Science

Science

[:es]Watch levitating upside-down boats flip the law of buoyancy[:]

[:es]If you’re a water sports fan looking for a new thrill, what about upside-down sailing? The idea might not be so outlandish. In a new study, physicists have managed to float tiny boats on the underside of a layer of liquid levitating in midair (see animation, above). Besides opening up some unusual nautical possibilities, the…
Science

[:es]Some mosquitoes already have resistance to the latest weapon against malaria[:]

[:es]An insecticide about to be widely deployed inside African homes to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes is already losing its punch. Two years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) gave the green light for clothianidin, long used in agriculture to kill crop pests, to be added to the current mainstays of indoor mosquito control, which are losing…
Science

[:es]The mysterious case of man who can read letters—but not numbers—exposes roots of consciousness[:]

[:es]In the video, the man sounds creeped out. “This is too strange for words,” he mutters. He’s holding a plate-size, green foam 8. When upright, it looks to him like an incoherent jumble. But when he rotates it 90°, the shape snaps into focus; it looks like “a mask.” He begins to rotate the numeral…
Science

[:es]From rocks to icebergs, the natural world tends to break into cubes[:]

[:es]Perhaps the Cubists were right. Researchers have found that when everything from icebergs to rocks breaks apart, their pieces tend to resemble cubes. The finding suggests a universal rule of fragmentation at scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary.[:]
Science

[:es]Ancient microbial arms race sharpened our immune system—but also left us vulnerable[:]

[:es]At a recent symposium on the evolution of infectious diseases, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), pathologist Nissi Varki noted that humans suffer from a long list of deadly diseases—including typhoid fever, cholera, mumps, whooping cough, measles, smallpox, polio, and gonorrhea—that don’t afflict apes and most other mammals. All of those pathogens follow the same…
Science

[:es]After 40 years, researchers finally see Earth’s climate destiny more clearly[:]

[:es]It seems like such a simple question: How hot is Earth going to get? Yet for 40 years, climate scientists have repeated the same unsatisfying answer: If humans double atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from preindustrial levels, the planet will eventually warm between 1.5°C and 4.5°C—a temperature range that encompasses everything from a merely troubling rise…
Science

[:es]Global warming shrinks bird breeding windows, potentially threatening species[:]

[:es]For breeding birds, timing is everything. Most species have just a narrow window to get the food they need to feed their brood—after spring’s bounty has sprung, but before other bird species swoop in to compete. Now, a new study suggests that as the climate warms, birds are not only breeding earlier, but their breeding…
Science

[:es]New genes control plant height, could lead to flood-proof crops[:]

[:es]Stature matters to plants. Short crops can carry more grain without bending under their own weight—a key trait that helped power the Green Revolution in the 1960s. But tall plants are better at surviving long floods. Now, researchers have found two genes that together help control the height of rice plants: one that accelerates the…
Science

[:es]The pandemic virus is slowly mutating. But is it getting more dangerous?[:]

[:es]It’s only a tiny change. At some point early in the pandemic, one of the 30,000 letters in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 changed from an A to a G. Today, that mutation, at position 23,403, has spread around the world. It is found in the vast majority of newly sequenced viruses and has become the…