| National Ignition Facility Prepares for Fusion Test Federal researchers are slowly testing 192 lasers that they hope will set off the world's first controlled nuclear fusion reaction.The lasers are housed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a $4 billion complex the size of three football fields that is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. [More] rss.sciam.com |
How Women Can Save the Planet At six billion plus today, the earth’s human population will reach more than nine billion by 2050, according to estimates. If this many people consume energy at the current rate in the developed world, the planet will need more than double the amount of power it consumes today. But energy is just one issue that humankind will have to tackle to create a sustainable future. The root cause of the looming energy problem--and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health--is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them.High fertility rates in areas of the developing world that can least cope put tremendous pressure on freshwater and sanitation needs and fuel economic and religious tensions. In response, these countries ramp up their energy production via the only means available to them based on their resources--means that tend to either pollute the environment or contribute to global warming. [More] rss.sciam.com |
How does background noise affect our concentration? How does background noise affect our concentration? --Philip Miele, Dublin, Ohio [More] rss.sciam.com |
The Hidden Life of Truffles (preview) It’s a cool November day near Bologna, Italy. We are strolling through the woods with truffle hunter Mirko Illice and his little dog, Clinto. Clinto runs back and forth among the oak trees sniffing the ground, pausing, then running again. Suddenly, he stops and begins to dig furiously with both paws. “Ah, he’s found an Italian white truffle,” Mirko explains. “He uses both paws only when he finds one of those.” Mirko gently pulls the excited dog from the spot and pushes through the soil with his fingers. He extracts a yellowish brown lump the size of a golf ball and sniffs it. “ Benissimo , Clinto,” Mirko intones. Though not the finest example of the species, Tuber magnatum --which grows only in northern Italy, Serbia and Croatia--Clinto’s find will fetch a nice price of about $50 at the Saturday market.Throughout history, truffles have appeared on the menu and in folklore. The Pharaoh Khufu served them at his royal table. Bedouins, Kalahari Bushmen and Australian Aborigines have hunted them for countless generations in deserts. The Romans savored them and thought they were produced by thunder. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature All things must come to an end, but we humans have an endless fascination with the inevitable. Our September 2010 special issue and our web exclusives explore some of those endings. Writers and filmmakers, of course, have been tackling apocalyptic themes for decades, at times using them to highlight emotional aspects of sacrifice, heroism and dedication, to varying degrees of success. [More] Apocalypse - Human - Art - Death - Writers Resources rss.sciam.com |