Scientific American Online

As BP's initial efforts to stem the flow of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico at its Deepwater Horizon drilling site have fallen by the wayside, the company said Monday it is implementing a plan in the next two weeks to permanently plug the leaking well. If successful, this so-called "junk shot" option--which involves clogging the well's failed blowout preventer with a variety of objects, including golf balls, tires and tennis balls--will be covered with a layer of cement that ensures the well is never used again. [More]

A hug from Mom can help soothe a stressed child, but new research shows that just hearing her voice can initiate the same biochemical responses--even if the mother is speaking over the phone. [More]

Symptoms of sickle-cell anemia often include severe pain and other major medical complications, but a new study shows that the disease might also decrease cognitive abilities in young and middle-aged adults. [More]

To construct the deceptive contraption he would enter in an international illusion contest , Kokichi Sugihara contravened a deeply held intuition: gravity works. Sugihara, a mathematical engineer at Meiji University in Japan, built a set of four ramps, arranged in a cross, on which wooden balls appear to roll uphill, as if pulled by a magnet toward the center. [More]

Working overtime increases your risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), according to a report published May 12 in the European Heart Journal . [More]

The U.S. is lagging in science and math education-- on a 2006 international test , American teens scored below the average for developed nations in both scientific and mathematical literacy. But the U.S. has traditionally been a tech haven, bestowing on the world the iPod, Microsoft Word and Google (not to mention the predecessor to the Internet itself). So it is fitting that someone would create a tech-based solution to try to close the education gap, an American approach to an American problem. [More]

By Steve Gorman and Timothy Gardner

PORT FOURCHON, La./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Troops using helicopters and bulldozers, helped by prison inmates, rushed to shore up Louisiana's coast against a huge oil slick on Tuesday as oil company executives traded blame in Washington over what could be the worst spill in U.S. history.

Political ideology helps determine whether homeowners respond to voluntary energy conservation programs, two University of California, Los Angeles , economists have found.

In a study published last month on the National Bureau of Economic Research website, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn concluded that providing feedback on energy use can actually backfire with some conservatives.

The U.S. population is growing--and no one has to tell you that a lot of that growth is happening at the waist.

Even before the colossal oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted the downsides of fossil fuels (as if we needed reminding), nuclear energy was looking better to me. In a previous post , I bashed Barack Obama for trying to revive nuclear power. Nuclear energy materials, equipment and expertise can be diverted toward building nuclear weapons, I fretted, and every reactor and waste repository represents a potential dirty bomb. I reiterated these anxieties in an online chat on Bloggingheads.tv, a segment of which was aired by The New York Times .

Then Rod Adams e-mailed me. Adams is a U.S. Navy officer who served on nuclear submarines, founded a firm to promote small reactors and blogs about nuclear power at Atomic Insights (highly recommended). Adams asked if I would like to talk to him on Bloggingheads.tv , and I said sure. Here are some of the major points that Adams made in our conversation :

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. They will monitor and track Humboldt squid and sperm whales in their watery habitats. This is the group's second blog post . [More]

The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch. Viking, 2010

Male, short and stout, with dark skin, brown eyes, ­shovel-shaped teeth, type A+ blood and coarse, dark brown hair giving way to pattern baldness. He would have a high tolerance for alcohol and a higher-than-average risk of nicotine dependence--fortunately, he lived thousands of years before humans discovered smoking. The description of a Stone Age Greenland resident published in February paints an extraordinary portrait of a man who vanished more than 4,000 years ago, drawn almost solely from his DNA remains.

The analysis, led by Danish scientists, not only marks the first full sequencing of an ancient human genome but also offers a startling example of how much modern-day detectives can discern just from a suspect’s genetic code. Far beyond using DNA “fingerprints” to link an individual to a crime scene, forensic profiling is edging toward the capability to create a police-artist-style sketch of an unknown person by reading traits inscribed in the genome. “The body interprets the DNA to determine the appearance of the face,” says anthropologist Mark Shriver of Morehouse College, who hopes to duplicate that ability within a decade.

The Patriot Act and the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act were passed in 2001 and 2002. These laws in part cover research on pathogens and toxins thought to have potential as bioweapons.

The Bush administration increased funding for research on such toxins and pathogens--but the laws added a great many procedural steps for such research, and restricted who could work with the microbes. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon recently evaluated the impact of the laws on research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . [Elisabeth Casman et al., http://bit.ly/ddGnoX ]

Dear EarthTalk: What happens to major appliances that get carted off when new ones take their place? We have a dishwasher and a refrigerator that are both on the blink now and may need replacement. I’d rather fix them than buy new, even if it’s more expensive to do so, because I don’t want to add these big clunkers to the waste stream. What’s your take on this? --D. M., Westport, Conn.

The ubiquitous David Pogue, author of the Missing Manual series and tech columnist for The New York Times , talks with podcast host Steve Mirsky (picture at left) aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic during MacMania, produced by insightcruises.com . [More]

By Alla Katsnelson

What makes two individuals different? Biologists now know that the genome sequence holds only a small part of the answer, and that key elements of development and disease are controlled by the epigenome--a set of chemical modifications, not encoded in DNA, that orchestrate how and when genes are expressed. [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. They will monitor and track Humboldt squid and sperm whales in their watery habitats. This is the group's first blog post for ScientificAmerican.com. [More]

Schizophrenia involves some of the same genetic variations as autism and attention deficit disorders, a new whole-genome study has confirmed. [More]

This special issue, 169 Best Illusions , contains a smorgasbord of static images that appear to be moving (such as the Hatpin Urchin shown here), “impossible” sculptures, freaky faces, ghostly afterimages and even some edible illusions.

Illusions make great eye candy, but they also serve a serious purpose. When we look at an illusion, we “see” something that does not match the physical reality of the world around us. Scientists take advantage of this discrepancy between perception and reality to gain insights into how our eyes and brains gather and interpret (or misinterpret) visual information. Here’s a sneak peek at 10 different types of illusions and what they reveal.