Scientific American Online

Back in 1995, I had the pleasure of visiting the IBM Almaden lab of Donald Eigler, who was announced today as a winner of this year's Kavli Prize for his work on nanoscience. Eigler made his mark nearly two decades ago when he showed how he could move individual atoms around with a scanning tunneling microscope, first to spell out the letters of his employer and later to draw images such as this stick figure made from carbon monoxide molecules. Such atomic-scale control not only can elucidate fundamental physics, but it could also be the basis for new computing and sensing technologies.   [More]

Each spring and summer fertilizer from the fields of the U.S. Midwest runs off into the Mississippi River. Old Muddy carries the nutrients down the length of the continent before dumping them into the Gulf of Mexico. Once introduced, the nitrogen and phosphorus prompts a bloom in algae, phytoplankton and other microscopic plants. After the plants die they drift to the bottom and their decomposition sucks the oxygen out of the seawater. The result is a vast dead zone , lethal to sea life that cannot swim out of the way, in inhabitable waters near the Gulf Coast that is sometimes as large as New Jersey--and the as much as 3.8 million liters of oil now spilling into the Gulf per day may make it worse. [More]

As the seasons heat up annually, males and females start looking for mates, and two summers' worth of steamy drama outside of a small European town have now been caught on tape. [More]

The next time you snap the waistband on your panties or enjoy a Speedos moment at the beach, have a moment of silence for the man who made it all possible-- Wallace Carothers . The famous DuPont chemist and inventor of nylon (among other ubiquitous synthetic materials) was a very practical person, so much so that he kept a cyanide capsule tucked discreetly into a locket on his watch chain--a comforting, ever-present, portable escape from an insufferably complex mind. Carothers’s thoughts were forever tumbling into the pits of depression , anxiety and--perhaps worst of all--the incessant, worrying anticipation of having to speak about his high-profile polymer research in public. [More]

By Alla Katsnelson

Different communities of Jews around the world share more than just religious or cultural practices--they also have strong genetic commonalities, according to the largest genetic analysis of Jewish people to date.

But the study also found strong genetic ties to non-Jewish groups, with the closest genetic neighbors on the European side being Italians, and on the Middle Eastern side the Druze, Bedouin and Palestinians.

Researchers in New York and Tel Aviv conducted a genome-wide analysis on 237 individuals from seven well-established Jewish communities around the world, hailing from Iran, Iraq, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria and eastern Europe. [More]

Eight scientists will share three million-dollar Kavli Prizes for their contributions in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. The announcement was made today in Oslo, Norway, by Nils Christian Stenseth , president of the Nor­wegian Academy of Science and Letters, and broadcast live at the opening of the World Science Festival in New York City. The laureates will each receive a scroll, a gold medal and a share of the $1 million prize for each of the three fields.

Jerry Nelson from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Ray Wilson formerly of Imperial College London in the U.K., and Roger Angel from the University of Arizona will share the astrophysics prize for their innovations in giant tele­scope design. Donald Eigler from IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., and Nadrian Seeman from New York University will jointly accept the nanoscience prize for illuminating the basic units of matter and the building blocks of nanotechnology . Thomas Südhof from the Stanford University School of Medi­cine, Richard Scheller from the San Franscisco-based biotech company Genentech and James Rothman from Yale University together will take the neuroscience prize for revealing how neurons communicate with each other.

EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Pelamis platurus , otherwise known as the Yellowbelly Sea Snake, has a new mechanical namesake, a flexible 180-meter monster -- nearly the length of two football fields. It is floating here next to a dock, ready to go to sea.

The giant red machine is named after the serpent, one of the few known to thrive in the open sea. The device is designed so that when it's hit by big waves, it writhes snake-like in the water. As it does, its hydraulic pistons move back and forth. They power its generators to produce a rated 750 kilowatts of electricity.

In a post on Asperger's syndrome , my fellow blogger Karen Schrock manages to knock both religious believers and nonreligious rationalists in just a few paragraphs. Kudos, Karen! People with Asperger's, a mild form of autism, tend not to attribute events in their lives to a "higher power or supernatural force," Karen reports. Conversely, the tendency of supposedly healthy people to see "intention or purpose" behind random events may stem from an overactive " theory of mind ," the innate ability to sense perceptions, emotions and intentions in others. Faith is a pathology, and so is the lack thereof. Basically, we're all nuts. Who could disagree? [More]

COLD SPRING, N.Y.-- J. Craig Venter and his colleagues recently announced that they had created the first cell to run on a fully artificial genome. So what's next for this synthetic strain of microscopic Mycoplasma mycoides and the new technology? [More]

This is a response to an open letter from Joshua Hartshorne entitled “ Fantasy TV in the service of science ,” posted as a guest blog by Scientific American about Dothraki , a language created by the Language Creation Society for the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones . David Peterson (creator of Dothraki) and Sai Emrys (LCS president) emailed him immediately after its posting. David's response below takes into account what was discussed during a fairly lengthy conversation.

Zhey vichomer Joshua Hartshorne,

By Ed Stoddard

VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) - BP on Thursday cleared the way for an attempt to cap a runaway Gulf of Mexico oil spill and funnel crude to the surface in a high-stakes effort to slow a 45-day gusher.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The official in charge of managing the U.S. response to the oil leak disaster in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday downplayed the possibility of using a nuclear or other explosive device to try to seal off the well.

"I think that's really on the peripheral of things we ought to be talking about right now," Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said when asked about suggestions that a nuclear explosion be used to seal off the leak.

For more than 150 years researchers have tangled with competing explanations for tiny pits preserved in ancient sediments. Some have interpreted those impressions to be so-called fossil raindrops-- rainfall literally embossed in the geologic record --but others have argued for air bubbles rising through sedimentary deposits as a more likely mechanism. [More]

The deepest hole humans have ever dug reaches 12 kilometers below the ground of Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Although we now have a spacecraft on its way to Pluto--about six billion kilometers away from the sun--we still cannot send a probe into the deep earth. For practical purposes, then, the center of the planet, which lies 6,380 kilometers below us, is farther away than the edge of our solar system. In fact, Pluto was discovered in 1930, and the existence of the earth’s inner core was not established--using seismological data--until six years later.

Still, earth scientists have gained a surprising amount of insight about our planet. We know it is roughly structured like an onion, with the core, mantle and crust forming concentric layers. The mantle constitutes about 85 percent of the earth’s volume, and its slow stirring drives the geologic cataclysms of the crust. This middle domain is mainly a mix of silicon, iron, oxygen, magnesium--each of which appears in roughly the same concentrations throughout the mantle--plus smaller amounts of other elements. But depending on the depth, these elements combine into different types of minerals. Thus, the mantle is itself divided into concentric layers, with different minerals predominating at different depths.

Most of us don’t think twice about getting behind the wheel even for short hops to pick up some milk. And that’s not just because cars are convenient, or because we’re lazy. According to Andrew Furman of Ryerson University in Toronto [ http://bit.ly/dr76ot ], it’s because in many places in North America it’s just not that nice to walk. But if cities and suburbs put more effort into building better pedestrian routes, he says more people might leave their SUVs at home. [More]

Scientific American magazine Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina and news editor Philip Yam join podcast host Steve Mirsky (pictured) to talk about the cover story of the June issue of the magazine, "12 Events That Will Change Everything". [More]

Lawmakers have floated a proposal to fast-track electric cars , but some in the clean-car field are worried that the wheels may fall off.

Last week, House and Senate legislators released bipartisan plans to speed up the deployment of electric vehicles. In each plan, the centerpiece was a "targeted deployment" approach: Rather than offer the same incentives nationwide, the government would award federal funds to the regions that come up with the best blueprints for rolling out tens of thousands of plug-in cars.

For at least 50 years Alaska's Bristol Bay has been one of the most valuable fisheries in the U.S. On average, fishermen net about 25 million sockeye salmon annually in the bay's chilly waters. In 2009 the catch was worth more than $120 million. [More]

Editor's Note: William Gilly , a professor of cell and developmental biology and marine and organismal biology at Stanford University, is traveling with a group of students on board the Don José in the Sea of Cortez. The team is monitoring and tracking Humboldt squid and sperm whales in their watery habitats. This is the group's 10th and final blog post. [More]

After hundreds of years, the most common, basic microscopes still operate by means of the same old hardware: the lens. But what if you could do away with that lens and create a microscope that fits on a cell phone? That’s what researchers led by Aydogan Ozcan at U.C.L.A. have developed. Ozcan recently won an NSF (National Science Foundation) Early Career Development award for his work [see http://bit.ly/d98kXu ].

Normal microscopes image cells themselves. But Ozcan’s team is imaging their shadows. Tissue cells and bacteria are semi-transparent--light penetrating through cells causes shadings and reveals texture. Ozcan uses an LED as his light source, creating cellular shadows. An algorithm turns those shadows into an image of the cells.