A team of physicists at Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, reported unusual behavior in the muon’s magnetic wobble in April. The signal shows that there are factors at work in the particle’s behavior that the Standard Model doesn’t expect (see “Long-Awaited Muon Measurement Boosts Evidence for New Physics”). However, as physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains…
We’re entering a new era of personalized medicine, in which each patient’s cancer therapy is tailored to their genetic composition. Individual tumors can be genetically profiled, and the exact mutations underlying them can be identified through genomic testing. Clinical trials are used to evaluate novel medication candidates or to investigate novel applications for current medications.…
New York became one of only a few states to legalize recreational marijuana this year when it did so in March. Cannabis, both medical and recreational, is now legal in more states than unlawful, increasing state-regulated grow operations across the US.Researchers from all across the country, including the Cannabis Research Center at the University of…
The BBC broadcasted an interview with US Special Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry and journalist Andrew Marr. Marr posed a series of challenging questions on America’s climate policies, including coal phaseout, carbon footprints, and green innovation.When asked if Americans will have to cut back on some regions of their carbon-intensive lives, such as eating…
Andrew Taylor only ate potatoes for the entire year of 2016. His potato diet included a few stipulations: he ate both white and sweet potatoes, and he occasionally blended in soymilk, tomato sauce, salt, and herbs. In addition, he took B12 supplements. He did, however, eat potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in general. Over…
Todd Watkins had no idea he’d become famous because of a school bus transaction.Watkins made headlines as the Director of Transportation for Montgomery Public Schools in Maryland when he decided to replace his district’s diesel school buses with cleaner, electric ones. Unbeknownst to him, the contract he signed with Highland Electric Transportation in February to…
The book Behavior of the Lower Organisms, written by naturalist Herbert Spencer Jennings in 1906, contains a novel idea: bacteria may alter their thoughts. Stentor, a single cell bristling with beating hairs, was his topic. These trumpet-shaped predators are so enormous that they can be eaten by giant fish and seen by humans, and they…
According to scientists, quasicrystals—so-called “impossible” materials with strange, non-repeating structures—have been discovered in leftovers of the world’s first nuclear bomb test. The hitherto unknown structure, composed of iron, silicon, copper, and calcium, was most likely created by using vaporized desert sand and copper wires. Similar materials have been made in the lab and found in…
Singapore officials authorized in vitro produced chicken in December, officially launching the world’s lab-developed meat sector. Eat Just, the firm behind the poultry, has now sold hundreds of plates to 1880, a Singaporean club, and wants to extend to other eateries in the island country this year. The Singapore Food Agency’s decision is the first…
Physicists didn’t make sure if these strange things existed in the actual world in the early days of black hole study before they even had that name. They might have resulted from the complicated arithmetic utilized in the general theory of relativity, which describes gravity at the time, still in its infancy. However, evidence has…