How a German City Developed — And Then Lost — Generations of Math Geniuses
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 915 words
| Trudie Dory
There are two things that connect the names Gauss, Riemann, Hilbert and Noether. One is their outstanding breadth of contributions to the field of mathematics. The other is that each was a professor at the same university in Göttingen, Germany.
Although relatively unknown today, Göttingen, a small German university town, was for a time one of the most productive centers of mathematics in history.
Göttingen's rise to mathematical primacy occurred over generations, but its fall took less than a decade when its stars were pushed abroad by the advent of National Socialism, the ideology of the Nazi Party.
[Read More]Million-Year-Old Bubbles Reveal Antarctica's Oldest Climate Snapshot
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 631 words
| Trudie Dory
A whiff of air frozen in ice for 1 million years provides a new snapshot of Earth's ancestral climate.
Scientists uncovered the ancient climate record from Antarctic blue ice. The ice core was drilled from a region called the Allan Hills, about an hour by plane from the McMurdo research station. Bubbles inside the ice are tiny windows into Earth's former atmosphere. Gases such as carbon dioxide and methane were trapped and preserved inside the bubbles when snow fell in the past.
[Read More]Mini Neanderthal Brains Are Growing in Petri Dishes
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 803 words
| Trudie Dory
Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago, but thanks to cutting-edge science, there is now a lab in California that has petri dishes filled with pea-size versions of the cavemen's brains.
Why are researchers cultivating and studying these mini brains? The reason, they say, is that these small neural lumps may reveal why Neanderthals died out and Homo sapiens went on to conquer much of the planet.
"Neanderthals are fascinating because they shared Earth with us, and there is now genetic evidence we actually bred with them,"
[Read More]Mystery of Whale and Dolphin Strandings May Hinge on NASA Data
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 626 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Dolphins, whales and other cetaceans are found stranded along coasts worldwide, and now scientists are turning to NASA satellite data to figure out how the animals get off course.
The cause of the mass strandings remains a topic of debate. Coronal mass ejections, for example, occur when the sun launches a huge cloud of magnetized particles into space, disrupting Earth's magnetic field. A recent theory surrounding sea animal strandings suggests that geomagnetic changes caused by this type of solar storm could confuse the animals, which rely on the planet’s magnetic field for navigation.
[Read More]New Health Risk Found in Public Pools
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 546 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Public swimming pools are more dangerous than you might think, a new study suggests. When sweat and urine, among other organics, mix with the disinfectants in pool water, the result can be hazardous to health.
The findings, announced this week, link the application of disinfectants in recreational pools to genetic cell damage that has been shown to be linked with adverse health outcomes such as asthma and bladder cancer.
Pool water represents extreme cases of disinfection that differ from the disinfection of drinking water as pools are continuously exposed to disinfectants.
[Read More]Parents Give Unneeded, Harmful Cold Medicines
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 477 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Many parents give their young children cough or cold medicines that the kids don't need, and that could cause harm, researchers say.
In a new poll, 44 percent of parents with children under age 4 said they had given their kids multi-symptom cough and cold medicine, 42 percent reported giving the children cough medicine, and 25 percent said they gave decongestants.
Doctors have known since at least the 1990s that cough and cold medicines are unlikely to help children, and since the mid-2000s, studies have shown that these medications could actually be harmful, said Dr.
[Read More]Physicists 'See' Location of 23,000 Single Atoms for First Time
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 767 words
| Patria Henriques
For the first time, scientists have seen the exact locations of more than 23,000 atoms in a particle that's small enough to fit inside the wall of a single cell.
A team led by Peter Ercius of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Jianwei Miao of UCLA used a scanning electron microscope to examine a particle that was made of iron (Fe) and platinum (Pt) that was only 8.4 nanometers across, they reported yesterday (Feb.
[Read More]Sky-High Microbes: How Far Up Can Life Exist?
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 838 words
| Patria Henriques
Organisms could live more than 30 miles (50 kilometers) above Earth's surface, in an atmospheric zone known as the stratopause, scientists say.
At those heights in the atmosphere, air pressure is only a tiny fraction of what it is at sea level, and temperatures hover around freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius). But this temperature, which is warmer than that of the air below and above the stratopause, creates a potential home for microbial life that could have once been lofted up by storms, volcanic eruptions, high-altitude aircraft and other human ventures far above Earth.
[Read More]Spider Bite Kills Florida Man
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 228 words
| Fernande Dalal
A Florida man has died from complications of a spider bite, a rare fatality caused by an arachnid.
The AP reports that Ronald Reese, 62, of Lakeland, Fla., died Feb. 16 after six months of treatment, including hospital stays, for a spider bite on his neck. It's unknown what kind of spider bit Reese, but the circumstances surrounding the bite and the fatal nature suggest it was a brown recluse.
[Read More]Why Climate Change Won't Intensify Extreme Snowstorms
Posted on May 28, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 658 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Better hold on to that snow shovel. Despite global warming, the massive snowstorms that bury cars and close down schools aren't disappearing any time soon.
Even though ferocious snowstorms will become more frequent this century, there's a glimmer of good news. Their intensity will stay about the same, according to a study published today (Aug. 27) in the journal Nature. This means the amount of snow dumped during the worst snowstorms will be similar to records set in the past.
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