Michael Segal, Nautilus
For something called the Standard Model, the foundational theory of particle physics is confronting a lengthy list of non-standard data. Neutrino oscillations, dark matter and energy, the imbalance between matter and anti-matter, quantum gravitythere's a growing list of natural phenomena that don't seem to fit.
Christian Jarrett, R-Digest
It's a question that's reverberated through the ages are we humans, though imperfect, essentially kind, sensible, good-natured creatures? Or deep down are we wired to be bad, blinkered, idle, vain, vengeful and selfish? There are no easy answers and there's clearly a lot of variation between individuals, but this feature post aims to shine some evidence-based light on the matter.
Belle Dum, Physics World
A handheld biopen capable of 3D printing cartilage tissue could for the first time be used during surgery to treat cartilage injuries and osteoarthritus. The extrusion-based device, which prints live stem cells embedded in a hydrogel material, produces constructs that look and behave just like natural articular tissue (Biofabrication 10 045006).
Tanya Hill, The Conversation
For the second time this year, the five brightest planets can be seen at the same time. You can catch them by looking towards the western sky after sunset. The planets will form a line rising up from the horizon.Mercury and Venus are low to the west, with bright Jupiter shining just above. Higher up in the northwestern sky is Saturn, and completing the set of five is the red planet Mars, high overhead.
Michael Segal, Nautilus
For something called the Standard Model, the foundational theory of particle physics is confronting a lengthy list of non-standard data. Neutrino oscillations, dark matter and energy, the imbalance between matter and anti-matter, quantum gravitythere's a growing list of natural phenomena that don't seem to fit.
Michelle Hampson, IEEE
Deep underground, within the concrete walls of CERN, Switzerland's world-famous particle accelerator, lies a 200-kilogram machine encased in a shield of oxygen gas. After years of careful design and assembly, the device is nearly ready to make its debut.
Harriet Hall, Skeptical Inquirer
The status of women in our society continues to improve. As the cigarette commercial says, You've come a long way, baby. Indeed, it seems we now have Equal Opportunity Quackery.Sex sells. It's always been a popular target for quackery, but the quackery used to be directed mainly at men. In the early twentieth century, Dr. John Brinkley made a lot of money promising to rejuvenate men by surgically implanting goat testicles into their scrotums.
Chris Klimek, Air & Space Magazine
First Man, writer-director Damien Chazelle's new historical drama about Neil and Janet Armstrong in the decade that culminated with Armstrong's walk on the Moon, is a surprisingly intimate portrait of a deeply modest and private man, and a marriage strained by grief.
Laurel Ives, BBC News
The age at which boys begin puberty is linked to when their mothers started having periods, a study suggests.Mothers who started earlier than their peers had sons who had: armpit hair two and a half months earlier acne and voices breaking two months earlier.
Caroline Haskins, Motherboard
As of this morning, five people have died in as a result of Hurricane Michaelin Virginia. That's more than 800 miles away from where Hurricane Michael first made landfall in Florida. According to an email to Motherboard from Jeffrey Caldwell, the Director of External Affairs of the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM), that death count could rise until all people are accounted for.
Bob Yirka, Phys.org
A pair of urban ecologists, one from Australia, the other Sweden, suggests in a Perspective piece published in the journal Science that it might be time to rethink the idea of the modern lawn. In their paper, Maria Ignatieva and Marcus Hedblom note that the natural benefits of green lawns are far outweighed by negative environmental consequences, and because of that, new forms of groundcover need to be explored.
Sabine Hossenfelder, B-reaction
Women today still face obstacles men don't encounter and often don't notice. I see this every day at my front door, in physics, where women are still underrepresented. Among the sciences, it's physics where the gender-balance is most skewed.While women are catching up on PhDs, with the ratio now at roughly 20% (US data), women are more likely to leave higher education for good. Among faculty, the percentage of women is down to about 10%. The better the job, the more likely it's occupied by a man.
Derek Lowe, Science Mag
Since I was going on yesterday about the need to validate tool reagents, I wanted to note that this problem is not confined to biochemical applications. Here's an article looking at commercial sources of graphene, the carbon monolayer material that's been the subject of so much research the last few years.
Natalie Wolchover, Quanta
In 2005, a student working in the fluid physicist Yves Couder's laboratory in Paris discovered by chance that tiny oil droplets bounced when plopped onto the surface of a vibrating oil bath. Moreover, as the droplets bounced, they started to bunny-hop around the liquid's surface.
Mike Wall, Space.com
A few months from now, the International Space Station (ISS) could be unoccupied for the first time in nearly two decades.Russia's workhorse Soyuz rocket suffered a serious anomaly just minutes after launching two astronauts toward the ISS today (Oct. 11), forcing the spaceflyers' crew craft to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, released on Monday, is a major advance over previous efforts to alert world leaders and citizens to the growing climate risk. But the report, dire as it is, misses a key point: Self-reinforcing feedbacks and tipping pointsthe wildcards of the climate systemcould cause the climate to destabilize even further.
Brian Gallagher, Nautilus
It seemed inevitable that Elon Musk would eventually get into a Twitter war over whether Mars can be terraformed. When you're on Twitter, he told Businessweek in July, you're in meme war land. And so essentially if you attack me, he said, it is therefore okay for me to attack back.
