Science News

Cities were already known to retain more heat than the rural environments that surround them, but new modeling from researchers in the United Kingdom now suggests that urban areas are also more sensitive to changes in climate. Furthermore, they will experience greater increases in average temperature with rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the cooling effects of night will become more of a memory than a reality.

Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. -- where Congress is debating over whether to pass a climate bill -- is getting a memorable preview of what new computer models are predicting. Last week's temperatures broke a 100-year record, and forecasters expect this June will be the hottest ever recorded in the area.

In Colorado's far western reaches is a valley called Paradox. Unlike most, it is cut crosswise through the middle. The Dolores River runs perpendicular through it, creating a geologic anomaly that is also the valley’s namesake.

Brilliant orange cliffs cradle the valley floor under the white gaze of Utah’s La Sal Mountains. Sagebrush plains and irrigated hay fields are broken only by herds of cows and the tiny hamlets of Bedrock and Paradox. Within the region's perplexing geology run rich veins of uranium, fuel for the nation's incipient nuclear renaissance .

Extraordinary claims, Carl Sagan liked to say, require extraordinary evidence. Here is an extraordinary claim: "Chimpanzeelike violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression." [More]

It turns out that not all the hairlike cilia projecting from the surfaces of many cells in the human body are equal--there are the myriad ones for sweeping, swimming and other functions, and then there is the until recently mysterious primary cilium.

Nearly all human cells contain these numerous microscopic projections. The more abundant variety of cilia are motile; they act like oars, paddling in coordinated waves to help propel cells through fluid, or to sweep material across cellular surfaces (as in the respiratory system, where millions of cilia lining the airways help to expel mucus, dead cells and other bodily debris). By contrast, cells also contain a single, nonmotile cilium known as the primary cilium. Its presence on cells has been known for more than a century, but many believed it was a functionless evolutionary remnant.

When we learn, we usually begin with the basics and work our way up, mastering our do-re-mi’s before launching into an aria. But when people have difficulty speaking and understanding language after a stroke--a condition called aphasia--they seem to improve faster when they start at a harder level.

Speech researcher Swathi Kiran of Boston University works with bilingual aphasia patients to help them relearn words. She has found that when pa­tients practice the language they speak less fluently, their vocabulary grows in both languages. But when the patients study words in the language they are more comfortable in, only that language improves.

Those of you following the World Cup know that at this stage there can be no more draws. Ties are broken during overtime play, or in a penalty kick shootout in which a goalkeeper’s ability to anticipate the ball’s flight can mean the difference between victory and elimination. Now, scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [Gabriel Diaz et al.] have discovered how a kicker’s body can betray whether he’s aiming left or right.

In a penalty shot, it’s kicker versus goalkeeper. And with the shooter standing just 12 yards from the goal, that ball can touch net in about half a second. That’s faster than a keeper can launch himself from the goal’s center to either post. Which means that a goalkeeper has to start moving before the kicker’s foot meets the ball. And he has to guess correctly which way to dive.

When U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003, they fought a traditional war of human on human. Since then, robots have joined the fight. Both there and in Afghanistan, thousands of “unmanned” systems dismantle roadside IEDs, take that first peek around the corner at a sniper’s lair and launch missiles at Taliban hideouts. Robots are pouring onto battlefields as if a new species of mechanotronic alien had just landed on our planet.

It is not the first time that the technology of warfare has advanced more rapidly than the body of international law that seeks to restrain its use. During World War I, cannons shot chemical weapons at and airplanes dropped bombs on unsuspecting cities. Only later did nations reach a verdict on whether it was acceptable to target a munitions factory next to a primary school.

LINDAU, Germany--What’s the best way to address a politically charged topic such as the future of energy? Remove the politics. “We’re going to skip over the politics,” Robert P. Laughlin, who won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, told a rapt audience of young scientists and others here at the 60th annual Nobel Laureate Lectures at Lindau . “I’m not interested in now but in the time of your children’s children’s children, six generations into the future and 200 years from now,” when all carbon burning has stopped because it’s been banned or none is left, he said. “Thinking about a problem this way is so simple. Instead of arguing about what to do now, I want to talk about what will happen when there’s no coal."