Scientific American Online

The first generation of World Wide Web capabilities rapidly transformed retailing and information search. More recent attributes such as blogging, tagging and social networking, dubbed Web 2.0, have just as quickly expanded people’s ability not just to consume online information but to publish it, edit it and collaborate about it--forcing such old-line institutions as journalism, marketing and even politicking to adopt whole new ways of thinking and operating.

Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers (and not just the younger ones) have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open tools of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based “Science 2.0” is not only more collegial than traditional science but considerably more productive.

The Wright 30-horse-power aeroplane in flight above the North Carolina coast, in a  drawing prepared from descriptions by observers of the experiments.  [More]

Africa needs a green revolution. Food yields on the continent are roughly one metric ton of grain per hectare of cultivated land, a figure little changed from 50 years ago and roughly one third of the yields achieved in the rest of the world. In low-income regions elsewhere in the world, including China and India, the introduction of high-yield seeds, fertilizer and small-scale irrigation boosted food productivity beginning in the mid-1960s and opened the escape route from extreme poverty for huge populations. A similar takeoff in sub-Saharan Africa is both an urgent priority and a real possibility. 

Until this change happens, Africa’s vast rural areas, which are home to two thirds of its population, will remain mired in poverty, hunger and high child mortality and will stay isolated from the world market economy. Proven technologies--high-yield seeds, new water-management techniques for Africa’s mainly rain-dependent crop lands and new ways to replenish soil nutrients--are already achieving three to five tons per hectare in many parts of Africa but too often only in small demonstration projects.

One of the biggest scientific findings in recent years is the discovery that the universe is not only expanding, but it is also accelerating in its expansion. Under the influence of a mysterious dark energy, the universe will eventually thin out to nothingness and die a cold death. For the Insights story, "Dark Forces at Work," appearing in the May 2008 Scientific American, David Appell talked with Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the leaders of the group that came to the astonishing conclusion. Here is an edited excerpt of that interview.

In finding that the universe is on a path to runaway expansion, you had to find type Ia supernovae, which can act as distance markers. How did you get involved with supernova searching? [More]

Trick and treat: Workers divulge computer passwords for the promise of candy

Worried about someone stealing your identity? Hopefully you're more careful than our friends across the pond. Organizers of the Infosecurity Europe computer security trade show were alarmed to discover this week that 121 of 576 subway riders (21 percent) at London's Liverpool Street Station were prepared to reveal their computer passwords in return for a chocolate bar. The only comforting thing about the survey is that more people kept their mouths shut this time than they did last year when 64 percent of those polled were willing to part with their secret code in return for chocolate. It seems that women were most vulnerable on this score: 45 percent of women compared with 10 percent of the men surveyed gave up their passwords to researchers. "This research shows that it's pretty simple for a perpetrator to gain access to information that is restricted," says Claire Sellick, event director of Infosecurity Europe, set to begin in London on April 22, "by having a chat around the coffee machine, getting a temporary job as a [personal assistant] or pretending to be from the IT department." We hope the chocolate was good, at least. [More]

On July 29, 2006, there was a roughly 11-billion-gallon (0.044–cubic kilometer) lake that stretched more than two square miles (5.6 square kilometers) and covered the western portion of Greenland's massive ice sheet. In the span of 16 hours, it was gone. The reason: water pressure cracked through the more than half-mile (980-meter) thick ice, draining the lake as its water rushed through the new funnel and gathered below the giant ice sheet, raising it nearly four feet (1.2 meters) and moving it nearly three feet (0.8 meter) to the north. [More]

And you thought Frodo had it hard. In what is shaping up to be a battle of Tolkienian proportions, the tiny remains from Flores, Indonesia--paleoanthropology's hobbit--have once again come under attack. [More]

Podcast Transcript: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science.  Hi, Steve Mirsky here.  I’m going over our usual one minute.  By now, you’ve probably heard of Expelled, the new Ben Stein anti-evolution crockumentary.  It officially opens today as I speak, that’s April 18th.  Because of my job, I’ve had the misfortune of sitting through this film twice now.  As least I was getting paid.  The film tries very hard to connect Darwin with the Holocaust. [More]

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard spent 15 minutes in space. [More]

Schizophrenia is a devastating illness. One percent of the world’s population suffers from its symptoms of hallucinations, psychosis and impaired cognitive ability. The disease destroys relationships and renders many of its sufferers unable to hold down a job. What could cause such frightening damage to the brain? According to a growing body of research, the culprit is surprising: the flu.

If you are skeptical, you are not alone. Being condemned to a lifetime of harsh antipsychotic drugs seems a far cry from a runny nose and fever. And yet studies have repeatedly linked schizophrenia to prenatal infections with influenza virus and other microbes, showing that the children of mothers who suffer these infections during pregnancy are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia later in life. In 2006 scientists at Columbia University asserted that up to one fifth of all schizophrenia cases are caused by prenatal infections.

Podcast Transcript: Talk about your vicious cycles.  A new study finds that belly fat could be making you hungrier.  Which would lead to more belly fat.  The research was performed at the University of Western Ontario.  The culprit is a hormone called Neuropeptide Y, or NPY.  It was thought that only the brain produced this hormone, but no, your belly fat can make it too.  So NPY produced in the brain initially makes you eat more and gain weight around your middle, and then that fat makes more NPY, which makes you eat more.

Now, fat cells can’t reproduce themselves.  But the release of NPY can stimulate the reproduction of cells that are precursors to fat cells.  So the result is the same--more and more fat cells.  The researchers next want to come up with a way to easily detect the presence of the hormone--and to turn it off.  The hope is to identify and treat those people at greatest risk for becoming abdominally obese.  Because it would be easier to prevent obesity than to treat the many diseases that obesity can lead to.

In the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, narrator Ben Stein poses as a "rebel" willing to stand up to the scientific establishment in defense of freedom and honest, open discussion of controversial ideas like intelligent design (ID). But Expelled has some problems of its own with honest, open presentations of the facts about evolution, ID--and with its own agenda. Here are a few examples--add your own with a comment, and we may add it to another draft of this story. For our complete coverage, see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Scientific American's Take.

1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. [More]

An international team of scientists has determined the itinerary of the seasonal flu, paving the way for better monitoring and more effective vaccines.

The researchers report in Science that they sussed out the bug's travel plans by studying 13,000 samples of the virus collected from every continent (except Antarctica) over the past five years. Among their findings: seasonal flu originates in eastern and Southeast Asia. The result broadens previous hypotheses that such viruses emerged in China or exclusively in tropical regions.

Physicist John Wheeler and geneticist Salome Waelsch both had incredibly long and fruitful careers, providing numerous fundamental insights in their respective fields. We'll hear from Kenneth Ford, former director of the American Institute of Physics, about Wheeler, who died April 13th at 96. And Princeton's Lee Silver talks about Waelsch, who died last fall at 100 and who was memorialized on April 14th at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Plus we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this episode include www.ianford.com/kenford; www.leemsilver.net

The text transcript is currently not available. Transcripts are posted about a week after the podcast airs.