Innehållsförteckning för June 2016 från Discover

I’ve been taking a lot of deep breaths lately. It helps get my head beyond that looming to-do list. There’s something that happens in your brain when you fill your lungs with as much air as possible, then let it slowly escape. Sit still, noticing only your breath. Go for a run, paying attention only to the feel of your muscles firing in unison. When you focus the mind on one central point — and all else falls away — it will open up. Creative thinking hinges on this flow. That’s what lies at the heart of two feature stories in this issue: Einstein’s thought experiments and the gene-editing revolution. We break down how a young Einstein watched everyday events with fresh eyes, questioning assumptions and taking the notion of…

James Niemi, an engineer at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, knew his team had the prototype right for a new, vibrating insole intended to improve balance when it felt like every other insole on the market. We all have neurons in our feet that help control balance, but they’re often desensitized in seniors. The result: poor balance and falls. Thanks to past research he’d read about how random vibrations could open up neural ion channels, Wyss Core Faculty member James Collins discovered that those vibrations could improve seniors’ motor control and balance when applied imperceptibly to soles of their feet. In 2013, Discover reported that seniors standing on the vibrating insoles in the lab demonstrated the same balance as people in their 20s. Since then, Niemi has been working to make that…

Robert Hare steps out of the sunlight and into a West Vancouver pub. “Let me see your eyes,” says the 82-year old, piercing me with a cautious gaze that has sized up hundreds of criminals, including some of Canada’s most notorious psychopaths. The word itself has become a synonym for a certain type of evil, denoting a specific breed of cunning, bloodthirsty predator who lacks empathy, remorse and impulse control, readily violating social rules and exploiting others to get what he or she wants. Psychopaths are capable of the most heinous crimes, yet they’re often so charming and manipulative that they can hide behind a well-cultivated mask of normalcy for years and perhaps their entire lives. Only the ones who get caught become household names, such as Ted Bundy, “Killer…

As teenage brothers and identical twins growing up in 1950s Alabama, Gregory and James Benford both read Time for the Stars, Robert Heinlein’s 1956 novel about Tom and Pat Bartlett — identical teenage twins who took part in the world’s first interstellar space mission. The tale made a lasting impression on the Benfords, who shared the Bartletts’ affinity for space and were simultaneously drawn to the world of science fiction. While still in their teens, the Benfords published 29 issues of the fanzine Void. James has since sold a few sci-fi stories, whereas Gregory has published more than 200 short stories and written 31 novels, winning two Nebula Awards along the way. But the brothers’ main pursuit is science. Gregory is an emeritus physics professor at the University of California,…

Well Wishes In Stephen C. George’s Editor’s Note in the April 2016 issue, his last before moving on from his Editor In Chief role at Discover, he once again relayed a nugget of wisdom to readers that a science teacher had passed on to him. One reader had this heartfelt reaction to George’s closing words. To Stephen C. George: Well, rats. I thought YOU were the constant, not so much the change. I checked my back issues this morning to see how long I’ve received Discover — a little longer than the three years of your column — and happened to look into the issue (April 2013) where you titled your Editor’s Note “Elements of Change,” mentioning the same teacher who changed the seating around: “If you complained, Mr. M…

Latin for “tough body,” this mass of more than 200 million nerve fibers helps connect the left and right hemispheres of the cerebrum, our brain’s largest and uppermost section. This connection allows the two hemispheres to communicate more efficiently. And while there’s been much debate over whether or not women have bigger corpus callosa, there’s evidence that musicians may have the edge: Researchers have found that starting musical training before the age of 7 can boost connectivity in this brain area.…

Estela, 26, lay curled up on a stretcher, her forehead beaded with sweat. Nausea, vomiting and stomach cramps had laid her low for two days, she said. She was on methadone, and if she’d missed a dose, withdrawal could be causing the vomiting and stomach cramps. But heaving for two days straight would be unusual. “So you did take this morning’s dose?” I asked. “Seventy-five milligrams at eight this morning,” my patient replied. “I missed yesterday.” The facts weren’t fitting my tidy theory. I turned to Paul, my medical student. “Small bowel obstruction?” he offered. “Hepatitis? Pancreatitis?” “Any fever?” I asked Estela. “No.” “Diarrhea?” “No.” “Alcohol use?” “No,” she said. The rest of the history was no help. Her abdomen, cramps notwithstanding, felt soft. Also normal were blood pressure, pulse…

Smacking a bell on his desk, George Cachianes summons the class to order. Twenty-six teenage biotechnologists cluster at three tables. Cachianes teaches Principles of Biotechnology — he calls it “Welcome to Graduate School” — to a select group of juniors and seniors at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco. His Room 22 is not just a classroom, but a functioning laboratory. Its equipment, acquired through grants and donations, can handle tasks such as sequencing DNA and analyzing proteins. But today’s lesson is about a newer technology, a means for altering the genes of any organism — and, potentially, its offspring. It’s called Crispr-Cas9. An elegant tool with an inelegant name, Crispr-Cas9 has electrified the biotech world. Molecular biologists, biomedical researchers, and movers and shakers throughout the life sciences have…

The PCL-R — or The Hare, as it’s colloquially known — measures a constellation of 20 personality traits and behaviors. An accredited clinician, ideally one with a background in psychopathy, conducts a semistructured interview with a subject, coaxing out information about the subject’s personality, lifestyle and personal history. The feedback is combined with information from the subject’s file and ideally interviews with family, friends, employers and other associates, to help the clinician determine whether the subject is evasive or deceptive. The checklist’s 20 items include glibness/superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, need for stimulation/proneness to boredom, pathological lying, conning/manipulation, lack of remorse/guilt, shallow affect, callousness/lack of empathy, parasitic lifestyle, promiscuous sexual behavior, early behavior problems, lack of realistic, longterm goals, impulsivity, failure to accept responsibility, many short-term marital relationships, juvenile…

When spacecraft fail, they often fail dramatically. But “if the mission survives entry and landing or insertion into orbit, the spacecraft typically lasts two to three times longer than planned,” says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for NASA’s Mars Program Office. Here are some examples of craft that have lived to enjoy missions well beyond their original assignments. Voyager 1 and 2 Launched in 1977, these spacecraft were originally tasked with flybys of Jupiter and Saturn to snap photos and gather data on temperature and atmosphere composition. Bonus science: After also taking a good look at Neptune and Uranus, one of them is off to explore interstellar space. Voyager 1 left the solar system in 2012, and Voyager 2 will join it within the next few years. Why it’s still on…

Smart Summer Reads THE DRAGON BEHIND THE GLASS: A True Story of Power, Obsession and the World’s Most Coveted Fish By Emily Voigt At the center of international intrigue, the shimmering arowana is a predator “the length of a samurai sword.” It’s the most expensive tropical fish in the world — and one of the most endangered. With the taut suspense of a spy novel, Voigt paints a vivid world of murder, black market deals and habitat destruction surrounding a fish that’s considered, ironically, to be a good-luck charm. CHOICE OR CHANCE: Understanding Your Locus of Control and Why It Matters By Stephen Nowicki It was meant to be . . . wasn’t it? Everything happens for a reason . . . doesn’t it? For half a century, psychologists have…

Who could have believed that the world was flat? Or that it sits fixed in space, while the cosmos revolves around it? Anyone with two eyes, that’s who. It takes a leap of imagination to contemplate the alternative — that we are standing atop a rapidly spinning sphere, hurtling through space. Albert Einstein, like Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei before him, redefined our understanding of the universe, and he did so thanks to a knack for keeping his thoughts clear of unnecessary information. In fact, he conducted experiments on the basis of thought alone, playing them out in something like the construct from The Matrix — a completely empty space populated with only items essential to his experiments. A clock. A train. A beam of light. An observer or two.…

Joseph Cook took to the ice to learn about the polar ice caps of Mars, but he found something almost as otherworldly on Earth. For his graduate research in glaciology, Cook’s plan was to study depressions on glaciers as a way to learn more about mysterious Swiss-cheese pits in Martian ice. But, he says, once he began exploring the holes in 2009, “I was hooked.” It’s easy to understand Cook’s fascination. Each hole is its own tiny world, an ecosystem unto itself that supports a host of life-forms, including tardigrades — or water bears — and other small organisms. These waterfilled divots develop when dark grains of bacteria-specked dust collect on a glacier or ice sheet and absorb heat from the sun. The granules, called cryoconite, begin to melt the…