Could a Monster Earthquake Actually Sink Parts of the Pacific Northwest? A new study is fueling speculation and fear about the risks of a major earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone, including massive flooding in California By Stephanie Pappas edited by Jeanna Bryner Stumps of Sitka spruce, drowned from subsidence during an earthquake at a…
Air filters could be a simple way of boosting school attendance Arne Dedert/dpa/Alamy Live News School attendance increased by 1.3 days per pupil per year when five elementary schools in Milan, Italy, introduced air filters into classrooms, in the first randomised controlled trial of its kind. “It’s the first experimental evidence,” says Stefania Renna at…
Members of New Mexico’s Picuris Pueblo Tribal Nation have long told stories about having descended from ancient North American ancestors. Genetic evidence now backs up what Picuris people — but not archaeologists — knew all along and fleshes out lost pieces of the tribe’s past. The new results, published April 30 in Nature, came out…
Where in the brain does consciousness originate? Theories abound, but neuroscientists still haven’t coalesced around one explanation, largely because it’s such a hard question to probe with the scientific method. Unlike other phenomena studied by science, consciousness cannot be observed externally. “I observe your behavior. I observe your brain, if I do an intracranial EEG…
Women, on average, live longer than men. This trend can be seen as far back as records stretch, and is true of every country in the world today. Many explanations have been put forward: men take more risks or smoke more, oestrogen is protective against health conditions, two X chromosomes are better than one… the…
For most of her life, Alyssa Fraser took comfort in cooking. Fraser, a former food reporter from Minnesota, used to relish the process of whipping up her favorite chicken and vegetable recipe or batches of pasta. But after she started taking the popular weight-loss medication Wegovy, her culinary interests seemed to disappear because she became…
Lesions close up quicker if you’re a chimpanzee than a person Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Human wounds take almost three times as long to heal as the injuries of other mammals, including chimpanzees, which are among our closest living relatives. It isn’t clear why, but it may be an evolutionary adaptation connected to the loss of…
Firing Science Advisors Will Leave the U.S. Senseless From public health to space exploration, advisory panels have helped U.S. agencies make smarter decisions. The Trump administration wants to kill them By Dan Vergano In the Trump administration’s ongoing race to make the U.S. poorer, sicker and dumber, one more stomp on the accelerator comes from…
Some deepfake videos present a convincing pulse Alamy Stock Photo Deepfake videos that feature digital manipulations of people’s facial expressions and voices can also depict realistic heartbeats, making them even harder to spot. “We now know that just because a person in a video has a measurable pulse, it doesn’t mean that we can assume…
All about AI Scientists are working on AI technology that has brain-inspired hardware, architecture or algorithms. Such neuromorphic AI could be nimbler, more efficient and more capable than traditional AI, freelance writer Kathryn Hulick reported in “Making AI think more like your brain.” Hulick reported that mainstream computers, which currently run most AI, separate memory…
