The Conversation
The question of when people first arrived in Australia has been the subject of lively debate among archaeologists, and one with important consequences for the global story of human evolution. Australia is the end point of early modern human migration out of Africa, and sets the minimum age for the global dispersal of humans.
Joshua Sokol, NewScientist
Imagine you're an astronomer with bright ideas about the hidden laws of the cosmos. Like any good scientist, you craft an experiment to test your hypothesis.Then comes bad news there's no way to carry it out, except maybe in a computer simulation. For cosmic objects are way too unwieldy for us to grow them in Petri dishes or smash them together as we do with subatomic particles.
Dr. Joseph Perrone, RCScience
A landmark study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine discovered the fountain of youth tastes a lot like freshly brewed coffee.After examining the diets of more than 500,000 Europeans over roughly 16 years, researchers found that increased coffee consumption was associated with a reduced risk of death from all causes. Cue the flood of headlines claiming Coffee drinking could lead to longer life.
Beth Mole, Ars Technica
After the ghastly symptoms subside, Ebola may not be done; it may just shift to a clever stealth mode, a new study suggests.Examining archived tissue samples from infected monkeys, researchers found that Ebola can create a cryptic viral reservoir in certain immune cells and hide in corners of the body where the rest of the immune system has little reach.
Aaron Neil, Quillette
Each year, 265 million in public funding goes toward The Canada Research Chairs Program, a program that funds top researchers at Canadian universities. Now, Science Minister Kirsty Duncan is threatening to defund its chairs for not meeting diversity targets.
Lukianoff & Haidt, The Atlantic
Of all the ideas percolating on college campuses these days, the most dangerous one might be that speech is sometimes violence. We're not talking about verbal threats of violence, which are used to coerce and intimidate, and which are illegal and not protected by the First Amendment.
Herton Escobar, Sci Mag
Strapped for cash after 3 years of austerity budgets, Brazilian scientists are bracing for an even harsher year ahead. The federal government is planning to slash science funding by nearly 40% in 2018, jeopardizing major projects including Brazil's participation in world-class telescope facilities, ScienceInsider has learned.Brazilian scientists were already reeling before the latest dispiriting news. This year, the science ministry absorbed a 44% budget decrease. Perennial... Читать дальше...
J. M. Porup, Ars Technica
A pair of Apollo-era NASA computers and hundreds of mysterious tape reels have been discovered in a deceased engineer's basement in Pittsburgh, according to a NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.Most of the tapes are unmarked, but the majority of the rest appear to be instrumentation reels for Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, NASA's fly-by missions to Jupiter and Saturn.
Sloan & Batista, The Conversation
The first exoplanet was spotted in 1988. Since then more than 3,000 planets have been found outside our solar system, and it's thought that around 20% of Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet in their habitable zones. We don't yet know if any of these host life and we don't know how life begins. But even if life does begin, would it survive?Earth has undergone at least five mass extinctions in its history. It's long been thought that an asteroid impact ended the dinosaurs. Читать дальше...
Don Lincoln, Space.com
Many science-savvy people take it for granted that the universe is made not only of Carl Sagan's oft-quoted "billions and billions" of galaxies, but also a vast amount of an invisible substance called dark matter. This odd matter is thought to be a new kind of subatomic particle that doesn't interact via electromagnetism, nor the strong and weak nuclear forces. Dark matter is also supposed to be five times more prevalent in the universe than the ordinary matter of atoms.
Edwin Cartlidge, PW
Physicists in the US have shown that protons themselves can be used to provide the complex 3D images essential for tailoring proton therapy to individual patients. Researchers in the US built a prototype detector to carry out "proton computed tomography" (proton CT), and found that in around 6 min it could generate maps of proton stopping power energy lost per unit distance in a material that were more accurate and required a much lower radiation dose than existing techniques.
Emily Conover, Science News
Physicists have now probed the memory of Maxwell's demon, a devious, hypothetical beast. By peeking at information retained by a laboratory version of the creature, scientists confirmed the role of information in saving the second law of thermodynamics from the onslaught of a tiny, superpowerful being intent on wreaking havoc.In work reported online July 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers created a quantum version of Maxwell's... Читать дальше...
Ethan Siegel, SWaB!
In all the known Universe, there's only one planet capable of housing the complex, intelligent life we see on our home world: Earth. While very distant worlds around other stars may have the potential to be Earth-like and perhaps even inhabited, we have yet to venture anywhere close to that far. What about looking for another world here in our Solar System? The most likely candidate is Mars, which seems to have had many Earth-like qualities in its past. Perhaps, with a little help, it could be that way again?
