Scientific American (December 17, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Search for Planet Nine’….
If there’s a hidden world in the solar system, a new telescope should find it
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An injectable HIV drug with a novel mechanism shows remarkable ability to prevent infection
When the forces of plate tectonics tear continents apart, it’s an incredibly violent process, unfolding in slow motion. It was also thought to be very local: Magma from hot, rising mantle rock seeds volcanoes along the rift zone, while the far-removed cold interiors of continents remain intact.
Microscopic algalike fossils from China reported early this year astounded evolutionary biologists with their extreme age. Dated at 1.6 billion years old, the specimens suggest one of the hallmarks of complex life—multicellularity—arose far earlier than previously thought.
For 98 years, physicists knew of two types of permanently magnetic materials. Now, they’ve found a third. In familiar ferromagnets such as iron, unpaired electrons on neighboring atoms spin in the same direction, magnetizing the material so that, for example, it sticks to a refrigerator. Antiferromagnets such as chromium have zero overall magnetism, but they possess an atomic-scale magnetic pattern, with neighboring electrons spinning in opposite directions. Novel altermagnets—hypothesized 5 years ago—share aspects of both.
Largest study of links between consumption of the beverage and gut diversity finds coffee-loving bacteria.
Chemistry of the planet’s atmosphere suggests that its interior has never held water.
Artefacts from a Mesopotamian archaeological site suggest that people in the region founded and later rejected an early form of the organized state.
Johns Hopkins Magazine (December 6, 2024): Microplastics are among and in us; meet opera composer and hitmaker Kevin Puts; the science of seeing faces in nature; addressing the epidemic of eatings disorders in America, and more…
Next to opioid use disorder, anorexia is the most deadly mental health illness. In all, 5% of patients will die within the first four years of diagnosis as a result of heart failure, organ shutdown, low blood sugar, or suicide. The Eating Disorders Coalition reports that every 52 minutes, at least one person loses their life as a direct result of an eating disorder.
Maya Dizack, BSPH ’24 (ScM), set out years ago on a journey down the Mississippi River to see how widespread microplastics were in this major body of water. Her findings were more alarming than expected. But just how concerned
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Model-stumping benchmark shows human experts remain on top—for now
Researchers probe volcanoes’ response to a changing world
Urgent action underway to bolster treatments and prevent dangerous microbes from spilling across borders
Study participants rated fictional scientists who admitted their own knowledge gaps as more credible.
Neighbouring cells bolster the immune cells’ tumour-fighting abilities.
The only continent where amber had not been found no longer has that distinction, thanks to a sediment core drilled just offshore.
Relatively warm regions of the object called Makemake could also be explained by a dusty planetary ring.
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (December 2, 2024): The latest issue features ‘From Atop The Magic Mountain’ – One-Hundred years later, Thomas Mann’s epic remains as prophetic as ever.
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war By Samantha Rose Hill
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil
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A multifunctional metamaterial can change shape and steer light simultaneously
Footprints in Kenya show that hominin bipedalism had a complex evolutionary history
Stimulating certain brain cells in mice seems to ease anxiety without causing hallucination-like effects.
A pall of smoke from burning cropland each year decreases rainfall in the annual monsoon.
Understanding how human neurons cope with the energy demands of a large, active brain could open up new avenues for treating neurological disorders.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to scrutinize proven vaccines and slash staff at research and regulatory agencies
$1 billion SinoProbe II will map the depths with drill rigs and instrument arrays
Boomers Daily 