Sci-News Roundup January 15 - January 21, 2022
General Interest  Cosmos   Innovation   Health  Nature  Environment  Climate

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Dec 09 Human Earth (video available)
Jan 11: How "Clean" Is Blue Hydrogen Energy? (video available)




This is the .gov info site for at-home tests.

Slate, January 14, 2022
What are sensitivity and specificity, anyway?

The Conversation, January 14, 2022
The court’s six conservative justices held that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration exceeded its power in issuing the mandate on private companies, which would have covered about 80 million workers.

Washington Post, January 13, 2022
Health experts say while there are no hard and fast rules, there are best practices for safely getting multiple uses out of N95s or KN95s.

BBC News, January 18, 2022
Covid-19 is continuing to spread around the world, with more than 300 million confirmed cases and more than five million deaths reported across almost 200 countries.


GENERAL INTEREST

Science Daily, January 13, 2022
Counter to the general assumption that memories simply decay with time, 'forgetting' might not be a bad thing.

New York Times, January 17, 2022 (right out of Hitchcock!)
Crows have sometimes dropped sticks or leaves or feces onto outdoor diners.

Science News, January 18, 2022
‘History of Mathematics’ explores the origins of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and more.

Cosmos, January 18, 2022
Is there a difference between the differently colored balls?

Ancient History Lists, March 18, 2019
Now present-day Iran, Persia can be credited with such inventions as the refrigerator, the battery, and sulfuric acid, all of which were very advanced for the period.

Symmetry, January 18, 2022
Quantum information breaks the rules of classical information in a way that could allow us to answer questions that a classical computer cannot.


COSMOS

Universe Today, January 17, 2022
Scientists have studied it many times, and they’ve concluded that the strange, organic-seeming morphologies inside the meteorite were not biological in origin.
So what created them?

Quanta, January 12, 2022
Physicists have been busy exploring how our universe might emerge like a hologram out of a two-dimensional sheet. New clues have come from the symmetries found on an infinitely distant “celestial sphere.”

Phys.Org, January 13, 2022
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has capped off the first seven months of its survey run by smashing through all previous records for three-dimensional galaxy surveys, creating the largest and most detailed map of the universe ever.

Inverse, January 18, 2022
The JWST anticipated January 23 arrival at L2 won’t be the final step the telescope must complete before beginning its science mission — months of instrument calibration and testing remain — but it will mark the successful end of a long physical journey that started with a secret trip down the Panama Canal in October.

Ars Technica, January 17, 2022
The system already has over 1,500 satellites in orbit and has received approval to operate 12,000 of them. And that has astronomers worried.


INNOVATION

MIT News, January 10, 2022
With special treatment, minerals called zeolites — commonly found in cat litter — can efficiently remove the greenhouse gas from the air, researchers report.

Smithsonian, January 14, 2022
The canned food company’s tomato breeding program was responsible for developing several important varieties

The Conversation, January 10, 2022
5G offers an order of magnitude – 10 times – more bandwidth than its predecessor, 4G. The greater bandwidth is possible because over and above low and medium frequency radio waves, 5G uses additional higher-frequency waves to encode and carry information.

Science Daily, January 12, 2022
Bioengineers successfully regrew cartilage in a rabbit's knee, a promising hop toward healing joints in humans.

TechXplore, January 14 2022
The climate crisis requires ramping up usage of renewable energy sources like solar and wind, but with intermittent availability, scalable energy storage is a challenge.  


HEALTH

Sci-News, January 12, 2022
Consuming more than 7 grams of olive oil per day is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, cancer mortality, neurodegenerative disease mortality and respiratory disease mortality, according to a study of over 92,000 U.S. adults.

The Guardian, January 18, 2022
Study calls for cap on production and release as pollution threatens global ecosystems upon which life depends.

Washington Post, January 09, 2022
The “right” time to shower is an age-old debate. Dermatologists say skin health and hygiene depend much more on how, not when, you’re showering.

Medical News Today, January 17, 2022
Conflicting findings make it challenging to navigate the research investigating the effects of social media on mental health and how best to use social media. With this in mind, Medical News Today sought the input of seven psychology experts.

Well & Good, January 18, 2022
Cheese is a friend to your oral health for a few reasons, says Dr. Berg. First of all, it's low in carbohydrates—which makes it hard for the oral bacteria biofilm in your mouth to convert carbs to sugar to acid, the latter of which can contribute to tooth decay. And that's not all.

Science Daily, January 13, 2022
Exercise causes the body to release hundreds of different signals that improve our health in many different ways.


NATURE 

The Guardian, January 17, 2022
Dogs can figure out some things that even chimps can’t. Our science correspondent puts her puppy retriever to the test

NPR/Morning Edition, January 18, 2022
That means the explosive force was more than 500 times as powerful as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.

Treehugger, January 07, 2022
Plus, how they support environmental conservation.

BBC Future, January 12 2022
Could our understanding of the deep ocean help unlock the mysteries of outer space? Nasa's space mission is leading us to unexplored depths of our own planet.

Cosmos, January 14, 2022
Will we get arthritis like our parents used to tell us? 

Sci-Tech Daily, December 26, 2021
The glacier is the size of Florida or Britain and currently contributes four percent of annual global sea level rise. If it does collapse, global sea levels would rise by several feet—putting millions of people living in coastal cities in danger zones for extreme flooding.


ENVIRONMENT

Nature, January 17, 2022
To thrive, cities must lean into nature. That means having open green spaces and interconnected waterways to prevent floods; green roofs and walls that reduce temperatures and produce food; and forests planted as green belts to oxygenate urban areas and regenerate ecosystems.

Eco Watch, January 17, 2022
Biodiversity loss and the climate crisis could interact to drive plant species to extinction.

Deutsche Welle, January 17, 2022
Corals in the Gulf of Aqaba have a unique evolutionary history that could help them survive the climate crisis. Scientists even hope to breed their resilience into other reefs.

The Guardian, January 20, 2022
In northern Norway, trees are rapidly taking over the tundra and threatening an ancient way of life that depends on snow and ice.

BBC News, January 18, 2022
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) says there's a cascade of evidence of harm from plastics. It argues that the plastic pollution threat is almost equivalent to climate change.


CLIMATE 

Common Dreams, January 19, 2022
"To put it simply, advertising and public relations campaigns for fossil fuels must stop," states an open letter to ad agencies and major firms.

Inside Climate News, January 18, 2022
As the United States and other countries work toward net-zero emissions by 2050, the lack of clear data from the U.S. Defense Department—the world’s largest employer—and other militaries is a major stumbling block.

Grist, November 15, 2021
France asked 150 ordinary people to make climate policy. They ended up clashing with President Macron.

Reuters, January 12 2022
The anticipated increase in emissions shows the United States is far off track to reach net zero by 2050.

PBS, January 14, 2022
While the temperature at Earth’s surface is what people experience day to day, the temperature in the upper part of the ocean is a better indicator of how excess heat is accumulating on the planet.