Science

A new study allays fears that rerouting flights to avoid forming climate-warming contrails could result in inadvertently making climate warming worse. Researchers from Sorbonne Universite and the University of Reading found that for most flights that form contrails in the North Atlantic, the climate benefit of avoiding the contrail outweighs the extra carbon dioxide emitted … Read more

This piece is part of Scientific American’s column The Science of Parenting. For more, go here. As we strive to keep our kids safe, healthy and happy, detecting and treating developmental and other conditions early is essential. For this reason, pediatric care emphasizes the importance of screening for everything from developmental delays to emotional problems … Read more

To a group of autistic adults participating in a Rutgers study, giddiness manifests like “bees”; small moments of joy are like “a nice coffee in the morning” that yields “a sense of elevation”; anger starts with a “body-tensing” boil, then headaches. Contrary to common perceptions and years of research that autistic people can’t describe their … Read more

The long-standing mystery of how supermassive black holes grew so huge so quickly could be solved by decaying dark matter #Dark #matter #giant #black #holes #form #early #universe

Exposure to arsenic and other toxic metals may accelerate the progression toward diabetes, according to a new study by University of Illinois Chicago researchers. In a longitudinal study of over 500 Mexican Americans living in southern Texas, researchers found that high levels of toxic metals in urine predicted faster increases in blood sugar over subsequent … Read more

What sets humans apart from the rest of life, or indeed inert matter? Many people would respond that it is our intelligence. Yet the rise of seemingly intelligent machines challenges this way of thinking. The companies behind these new artificial intelligence technologies, in the form of ChatGPT and its rivals, speak of achieving artificial general … Read more

The groans of pain as we get up from the sofa or the sound of crunching cartilage when taking the stairs are all too familiar. Many of us look down at our aching knees and curse them — wondering why they seemingly evolved to hurt so much. But the human knee has a complex evolutionary … Read more

Loneliness is associated with multiple health conditions Marc Bruxelle RF / Alamy The idea that loneliness leads to certain health conditions is now being called into question. Although loneliness is associated with a range of negative physical health outcomes, including an increased risk of premature death, it might just be correlated with many of the … Read more

Pregnancy may cause more than 80% of the brain’s gray matter to shrink, leaving “permanent etchings.” That’s what researchers found when a pregnant neuroscientist underwent more than two dozen brain scans throughout her pregnancy and for two years postpartum. After pregnancy, the new mom regained some gray matter, which includes both the cell bodies of … Read more

September 16, 2024 4 min read Was Life on Earth Inevitable or Incredible? We can’t yet tell how life got its start on Earth. That’s one great reason to keep looking for life elsewhere By Mario Livio & Jack W. Szostak An imagined exoplanet surface may contain the ingredients for a spark of life. Two … Read more