Salon.com > Scientific American http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 03:47:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 America hates science http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/america_hates_science_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/america_hates_science_partner/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 19:04:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287799 Scientific American In his delightful memoir “Uncle Tungsten”, the eminent neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks recounts the swashbuckling chemical adventures of his teenage years, sparked when a sympathetic uncle got him hooked on to the wonders of chemistry. For me the most memorable image from that book is one of the young Sacks standing on a bridge on a river and successively dropping a few grams of the alkali metals – from lithium to cesium – in the water to observe their reaction. Lithium causes little reaction, sodium dances on the surface with a flame while cesium roars like a beast with much sound and fury. Sacks says that after that incident he never forgot the trends in reactivity of the alkali metals, an important principle that’s often taught in high school and college. Many prominent scientists, some of whom later won Nobel Prizes, remember similar exciting adventures with chemistry sets as teenagers.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/america_hates_science_partner/feed/ 58 Is ADHD actually undertreated? http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/is_adhd_actually_undertreated_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/is_adhd_actually_undertreated_partner/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 18:08:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13286884 Scientific American A German children's book from 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman featured “Fidgety Philip,” a boy who was so restless he would writhe and tilt wildly in his chair at the dinner table. Once, using the tablecloth as an anchor, he dragged all the dishes onto the floor. Yet it was not until 1902 that a British pediatrician, George Frederic Still, described what we now recognize as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Since Still's day, the disorder has gone by a host of names, including organic drivenness, hyperkinetic syndrome, attention-deficit disorder and now ADHD.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/is_adhd_actually_undertreated_partner/feed/ 17 How conspiracists think http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/how_conspiracists_think_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/how_conspiracists_think_partner/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:34:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13285899 Scientific American Did NASA fake the moon landing? Is the government hiding Martians in Area 51? Is global warming a hoax? And what about the Boston Marathon bombing…an “inside job” perhaps?

In the book “The Empire of Conspiracy,” Timothy Melley explains that conspiracy theories have traditionally been regarded by many social scientists as “the implausible visions of a lunatic fringe,” often inspired by what the late historian Richard Hofstadter described as “the paranoid style of American politics.” Influenced by this view, many scholars have come to think of conspiracy theories as paranoid and delusional, and for a long time psychologists have had little to contribute other than to affirm the psychopathological nature of conspiracy thinking, given that conspiricist delusions are commonly associated with (schizotype) paranoia.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/how_conspiracists_think_partner/feed/ 320 Can we record our inner monologues? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/can_we_record_our_inner_monologues_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/can_we_record_our_inner_monologues_partner/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13284777 Scientific American On any given day, millions of conversations reverberate through New York City. Poke your head out a window overlooking a busy street and you will hear them: all those overlapping sentences, only half-intelligible, forming a dense acoustic mesh through which escapes an exclamation, a buoyant laugh, a child’s shrill cry now and then. Every spoken consonant and vowel begins as an internal impulse. Electrical signals crackle along branching neurons in brain regions specialized for language and movement; further pulses spread across facial nerves, surge toward the throat and chest and zip down the spine. The diaphragm contracts—pulling air into the lungs—and relaxes, pushing air into that birdcage of calcium and cartilage—the larynx—within which wings of tissue draw near one another and hum. As this vibrating air enters the mouth, the tongue guides its flow and the lips give each breath a final shape and sound. Liberated syllables travel between one person and another in waves of colliding air molecules.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/can_we_record_our_inner_monologues_partner/feed/ 2 Will smartglasses replace eyeglasses? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/#comments Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13283297 Scientific American

Google Glass is just the beginning. The search giant’s smartglasses are in the headlines, but numerous other players are also looking to cash in on what’s expected to be a boom in eyewear that puts virtual and augmented reality face-front.

Smartglasses overlay digital information onto the wearer’s view of the real world. Usage scenarios are limited only by developers’ imaginations. Google Glass has apps for search, navigation, photo capture and sharing, to name a few. Commercial possibilities include enhanced vision systems for use in manufacturing, engineering, health care and other industries. A surgeon could have all of a patient’s vital information literally in front of his eyes while operating, for example.

There’ll be no shortage of smartglass systems in as little as one to two years. Research firm Gartner says there are about a dozen companies with products in the works, many of them ready for prime time. There could be as many as 10 million smartglasses sold worldwide by 2016, if software developers can come up with appealing applications that provide wearers with useful, nonobvious information about their surroundings, according to IMS Research, which defines smartglasses as “wearable computers with a head-mounted display.” Without good apps, the number of smartglasses sold could number only about one million by 2016, IMS adds.

“This stuff is bubbling up and it’s going to happen,” says Trae Vassallo, a partner in venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has joined with fellow firms Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures to fund smartglass app development. Vassallo sees big potential: Kleiner Perkins’s investment will “depend on the quality of the ideas and the entrepreneurs.”

One such company is Rochester, N.Y.–based Vuzix Corp. Its M100 Smart Glasses, now shipping to developers, can run any existing Android app. CEO Paul Travers says developers are building augmented reality (AR) apps for the M100 in areas like fitness, navigation and gaming. “There will be a lot of people in the consumer space that will like these gizmos,” Travers says.

Like Google Glass and most other smartglasses, the M100 has a built-in video camera that projects an image of the real world onto an eyepiece that is essentially a prism. This so-called “wave guide” approach lets developers layer information and graphics into the wearer’s view. Advances in optics and microprocessors fueled by the smartphone revolution are what’s behind the expected boom. “The killer app for all of this are things that allow immersive AR with sensors you can fit in a phone,” says Dan Small, a research principal at Sandia National Laboratories, which has conducted extensive research into augmented reality for the military.

There are limitations: Both Google Glass and the M100 are monocular systems that use a single eyepiece to deliver an augmented field of view of about 14 degrees. Humans’ natural field of view is roughly 180 degrees, so there’s a keyhole effect.

Some manufacturers are developing binocular systems that resemble conventional sunglasses, in part to achieve a wider field and 3-D viewing. Israel-based Lumusmakes AR shades that wouldn’t look out of place at a ski resort. “Google is basically a beam-splitter technology. Looking through that, your view of the world is skewed,” says Lumus business development manager Ari Grobman. “We’re giving you a pair of glasses and overlaying information on that.” He adds Lumus is in licensing talks with several major electronics companies. “We’re hot and heavy in terms of pushing into consumer applications.”

Also taking the binocular approach is Epson Corp. Its Android-powered Moverio BT-100 smartglasses give users the impression they are looking at information on an 80-inch screen through a 23-degree field. Being binocular “is very critical because it allows you to overlay 3-D content in the center of your field of view,” says Eric Mizufuka, new products manager at Epson.

Epson, a division of Seiko, is targeting the commercial market. Partner Scope AR has created BT-100 AR software for use in industrial training. One of its apps overlays images of tools that the wearer would need to fix high-tech equipment, and shows where the parts should go. “We can take someone who’s been working at McDonald’s and turn them into to the equivalent of a worker with 30 years training on that machine,” says Scope founder, Scott Montgomerie.

Other companies developing smartglasses include Olympus, Sensics and AR contact lens developer Innovega. Microsoft and Apple, which holds AR patents, are also said to be eyeing the smartglass market.

Experts say today’s optics and chip technologies are for the first time sufficient for functional AR. What’s needed to deliver fully immersive virtual reality or AR experiences, a la The Matrix, are breakthroughs in tracking technology. To track head movements, AR glasses need fast internal sensors, or an external system. The slightest lag can be disconcerting. “Humans are very adept at picking up latency,” says Sandia’s Small. “The problem is that sensors don’t track like chips do with Moore’s Law.”

Still, it’s expected that the sight of smart-bespectacled workers and consumers won’t be uncommon within a year or two once prices hit the sub-$500 mark—Google Glass prototypes sell for $1,500, if you can get them.
Widespread smartglass use will raise a host of privacy and regulatory issues. “We’re already hearing the term ‘glassholes’,” says Gartner’s Angela McIntyre. And you thought the jerk with the cell phone was bad.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/feed/ 3 Gut microbe makes diesel biofuel http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/gut_microbe_makes_diesel_biofuel_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/gut_microbe_makes_diesel_biofuel_partner/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:14:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13281737 Scientific American Welding bits and pieces from various microbes and the camphor tree into the genetic code of Escherichia coli has allowed scientists to convince the stomach bug to produce hydrocarbons, rather than sickness or more E. coli. The gut microbe can now replicate the molecules, more commonly known as diesel, that burn predominantly in big trucks and other powerful moving machines.

"We wanted to make biofuels that could be used directly with existing engines to completely replace fossil fuels," explains biologist John Love of the University of Exeter in England, who led the research into fuels. "Our next step will be to try to develop a bacterium that could be deployed industrially." Love’s work was published April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/gut_microbe_makes_diesel_biofuel_partner/feed/ 2 Could Tsarnaev have hid from infrared? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/could_tsarnaev_have_hid_from_infrared_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/could_tsarnaev_have_hid_from_infrared_partner/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:28:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13281378 Scientific American Late last Friday a terrible week that began with the bombing of the Boston Marathon came to a satisfying, if somber, conclusion. The last alleged perpetrator of the horrific events at the marathon and MIT was arrested after a most dangerous game of hide and seek.

To help bring Dzhokhar Tsarneav to justice, we took advantage of what is usually invisible to us—heat.

Photos (and videos) like these highlight just how far our detective technology has come. Specifically, Tsarneav was indentified with the aid of a FLIR (forward-looking infrared) camera mounted to a police helicopter. But how does this apparent X-ray vision work, and is there any way the bomber could have hid from this seemingly all-seeing eye?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/could_tsarnaev_have_hid_from_infrared_partner/feed/ 13 Could New York run on renewable energy alone? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/can_an_entire_state_run_on_renewable_energy_alone_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/can_an_entire_state_run_on_renewable_energy_alone_partner/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276751 Scientific American
Three times now, Mark Jacobson has gone out on the same limb. In 2009 he and co-author Mark Delucchi published a cover story in Scientific American that showed how the entire world could get all of its energy — fuel as well as electricity — from wind, water and solar sources by 2030. No coal or oil, no nuclear or natural gas. The tale sounded infeasible — except that Jacobson, from Stanford University, and Delucchi, from the University of California, Davis, calculated just how many hydroelectric dams, wave-energy systems, wind turbines, solar power plants and rooftop photovoltaic installations the world would need to run itself completely on renewable energy.The article sparked a spirited debate on our web site, and it also sparked a larger debate between forward-looking energy planners and those who would rather preserve the status quo. The duo went on to publish a detailed study in the journal Energy Policy that also called out numbers for a U.S. strategy. Two weeks ago Jacobson and a larger team, including Delucchi, did it again. This time Jacobson showed in much finer detail how New York state’s residential, transportation, industrial, and heating and cooling sectors could all be powered by wind, water and sun, or “WWS,” as he calls it. His mix: 40 percent offshore wind (12,700 turbines), 10 percent onshore wind (4,020 turbines), 10 percent concentrated solar panels (387 power plants), 10 percent photovoltaic cells (828 facilities), 6 percent residential solar (five million rooftops), 12 percent government and commercial solar (500,000 rooftops), 5 percent geothermal (36 plants), 5.5 percent hydroelectric (6.6 large facilities), 1 percent tidal energy (2,600 turbines) and 0.5 percent wave energy (1,910 devices). In the process, New York would reduce power demand by 37 percent, largely because the new energy sources are more efficient than the old ones. And because no fossil fuels would have to be purchased or burned, consumer costs would be similar to what they are today, and the state would eliminate a huge portion of its carbon dioxide emissions.New York state could end fossil fuel use and generate all of its energy from wind, water and solar power, according to Mark Jacobson. Image: Graphic by Karl BurkartOnce again, reaction was swift. The New York Times heralded the study as scientifically groundbreaking and practically impossible. But this time Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, is digging in. He took his analysis a step further and found a surprising way to sell his plan. And he’s close to finishing a similar study for California, which will lend more depth to his vision. I asked Jacobson why he’s out to change the world, how he answers his critics and what it will take for his plans to get traction in government.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/can_an_entire_state_run_on_renewable_energy_alone_partner/feed/ 12 Is high-tech security counterproductive? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/is_high_tech_security_at_public_events_counterproductive_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/is_high_tech_security_at_public_events_counterproductive_partner/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:16:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13275237 Scientific American Which is more intrusive: security screening and metal detectors every few blocks, or a drone flying high above it taking video of every little thing you do?

"The best thing would have been a dog," explains Joseph King, professor of terrorism and organized crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former chief of counterterrorism for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "They don't need to be at a choke point; they can move through the crowd."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/is_high_tech_security_at_public_events_counterproductive_partner/feed/ 1 How do improvised explosive devices work? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/how_do_improvised_explosive_devices_work_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/how_do_improvised_explosive_devices_work_partner/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13272493 Scientific American The bombing near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon on Monday killed two and injured more than 100 people on site. Now comes the search for who planted and detonated the explosives, and the motive.

The first bomb was detonated at about 2:45 P.M. local time near one of the many classic storefronts lining the marathon’s home stretch. The second explosive followed within minutes about 50 to 100 yards away. Law enforcement later found and dismantled at least two more explosive devices, according to various news reports.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) such as those used to attack the marathon are sometimes triggered remotely by cell phones. The Associated Press initially reported that law enforcement had the cell network in the vicinity of the finish line shut down after the incident, but later reports contradicted this, indicating that problems receiving a signal were due to the volume of cell phone users on the network.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/how_do_improvised_explosive_devices_work_partner/feed/ 3 Sea pigs and acorn worms: What lurks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/sea_pigs_and_acorn_worms_what_lurks_at_the_bottom_of_the_mariana_trench_partne/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/sea_pigs_and_acorn_worms_what_lurks_at_the_bottom_of_the_mariana_trench_partne/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13271177 Scientific American The deepest, darkest, scariest place on the maps I loved pondering as a child was a crescent-shaped canyon in the western Pacific Ocean.

It was called the Mariana Trench, and at the very, very bottom was the lowest point on Earth’s surface, the Challenger Deep. Its floor was seven terrifying miles down.

What was down there? It was fun to imagine. I didn’t know, and it didn’t seem likely anyone would anytime soon.

In 1989, James Cameron had fun imagining what might be at the bottom of a similar canyon when he made the “The Abyss”, which imagined quite a lot at the bottom of an unspecified Caribbean trench. Eleven-year-old me loved it.

Then, last year, he answered the question for himself.

In February and March, he descended to the bottom of both the New Britain and Mariana Trenches, lights and 3-D Hi-Def cameras blazing, in a slender, lime-green sub called the Deepsea Challenger. He also dropped several autonomous landers built on similar design.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/sea_pigs_and_acorn_worms_what_lurks_at_the_bottom_of_the_mariana_trench_partne/feed/ 1 Do e-readers inhibit reading comprehension? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/do_e_readers_inhibit_reading_comprehension_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/do_e_readers_inhibit_reading_comprehension_partner/#comments Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13269731 Scientific American In a viral YouTube video from October 2011 a 1-year-old girl sweeps her fingers across an iPad's touchscreen, shuffling groups of icons. In the following scenes she appears to pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines as though they too were screens. When nothing happens, she pushes against her leg, confirming that her finger works just fine — or so a title card would have us believe.

The girl's father, Jean-Louis Constanza, presents "A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work" as naturalistic observation — a Jane Goodall among the chimps moment — that reveals a generational transition. "Technology codes our minds," he writes in the video's description. "Magazines are now useless and impossible to understand, for digital natives" — that is, for people who have been interacting with digital technologies from a very early age.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/do_e_readers_inhibit_reading_comprehension_partner/feed/ 51 Is North Korea for real? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/is_north_korea_for_real_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/is_north_korea_for_real_partner/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:48:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13268261 Scientific American North Korea has been threatening its neighbor to the south as well as its U.S. ally with invasion and destruction for more than 60 years. Backed by China, the North made good on the first part of this promise in June 1950, sparking the Korean War. But for the most part the decades of hostile rhetoric since the 1953 armistice that ended the fighting have amounted to little more than minor skirmishes. It’s easy to dismiss North Korea’s latest round of pronunciations and posturing as more of the same, except for one important variation in the Kim Jung-un regime’s verbiage. This time around the threat is “thermonuclear” war, and it comes about two months after North Korea’s third nuclear test prompted the U.N. Security Council to pursue additional sanctions against the North.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/is_north_korea_for_real_partner/feed/ 2 Research: Childhood obesity is a product of environment http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/research_childhood_obesity_is_a_product_of_environment_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/research_childhood_obesity_is_a_product_of_environment_partner/#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:38:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13266008 Scientific American New evidence is confirming that the environment kids live in has a greater impact than factors such as genetics, insufficient physical activity or other elements in efforts to control child obesity. Three new studies, published in the April 8 Pediatrics, land on the import of the 'nurture' side of the equation and focus on specific circumstances in children's or teen's lives that potentially contribute to unhealthy bulk.

In three decades child and adolescent obesity has tripled in the U.S., and estimates from 2010 classify more than a third of children and teens as overweight or obese. Obesity puts these kids at higher risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, and bone or joint problems. The variables responsible are thought to range from too little exercise to too many soft drinks. Now it seems that blaming Pepsi or too little PE might neglect the bigger picture.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/research_childhood_obesity_is_a_product_of_environment_partner/feed/ 9 Can we survive in space unprotected? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/can_we_survive_in_space_unprotected/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/can_we_survive_in_space_unprotected/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:53:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13264788 Scientific American As far as certain death in a science fiction plot line goes, being ejected into the vacuum of space is more than a pretty sure thing. A shove out of the air lock by a mutinous lieutenant or a vicious rip in a space suit, and your average movie victim is guaranteed to die quickly and quietly, though with fewer exploding body parts than screenwriters might have you believe.

In reality, however, animal experiments and human accidents have shown that people can likely survive exposure to vacuum conditions for at least a couple of minutes. Not that you would remain conscious long enough to rescue yourself, but if your predicament was accidental, there could be time for fellow crew members to rescue and repressurize you with few ill effects.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/08/can_we_survive_in_space_unprotected/feed/ 35 Does tar sand oil increase the risk of pipeline spills? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/does_tar_sand_oil_increase_the_risk_of_pipeline_spills_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/does_tar_sand_oil_increase_the_risk_of_pipeline_spills_partner/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:37:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13262813 Scientific American An oil flood through an Arkansas subdivision on March 29 is just the most recent example of pipeline problems in the U.S. In recent weeks, months and years diesel has leaked from a pipeline into wetlands near Salt Lake City; oil has spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana; and about 20,000 barrels of oil have spewed into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The question: Is the problem the pipelines themselves or what they carry?

The answer may be an unfortunate combination of the two. Certainly, the infrastructure has issues. The U.S. is crisscrossed by more than four million kilometers of such pipelines, many decades old. These pipelines spring hundreds of leaks every year, most small. The pipelines can fail for reasons ranging from a backhoe inadvertently striking one to the slow but steady weakening from corrosion. "It's not a matter of if, but when," says Susan Connolly, a resident of Marshall, Mich., right near where the Kalamazoo River spill occurred in 2010 as a result of external corrosion.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/05/does_tar_sand_oil_increase_the_risk_of_pipeline_spills_partner/feed/ 6 Chimps take antidepressants too http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/chimps_take_anti_depressants_too_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/chimps_take_anti_depressants_too_partner/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:35:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13258852 Scientific American As our closest relatives, chimpanzees have played a role in science for nearly 80 years. Because they can contract infections such as HIV and hepatitis, they have proved valuable for biomedical research. This research has revealed another trait, however, that chimpanzees share with humans: vulnerability to psychological damage. Concerned by mounting evidence of lasting trauma in great apes, the European Union banned their use in research in 2010. And in January 2013, a National Institutes of Health report recommended that all but 50 of the nearly 700 chimps in NIH-supported labs be retired to sanctuaries. In 2010 the Scientific American Board of Editors published an editorial calling for a ban on the use of apes in invasive biomedical research.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/chimps_take_anti_depressants_too_partner/feed/ 1 “De-extinction” could spawn birth of hybrid species http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/de_extinction_could_spawn_birth_of_hybrid_species_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/de_extinction_could_spawn_birth_of_hybrid_species_partner/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:52:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254649 Scientific American WASHINGTON, D.C.—A bird that once darkened the skies of the 19th-century U.S. no longer exists, except as well-preserved museum specimens bearing bits of DNA. An ambitious new effort aims to use the latest techniques of genetic manipulation to bring the passenger pigeon back, as North Dakotan Ben Novak, a would-be de-extinction scientist working on the Revive & Restore project at the Long Now Foundation, told the crowd at the TEDxDeExtinction event here on March 15.

"This [pigeon flock] was a biological storm that was rejuvenating resources and allowing other animals to thrive," Novak said of the storms of Ectopistes migratorius feces that used to fall like rain on the landscape of eastern North America. Plus, with the regrowth of forest on the east coast "there is more passenger pigeon habitat every year."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/de_extinction_could_spawn_birth_of_hybrid_species_partner/feed/ 5 How to ace your job interview http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/job_interviews_arent_for_the_faint_of_heart_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/job_interviews_arent_for_the_faint_of_heart_partner/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:11:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254044 Scientific American In today's competitive job market, hopeful employees want to know what qualities lead one job candidate to prevail over dozens of other capable contenders. If we consider the recent appointment of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to the highest post in the Catholic Church, then humility, servility, and meekness may top the list. Numerous anecdotes about Pope Francis' unassuming nature have surfaced since his selection, including stories of him rejecting a chauffeur-driven car and images of him washing the feet of women. Perhaps the lesson here is that job seekers should reflect on their own relative insignificance, and strive to convey modesty, restraint, and vulnerability in the interview process.

This may be the right strategy — if you have a shot at the papacy. But if you are trying to secure a spot in the American business world, new research suggests that priming your powerful side is the way to go. A sense of power, it seems, increases your appeal both on paper and in person to those making hiring decisions.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/job_interviews_arent_for_the_faint_of_heart_partner/feed/ 3 Is there an actual tipping point for global warming? http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/is_there_an_actual_tipping_point_for_global_warming_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/is_there_an_actual_tipping_point_for_global_warming_partner/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13253463 Scientific American Is there a chance that human intervention—rising temperatures, massive land-use changes, biodiversity loss and so on—could “tip” the entire world into a new climatic state? And if so, does that change what we should do about it?

As far back as 2008 NASA’s James Hansen argued that we had crossed a “tipping point” in the Arctic with regard to summer sea ice. The diminishing ice cover had moved past a critical threshold, and from then on levels would drop precipitously toward zero, with little hope of recovery. Other experts now say that recent years have confirmed that particular cliff-fall, and the September 2012 record minimum—an astonishing 18 percent lower than 2007’s previous record—was likely no fluke.

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