climate Change Blamed for Fall of Mayan Civilization

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:00:00 EST

Researchers in Mexico say the mighty Mayan civilization, which thrived in Central America for 2700 years, was likely brought down by a long period of drought.

Track Record: Do Major Urban Subway Networks Evolve along Similar Patterns?

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:15:00 EST

No two subway systems have the same design. New York City’s haphazard rail system differs markedly from the highly organized Moscow Metro (above), or the tangled spaghetti of Tokyo ’s subway network. Each system’s design is the result of many factors, including local geography, the city’s layout and traffic distribution, politics, culture and degree of urban planning.

[More]

Whales Adjust Their Hearing Sensitivity

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:05:08 EST

Have you ever wanted to turn down the volume at a deafening concert or noisy bar? Envy the whale: a new study finds that toothed whales can reduce their own auditory sensitivity when they expect a loud sound. The work is presented at this week’s Acoustics 2012 meeting. [Paul E. Nachtigall and Alexander Ya Supin, " Immediate changes in whale hearing sensitivity "]

[More]

The Football Concussion Crisis, Part 1

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:15:08 EST

NFL Hall of Famer Harry Carson joins former NBC anchor Stone Phillips and pathologist Bennet Omalu for a discussion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among football players. [More]

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:15:00 EST

Extended breastfeeding is the norm in most human and primate societies. So why are we the weird ones?

"Attachment (with respect to Martin Schoeller)" by Nathaniel Gold

[More]

The Mathematician's Obesity Fallacy

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:30:00 EST

As I write, this interview with mathematician Carson C. Chow is the number-one most-emailed story on the New York Times Web site. Chow, a researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, had no experience in the health sciences before he came to study the problem of why so many Americans are overweight. “I didn’t even know what a calorie was,” he says.

This kind of outsider’s perspective can be invaluable when attacking a problem as difficult and entrenched as the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. Chow relates the story of starting work at the institute a division of the National Institutes of Health and finding a mathematical model created by a colleague that could predict “how body composition changed in response to what you ate.” The problem, as Chow describes it, was that the model was complicated: “hundreds of equations,” he told the Times . “[We] began working together to boil it down to one simple equation. That’s what applied mathematicians do.”

[More]

Searching for the Onset of Autism

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:43:00 EST

Diffusion tensor image shows white matter pathways in infant at risk for autism. Warmer colors represent higher fractional anisotropy, a measure of white-matter organization. (Credit: Image created by Jason Wolff, University of North Carolina.)

Early behavioral intervention has shown some promise as a way to help children with autism. But it s difficult to see the hallmarks of autism before two years of age with today s diagnostic criteria. Could we find other methods?

[More]

Car Commutes Can Counter Conditioning

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:19:08 EST

The average American car commuter spends a total of about 50 minutes each day getting to and from work. Some spend hours stuck in heavy traffic. Others may enjoy clear roads, but long drives from suburbs to the city.

[More]

Canceled: 'Artificial Volcano' Test for Geoengineering Climate

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:00 EST

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazine

A field trial for a novel UK geoengineering experiment has been cancelled amid questions about a pre-existing patent application for some of the technology involved.

The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project is a collaboration among several UK universities and Cambridge-based Marshall Aerospace to investigate the possibility of spraying particles into the stratosphere to mitigate global warming. [More]

Do Psychedelics Expand the Mind by Reducing Brain Activity?

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:50:00 EST

What would you see if you could look inside a hallucinating brain? Despite decades of scientific investigation, we still lack a clear understanding of how hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), mescaline, and psilocybin (the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms) work in the brain. Modern science has demonstrated that hallucinogens activate receptors for serotonin, one of the brain’s key chemical messengers. Specifically, of the 15 different serotonin receptors, the 2A subtype (5-HT2A), seems to be the one that produces profound alterations of thought and perception. It is uncertain, however, why activation of the 5-HT2A receptor by hallucinogens produces psychedelic effects, but many scientists believe that the effects are linked to increases in brain activity. Although it is not known why this activation would lead to profound alterations of consciousness, one speculation is that an increase in the spontaneous firing of certain types of brain cells leads to altered sensory and perceptual processing, uncontrolled memory retrieval, and the projection of mental “noise” into the mind’s eye.

[More]

Native Buzz

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:45:00 EST

Learn more about the nesting preferences, diversity and distribution of indigenous solitary bees and wasps, share this information, and provide a forum for others interested in native beekeeping [More]

If Salt Lake City's CO2 Emissions Can Be Monitored, Can China's?

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

Negotiating an international agreement to fight climate change is hard enough. But for the past several years, scientists have warned that verifying whether countries meet their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions could be even harder.

[More]

Explore the Human Microbiome [Interactive]

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:45:00 EST

The body contains 10 times more bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms than human cells. Most of these species are harmless--although they can still cause illness if they wind up in the wrong place. In addition, researchers are beginning to learn exactly how some microbial species in the body help digestion and contribute to regulation of appetite and the immune system .

[More]

How Bacteria in Our Bodies Protect Our Health (preview)

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:25:00 EST

Biologists once thought that human beings were physiological islands, entirely capable of regulating their own internal workings. Our bodies made all the enzymes needed for breaking down food and using its nutrients to power and repair our tissues and organs. Signals from our own tissues dictated body states such as hunger or satiety. The specialized cells of our immune system taught themselves how to recognize and attack dangerous microbes--pathogens--while at the same time sparing our own tissues.

[More]

Your Microbiome Community Brings New Meaning to "We the People"

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:05:00 EST

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote English poet John Donne. Nearly four centuries later science is gaining a fuller appreciation of just how literally true that is.

[More]

The World Is Living Beyond Its Resources

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:54:06 EST

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) - Biodiversity has decreased by an average of 28 percent globally since 1970 and the world would have to be 50 percent bigger to have enough land and forests to provide for current levels of consumption and carbon emissions, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.

Unless the world addresses the problem, by 2030 even two planet Earths would not be enough to sustain human activity, WWF said, launching its "Living Planet Report 2012", a biennial audit of the world's environment and biodiversity - the number of plant and animal species.

Yet governments are not on track to reach an agreement at next month's sustainable development summit in Rio de Janeiro, WWF International's director general Jim Leape said.

"I don't think anyone would dispute that we're nowhere near where we should be a month before the conference in terms of the progress of the negotiations and other preparations," Leape told reporters in Geneva.

"I think all of us are concerned that countries negotiating in the U.N. [More]

A drowned nesting colony of Late Cretaceous birds

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:49:00 EST

Enantiornithine nesting colony, reconstruction by Julio Lacerda.

[More]

Empowering the Body to Fix Its Parts

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:33:00 EST

Over the past few months, we have been flooded with emails from distressed parents asking whether their deaf child will be able to hear one day.

With each new email comes a poignant story about a child whose world is silent. It is estimated that hearing loss affects 11% of school age children and even mild loss may adversely influence school performance, cognitive development and language acquisition. The most common type of hearing loss, sensorineural, is the result of injury to the hair cells of the inner ear s Organ of Corti, most commonly due to infections, medication, noise and aging.

[More]

This Is Your Brain on Drugs

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:30:00 EST

In the 1954 foundational text of the Age of Aquarius, The Doors of Perception , Aldous Huxley describes his encounters with mescaline, a psychoactive substance derived from the peyote cactus and traditionally used by Native Americans for religious purposes. Huxley’s experiences include profound changes in the visual world, colors that induce sound, the telescoping of time and space, the loss of the notion of self, and feelings of oneness, peacefulness and bliss more commonly associated with religious visions or an exultant state: “A moment later a clump of Red Hot Pokers, in full bloom, had exploded into my field of vision. So passionately alive that they seemed to be standing on the very brink of utterance, the flowers strained upwards into the blue.... I looked down at the leaves and discovered a cavernous intricacy of the most delicate green lights and shadows, pulsing with undecipherable mystery.” Yet remarkably these enhanced percepts are not grounded in larger but in reduced brain activity, as a recent experiment reports. More on that in a moment.

[More]

Instant Egghead - What's the Difference Between a Comet and an Asteroid?

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:00:00 EST

If you answered "one of Santa's reindeer" and "a popular video game from the 80s" --this episode of Instant Egghead is for you. Scientific American editor John Matson explains how our favorite space rocks differ.

Not-So-Quick Fix: ADHD Behavioral Therapy May Be More Effective Than Drugs in Long Run

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:30:00 EST

Before stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall began their rise to popularity in the 1970s, treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focused on behavioral therapy. But as concerns build over the mounting dosages and extended treatment periods that come with stimulant drugs, clinical researchers are revisiting behavioral therapy techniques. Whereas stimulant medications may help young patients focus and behave in the classroom, research now suggests that behaviorally based changes make more of a difference in the long-term.

[More]

French Oil Co. Starts Injecting Mud to Kill North Sea Gas Leak

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:12:05 EST

LONDON (Reuters) - France's Total started pumping heavy mud down its leaking well in the North Sea on Tuesday to try to stop an escape of gas that has lasted nearly eight weeks and could deprive Britain of nearly 6 percent of its supply this summer.

"The well intervention operation got underway at 4.20 a.m. [More]

Dots, Spots, and Pixels: What s In A Name?

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:59:00 EST

This is a guest post by Jim Perkins, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s medical illustration program . Jim explains the most befuddling concepts in graphics and illustration with clarity and ease – he has written for Symbiartic twice before: first, on why it’s a good idea to calibrate your computer monitor and second, on the mysterious settings known as gamma and white point . I’m delighted to be able to post another of his extremely useful explanations, this time on the difference between dots, spots, and pixels.

As a medical illustrator, I m obsessed with terminology. On a daily basis, I deal with hundreds of anatomical terms, most derived from Latin or Greek roots. And I m a stickler for accuracy. As with our own language, changing just one letter can completely alter the meaning of a word, e.g., the prefix myo - (meaning muscle) becomes mylo - (molar) which could become myelo - (referring to either bone marrow or the spinal cord). As my students will attest, I m also a stickler for the arcane plural forms of Latin terms. The plural of ramus communicans is rami communicantes and the singular of phalanges is phalanx . There s no such thing as a phalange.

[More]

Hot Jupiters Smarten Search for Other Earths

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:08:08 EST

Scientists are looking for Earth-like planets around other stars. But one way to limit the search can be to figure out where an Earth-like planet cannot exist and eliminate those types of systems.

[More]

One More Year of School Found to Improve Longevity

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:00:00 EST

By Alice Lighton of Nature magazine

Shortly after the Second World War, the Swedish government conducted a vast social experiment to decide whether to implement educational reform. [More]

Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse Recorded in Octopus DNA

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:47:00 EST

Map of current land and ice separating the Weddell and Ross seas, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Wutsje/CIA

Octopuses have made themselves at home in most of the world’s oceans from the warmest of tropical seas to the deep, dark reaches around hydrothermal vents. Antarctic species , such as Turquet’s octopuses ( Pareledone turqueti ), even live slow, quiet lives near the South Pole . But these retiring creatures offer a rare opportunity to help understand how this extreme part of the Earth has changed in recent geologic times and what climate change might bring there in the near future.

[More]

How Neuroscientists and Magicians Are Conjuring Brain Insights

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:41:00 EST

Apollo Robbins (right) in action removing the wristwatch of Mariette DiChristina. (Credit: Flip Phillips.)

I see you have a watch with a buckle. Standing at my side, Apollo Robbins held my wrist lightly as he turned my hand over and back.

[More]

Gas-Rich States Lose Fracking Lottery

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:18:10 EST

By Joan Gralla

(Reuters) - While Pennsylvania, northwestern Louisiana and gas-rich areas around the Gulf of Mexico are losing jobs and revenue as the fracking industry shrinks after a price collapse, oil-rich North Dakota and Texas are in the midst of a boom.

Other winners in the fracking lottery include central and southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Wyoming, where the economy is expanding and revenues are climbing.

As oil prices are expected to stay around $100 a barrel for at least a couple of years, the success of these states may last longer. [More]

Gene Linked to Increased Risk of PTSD

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:00:00 EST

By Mo Costandi of Nature magazine

European researchers have identified a gene that is linked to improved memory, but also to increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Dominique de Quervain of the University of Basel in Switzerland and his colleagues recruited around 700 healthy young volunteers, obtaining DNA samples from them to analyze the sequence of their PRKCA gene. [More]

Prime Suspect: Did the Science Consultant Do It?

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:41:00 EST

It’s no secret that Jen-Luc Piquant is a huge fan of the TV series Bones , and last week’s episode was particularly amusing because it poked fun at Hollywood and science consultants. Entitled “The Suit on the Set,” the plot brought Booth and Brennan to Tinsel Town to visit the set of a fictional movie being made of Brennan’s (equally fictional) bestselling novel. True to form, once the camera starts rolling and Brennan hears the first line of Hollywood “science-y dialogue,” she hollers “Cut!” and launches into a lengthy objection about the inaccuracy of the scientific details.

The VP of production assures Brennan that the crew does have a science consultant on the set — and it turns out to be a Canadian forensic podiatrist named Doug Philmore who appeared in an episode last season. But Doug confesses that, despite his best efforts, the film’s director couldn’t care less about scientific accuracy, and rarely incorporates his input. On the plus side, when the stunt corpse is replaced with a real one — a murdered studio exec, natch! — and Booth and Brennan take over the case, at least they’ve got a fully functioning forensic lab to work with, because it turned out to cost just as much to buy real equipment as build prop replicas.

[More]

What Are Science's Ugliest Experiments?

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:41:00 EST

When I teach history of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, I devote plenty of time to science’s glories, the kinds of achievements that my buddy George Johnson wrote about in The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). George helps us appreciate what Galileo did with inclined planes, Newton with prisms, Pavlov with dogs, Galvani with frogs, Millikan with oil drops, Faraday with a magnet and coil of wire. (When George demonstrated Faraday’s experiment on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report , Stephen Colbert found the experiment so shocking that he blurted out, “Mother——!”) But I tell my students about science’s missteps, too, to remind them that scientists can be as flawed as the rest of us mortals. In that negative spirit, here are five experiments that I consider to be especially hideous, horrible, immoral in short, ugly.

Walter Freeman and Transorbital Lobotomies

[More]

Astronomers Detect Smallish Exoplanet's Infrared Glow

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:40:08 EST

Here’s a hot topic: astronomers have detected infrared radiation from a faraway planet not much bigger than our own.

[More]

Google-Backed Wind Power Line Clears Hurdle

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:47:01 EST

(Reuters) - A planned $5 billion transmission line to send power from wind farms off the East Coast cleared a hurdle, allowing the Google Inc-backed project to move to the next step in the approval process, officials said.

The Department of the Interior declared on Monday there was "no overlapping competitive interest" in proposed areas for building the line off the mid-Altantic coast. [More]

Know Your Neurons: The Discovery and Naming of the Neuron

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:00 EST

Different Types of Neurons (click to enlarge). A. Purkinje cell B. Granule cell C. Motor neuron D. Tripolar neuron E. Pyramidal Cell F. Chandelier cell G. Spindle neuron H. Stellate cell (Credit: Ferris Jabr; based on reconstructions and drawings by Cajal)

Over the years, I have taught my copy of Microsoft Word a lot of neuroscience terminology: amygdala , corpus callosum , dendritic spines , voxel. But it always knew what neuron meant. I thought I did too.

[More]

Look, Computer, No Hands!

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:56:08 EST

It's common for us to address our computers using hand gestures, although many convey frustration and may involve a single finger. In the future, however, sign language could become an effective way of surfing the Web, managing files or manipulating virtual objects on screen.

[More]

Asian Demand Forecasts Boom for Coal

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

China will widen its gap with the United States as the world's largest coal-producing country by the end of the decade, riding continued strong demand from its electric power and steel-making sectors, according to a new analysis from New York-based GBI Research.

[More]

Time to Can the Round Numbers

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:09:00 EST

Ever notice that we ve got a thing for round numbers? We like our data neat and tidy.

The world of ocean pollution and litter prevention is filled with nice round numbers. Like those lists of how long various consumer goods take to go away once they escape into the environment…

[More]

Livestock bacteria are as old as the livestock they kill

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:57:00 EST

Aurochs were the ancestors of domestic cattle. Photo Marcus S mnick

Animals were wilder then. Horns were longer, temperaments fiercer. These wild things had forever been free when humans took control of their flocks and herds, 10.000 years ago. Through careful breeding and rearing, the first pastoralists of the Near East moulded the beasts into more docile versions of their former selves. Over time, Bezoar became goat and auroch became cow. But it weren’t just the beasts that changed. Somewhere deep inside their lungs, invisible to the human eye, a wild bacterium became livestock disease.

[More]

How barley domesticated its clock

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:48:00 EST

Most organisms that live on or near the surface of the Earth or its oceans have evolved a circadian clock – a daily timer of all biochemical, physiological and behavioral functions.

Daily cycle of light and darkness in the environment is a selective factor – having an internal clock is an adaptation that allows organisms to predict and prepare for instead of passively react to cyclical changes in the environment. The regularity of the light-dark cycle is usually a good predictor for other (perhaps not as precise) cycles of temperature, availability of food, or activity of predators.

[More]

Older Adults Prize Accuracy More Than Speed

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:30:00 EST

Older adults often take longer to make a decision than young adults do. But that does not mean they are any less sharp. According to research at Ohio State University, the slower response time of older adults has more to do with prizing accuracy over speed.

[More]