This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Waking Up by Shara Yurkiewicz:
....Someone please tell me how to make a box in my mind and put patients into it and seal it and make the patients stay in there until I say they can come out and–actually, on second thought–maybe I’ll just never let them out. Because I am having nightmares too. But at least I am waking up in my home with both my legs still there.....
Antibodies found in Peruvians suggest natural resistance to rabies in local vampire bats by Kathleen Raven:
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While attempting to better understand the exposure of rural Latin American communities to diseases harbored by bats, epidemiologists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have stumbled upon an intriguing finding: eight people living in two tiny Peruvian villages appear to have developed antibodies against the rabies virus found in local vampire bats without any prior vaccination or treatment for the infection. This population study, the first of its kind, may provide clues to better understand how incremental exposure to rabies could lead to better vaccines or monoclonal antibody drugs....
Engineering Life to Survive on Mars and Aid Human Colonization by Tanya Lewis:
With NASA’s Curiosity Rover safely on Mars and ready to search for signs of life, back on Earth attempts are underway to engineer bacteria that could thrive on the Red Planet. A team of undergraduates from Stanford and Brown Universities are busy applying synthetic biology to space exploration, outfitting microbes to survive extreme Martian conditions and produce resources needed to sustain a human colony....
Why ‘Living in the Moment’ is Impossible by Rachel Nuwer:
"Just live in the moment!” say people who are selling something, probably. But new research finds that this commandment is probably impossible thanks to the hard-wired ways our minds process thinking and decision-making....
Gooooal! 2 Technologies Compete to Sense Soccer Goals by Rose Eveleth:
In the 39th minute of a 2010 second-round World Cup soccer game, England's Frank Lampard shot the ball at Germany's goal. The ball hit the crossbar of the goal net, bounced down to the ground and back up to the bar again before the German goalie grabbed it out of harm's way. The officials called it a no-goal, because the ball had not fully crossed the white goal line on the pitch that runs parallel to the cross bar. But it had. Video replay showed clearly that Lampard's shot had hit the ground nearly a third of a meter inside the goal line before bouncing back up. But the call was final, and the Germans had the ball. England lost that game and was eliminated from the World Cup....
Fire and flight: Is there hope for the Florida scrub-jay? by Justine E. Hausheer:
The wind blows constantly across Florida’s Merritt Island, carrying the scent of Atlantic salt into the scrubland and slash pines. The dense palmettos are buffeted together, their rattle adds to the roar of the wind, the scream of the ospreys, and the distant sputtering of motorcycles. Then the low roar is broken by a flash of blue and a bright, rasping call. Perched on a thin oak branch above the palmettos, a jay sways in the wind. He twitches every few seconds, peering around as he shrieks a warning...
Taking the scenic route: A lifetime climber both shapes and is shaped by the mountains by Kelly Slivka:
“At first I climbed mostly alone,” remembers Jim Gehres as he searches the white wall across the room for memories half a century old. His hair is parted far to the right and smoothed properly over his head in a style nostalgic for the 1940s. It’s still mostly jet-black despite his age, which shows in the wrinkles of his thin, tan skin and the tired slope of his shoulders. His eyes, though, are still guileless and excited, like a schoolboy’s on the day before summer vacation....
Curiosity to look for habitable environs by Nadia Drake:
If, late in the evening of August 5, NASA’s Curiosity rover survives what might be the most daring interplanetary touchdown in history, the six-wheeled robot will find itself in a dramatic landscape ripe with research opportunities: Gale Crater, an enormous basin with a 5-kilometer-tall mountain in the middle, called Mount Sharp. There, Curiosity will look for evidence of water, energy sources and organic carbon — the hallmarks of life-friendly environments, past or present. ....
Curiosity lands safely on Mars by Nadia Drake:
Curiosity has phoned home from the dusty surface of Mars. Radio signals and images received at 10:32 p.m. PDT on August 5 by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirm that the rover has reached Mars’ Gale Crater, Curiosity's intended destination after an 8.5-month journey of 567 million kilometers...