Carbon Dioxide from Cars, Part 2
2010-09-05 14:00:08
[More] Carbon - Environment - Carbon Cycle - Carbon dioxide - Carbon Management

It's Very Tough To Tell Just How Drunk Someone Is
2010-09-04 14:00:08
[More] Podcast - Directories - Hosting - Free - Web Design and Development

Sounds like art fraud: Acoustic waves give clues to paintings' provenance
2010-09-04 11:00:00
Theft, imitation and outright deception can make a painting's history even murkier than centuries of accumulated grime. But getting to the bottom of a piece of art's origins can be crucial for restoration --and forensics. [More] Fraud - Crime - Theft - Provenance - Art and Antiquities

Cooking For Geeks: Jeff Potter on Experimenting in the Kitchen
2010-09-03 19:05:08
Jeff Potter, author of Cooking For Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food , talks with daily podcast correspondent Cynthia Graber, and podcast host Steve Mirsky (picture left) tests your knowledge of some recent science in the news. [More] Steve Mirsky - Podcast - Good Food - Cooking - Author

Behavior Influenced More In Denser Networks
2010-09-03 12:31:08
Diseases can spread quickly. Someone with a cold infects a few casual contacts, who in turn infect others. Ideas can also spread that way, along so-called random networks. But Damon Centola at MIT says that ideas and beliefs spread faster and more efficiently when they’re reinforced in clustered networks, with overlapping connections among the members.Centola recruited more than 1,500 participants for what was billed as a Web-based health community. Each had an anonymous profile and was matched with health buddies. In one group, a minimal number of links connected the participants. The other group was denser, with redundant links. [More] Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Social network - Social sciences - Damon Centola - Psychology

How Can Los Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change?
2010-09-03 12:01:00
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Matthew Kahn's book Climatopolis .Los Angeles is a hedonist’s paradise. At night, you can cruise the Sunset Strip. Although The Doors no longer play there, you may run into Paris Hilton or Britney Spears before seeing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at a red-carpet event. During the winter, you might venture downtown to watch Kobe Bryant and the Lakers play. Every day of the year you can sit outside at Starbucks and try to identify professional basketball players looking for a latte in West Los Angeles. In spring 2009 I spotted Baron Davis of the Los Angeles Clippers at a Westwood Starbucks (but he didn’t seem to recognize me). In fall 2009 I spotted Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys as he strolled in Little Holmby Park (he didn’t give me a knowing nod or wink either). I saw Vin Diesel jog past my house not long ago (again, no seeming recognition on his part). Even the dignified former secretary of state, Warren Christopher, didn’t recognize me as he got out of his car while parking on my block. These cases suggest that I’m not a VIP, but a player such as you will have the option of ending the night at a party at the Playboy Mansion near UCLA. [More] Los Angeles Clippers - Baron Davis - Los Angeles - Basketball - Kobe Bryant

Lased and Confused: Off-the-Shelf Infrared Lasers Could Ward Off Missile Attacks on Military Helicopters
2010-09-03 11:30:00
Helicopter-mounted lasers that can dazzle and defend against heat-seeking missiles are now under development, researchers reveal. [More] Laser - Missile - Infrared homing - Helicopter - Business

MIND Reviews: The Art of Choosing
2010-09-03 10:00:00
The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar. Hachette Book Group, 2010 [More] Sheena Iyengar - Arts - Literature - TED - Coca-Cola

Worms for brains: Can genes point the way to the cerebral cortex's common ancestor with marine annelids?
2010-09-02 17:10:00
Marine worms might seem like lowly, slow-witted creatures, but new gene mapping shows that we might share an ancient brainy ancestor with them. [More] Annelid - Gene - Cerebral cortex - Worms - Animal

Physics of free kicks: The hidden advantage of long-distance soccer shots
2010-09-02 14:10:00
When Brazilian defender Roberto Carlos struck a powerful free-kick from about 30 meters out in a 1997 international match against France, he could not have known that scientists would still be discussing his feat more than a dozen years later. Indeed, he could not even have known that the ball would improbably find the back of the net . But find the net it did, swinging well wide of a wall of French defenders, hooking viciously to the left, and glancing off the inside of the goalpost. The French goalkeeper could only turn and watch in apparent disbelief as the ball came to rest in his goal. [More] Roberto Carlos - Physics - France - Association football - Goalkeeper

Ants Protect Acacia Trees from Elephants
2010-09-02 13:08:08
We all know that elephants aren’t really scared of mice. But a new study shows that they’re really not crazy about something even smaller: ants. In fact, elephants dislike ants so much that they avoid acacia trees that harbor the tiny, six-legged nectar-suckers. [More] Biology - Flora and Fauna - Animalia - Insecta - Hymenoptera

Shaky Ground: Can Seismologists Be Charged with a Crime for Not Predicting Deadly Quakes?
2010-09-02 09:00:00
The adage “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” does not quite capture the following pair of situations. It’s more like “damned if you could (but you can’t), damned if you couldn’t (but you kind of did).”First, the “damned if you could (but you can’t)”. On April 4 at 3:40 p.m.,  a magnitude 7.2 earthquake rocked Baja, Mexico, and was felt well north. The event elicited the following post on Twitter 16 minutes later from New Age lifemeister Dee­pak Chopra: “Had a powerful meditation just now--caused an earthquake in Southern California.” (Lawrence Krauss, too, lays into Deepak on page 36 for his lack of understanding of quantum physics. There’s plenty to bust Chopra about.) [More] Mexico - Southern California - Earthquake - New Age - California

Toxic avenger: One man's desperate idea to save the rhinos--poison their horns
2010-09-01 12:00:00
With rhinoceros poaching in Africa approaching an all-time high , one nature preserve owner has had enough. Ed Hern, owner of the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve near Johannesburg, South Africa, is experimenting with injecting cyanide into his rhinos' horns. He believes the poison will not harm the rhinos, because there are no blood vessels in the horn to carry the poison the rest of the rhino's body. But if anyone kills the animals and sells the horns for use in traditional Asian medicine, the end-consumer could pay the ultimate price. [More] South Africa - Africa - Poaching - Rhinoceros - Medicine

The Deepening Crisis: When Will We Face the Planet's Environmental Problems?
2010-09-01 09:00:00
With this final column I will transition Sustainable Developments from Scientific American to the home page of the Earth Institute ( www.earth.columbia.edu ). Although I will continue to contribute occasional essays to the magazine, I will use this last regular column to say thank you and take stock of the deepening crisis of sustainable development.During the four years of this column, the world’s inability to face up to the reality of the growing environmental crisis has become even more palpable. Every major goal that international bodies have established for global environmental policy as of 2010 has been postponed, ignored or defeated. Sadly, this year will quite possibly become the warmest on record, yet another testimony to human-induced environmental catastrophes running out of control. [More] Sustainable development - Environment - Earth - The Earth Institute - Environmental policy

If the world is going to hell, why are humans doing so well?
2010-09-01 07:00:00
For decades, apocalyptic environmentalists (and others) have warned of humanity's imminent doom, largely as a result of our unsustainable use of and impact upon the natural systems of the planet. After all, the most recent comprehensive assessment of so-called ecosystem services -- benefits provided for free by the natural world , such as clean water and air--found that 60 percent of them are declining. [More] Drinking water - Environmentalism - Human - Environment - Water

Engineering students happily deafened by Mwanga metalworkers
2010-08-31 16:00:00
Editor's Note: Students from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering are working in Tanzania to help improve sanitation and energy technologies in local villages. The student-led group , known as Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), will file dispatches from the field during their trip. This is their sixth blog post for Scientific American.The rooster in the room next to us crowed loudly at sunrise, and we despondently got out of bed with the goal of finding Fundi [see photo at left] , the town of Kalinzi's elusive stove maker. We found him farming and arranged to meet with him after work at the seventh hour of the Swahili clock, 1 p.m. international time (Swahili time starts with the first hour of sunlight and is therefore six hours behind). [More] Tanzania - Swahili language - Engineering - Dartmouth College - Thayer School of Engineering

Evolutionary psycho-logy: Commandeering genetics to explain why Obama really is a Muslim
2010-08-31 14:30:00
[More] genetic - Barack Obama - United States - Psychology - Biology

Dinner Party Discovered 12,000 Years Later
2010-08-31 12:10:08
We humans love excuses to gather for a rousing evening of community--featuring lots of food. Now researchers have evidence for the earliest known group feasting.At a 12,000-year-old burial site in northern Israel, archaeologists found the remains of at least 71 tortoises and two wild cattle in specially built hollows in a cave. The tortoise shells surrounded the remains of individuals who the scientists say were shamans. And there’s evidence that the animals were cooked and eaten. Based on the bones, the researchers estimate that the meat could have supported about 35 people, maybe more. [More] Archaeology - Israel - Human - Social Sciences - Burial

Got E. coli ? Raw Milk's Appeal Grows Despite Health Risks
2010-08-31 11:00:00
Milk is well known as a great dietary source of protein and calcium, not to mention an indispensable companion to cookies. But "nature's perfect food," a label given to milk over time by a variety of boosters, including consumer activists, government nutritionists and the American Dairy Council, has become a great source of controversy, too. The long-running dispute over whether milk, both from cows and goats, should be consumed in raw or pasteurized form--an argument more than a century old--has heated up in the last five years, according to Bill Marler , a Washington State lawyer who takes raw milk and other food poisoning cases. [More] Raw Milk - Milk - Pasteurization - United States - Health

Money Buys Unhappiness
2010-08-31 10:00:00
“ ’Tis the gift to be simple,” the Shakers sing. Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks take vows of poverty. Why? A new study published online in May in Psychological Science offers a hint. Money--even the thought of it--reduces satisfaction from life’s simple pleasures.Studies have shown that a person’s ability to savor experiences predicts their degree of happiness. Savoring is defined as the emotions of joy, awe, excitement and gratitude derived during an experience. Psychologist Jordi Quoidbach of the University of Liège in Belgium and his colleagues divided 374 adults, ranging from custodians to senior administrators, into two randomly assigned groups. The first group was shown a picture of a stack of money; the control group was shown the same picture blurred beyond recognition. Then the participants were given psychological tests to measure their ability to savor pleasant experiences. The results showed that people who had been shown the money scored significantly lower. [More] Psychology - Belgium - Happiness - Scientific control - Jordi Quoidbach