Scientific American - Biology

Are University Labs Criminally Dangerous?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

On a late afternoon in December 2008, the experiment Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji was working on went up in flames. The 23-year-old laboratory assistant at the University of California, Los Angeles, suffered second and third degree burns over 43 percent of her body and died almost three weeks later in a hospital burn unit.

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The Neglect of Mental Illness Exacts a Huge Toll, Human and Economic

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Mental health care is one of the biggest unmet needs of our time. Nearly one in two people in the U.S. will suffer from depression, anxiety disorders or another mental health ailment at some point in their life, and about one in 17 Americans currently has a serious mental illness. Young people are especially prone to these troubles. Yet millions of people living with these conditions do not receive the care they require. In recent years the health system and state and federal governments have taken steps to right that wrong. Progress has been slow, and budget cuts and legal wrangling have now put many of these measures at risk. Doctors, insurers and politicians need to pick up the pace.

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Stress Linked To Aging Chromosomes

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:43:08 EST

Too much sun, smoking and a poor diet can make us look older. But additional forces are at work aging our cells.

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New Family of Limbless Amphibians Discovered in India

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:50:00 EST

From Nature magazine.

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Our Birth Control Undermines Amphibians

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:07:08 EST

The most common types of ingested birth control contain estrogen. But the hormone doesn’t just prevent human babies. It may be lowering numbers of frog babies, too. Because estrogens can travel unaltered through a woman’s system, and back into the environment--where they interfere with the courtship of frogs.

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Fossilized, 'Pompeii' Forest Discovered Under Ash

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST

About 300 million years ago, volcanic ash buried a tropical forest located in what is now Inner Mongolia, much like it did the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.

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Smoking Messes Mouth Bacterial Community

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:46:08 EST

It's no secret cigarettes can yellow your teeth. But tobacco smoke has another, unseen effect. It can wipe out the healthy bacteria in your mouth, leaving the field open for pathogenic bugs--like the kind that cause gum disease. So says a study in the journal Infection and Immunity . [Purnima S. Kumar et al., " Tobacco smoking affects bacterial acquisition and colonization in oral biofilms "]

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Alex the Parrot's Posthumous Paper Shows His Mathematical Genius

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:30:00 EST

From Nature magazine

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Wasting Away: Can a Gates Foundation-Funded Toilet-Design Initiative End a Foul Practice in the Developing World?

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

Chances are that if you are reading this, you have a private flush toilet a few steps from your bed. Your commode is more reliable than your mobile connection, and likely will outlast all of your home appliances. Yet huge tracts of the developing world have yet to see so much as a latrine, a situation that facilitates the spread of debilitating or even deadly diarrheal diseases . [More]

Squid Can Fly to Save Energy

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

Squid can save energy by flying rather than swimming, according to calculations based on high-speed photography.

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Twitter Reveals People Are Happiest in the Morning

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

“Happy hour” is not when you might expect it to be, according to a new analysis of about half a billion Twitter messages from around the globe. On average, people are chipper when they wake up and become grouchy as the day wears on. This pattern holds true on weekends, too, but is delayed by about two hours--a trend confirmed in tweets from the United Arab Emirates, where the workweek is Sunday through Thursday. The data suggest that sleep schedules strongly influence mood cycles. The duo at Cornell University who carried out the research, published last September in Science, say that the rising popularity of online social media is allowing scientists to study human behavior in surprising new ways.

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Raising the Dead: New Species of Life Resurrected from Ancient Andean Tomb

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

QUITO, ECUADOR--Long before the Spanish conquered the Incas in 1533, and centuries before the Incas inhabited this area, the present-day site of Quito International Airport was a marshy lake surrounded by Indian settlements--the Quitus on one shore and the Ipias on the other. Between A.D. 200 and 800 these cultures prospered here, fishing the lake, growing corn, beans and potatoes in the fertile soil, and fermenting an alcoholic drink-- chicha --made of a watery corn broth.

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Robot Uses Lizard Tail to Leap

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Science fiction often envisions worlds populated by humanoid robots. In reality, insects, reptiles and nonhuman animals often serve as a more practical template for automatons. The more legs a robot has, the more easily it can navigate tough terrain. Likewise, claws are less challenging to emulate than primate-esque hands, and, as a team of researchers reported recently, tails are an incredibly versatile stabilizing mechanism.

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Photo Quiz: What Is It?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The experience of indulging in your favorite foods involves not only tasting flavors but also feeling the textures sweep across your tongue. [More]

MIND Reviews: The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to Be a Better Husband [More]

Readers Respond to "Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?" and Other Articles

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

ENTOMOLOGICAL ETHICS [More]

Fruit Flies Take Medicinal Nips

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:54:08 EST

We’re not the only animals that like to knock back the hard stuff. Studies have shown that some mammals seek out food and drink that naturally contains alcohol. And according to new research, fruit flies will purposely hit the bottle: to self-medicate.

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Microchip Implant Gives Medication On Command

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:10:00 EST

For people who face frequent needle jabs to treat chronic conditions, a new technology is on the horizon that might make treatment a lot less painful. [More]

How the First Plant Came to Be

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:01:00 EST

Earth is the planet of the plants--and it all can be traced back to one green cell. The world's lush profusion of photosynthesizers--from towering redwoods to ubiquitous diatoms--owe their existence to a tiny alga eons ago that swallowed a cyanobacteria and turned it into an internal solar power plant.

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Top Multitaskers Help Explain How Brain Juggles Thoughts (preview)

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves,” Albert Einstein is purported to have said. The quote acknowledges a fundamental characteristic of human attention. Sometimes there simply is not enough of it to go around.

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