Discover July - August 2014

Who’s the Boss? A friend of mine who is a novelist has a sheet of paper taped to his wall, just above his computer. It says, simply: The Book is the Boss. I assume it’s a mantra he repeats to himself whenever he’s in danger of missing his deadline (which for him is often). In my work, I’m motivated by a similar maxim, although I don’t have it written on my wall. It’s ingrained in my mind, and it’s this: The Reader is the Boss. I work for you. But I do my best work in a team environment, which is why I tend to think of our working relationship as a partnership, one that depends on actively soliciting your input. That’s why I throw a question out to readers…

Printing Parts Christian Millman wrote “20 Things You Didn’t Know About 3-D Printing” in our March issue. I always get something out of your magazine. Loved the 3-D printing article. My brother had a massive brain aneurysm about two years ago. After surgery, they left out about a fourth of the top of his skull. When it came time to replace it, the missing piece had become contaminated in storage. No problem! They ran him through a CT scanner that made the piece. I assume this is some of the same technology. Where would he have been without it? Elaine J. McElhaney Columbia, SC Hotheaded Lessons in Skepticism April’s “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Hoaxes” mentioned Discover’s 1995 April Fools’ story about the fictional hotheaded naked ice borer, a…

Three years ago, Dana DeBeauvoir, a county clerk in Austin, Texas, had a problem. Soon she’d have to replace the aging voting machines her county had bought eight years earlier. Congress had ponied up the money for those machines, driven by the hanging chad debacle in Florida’s 2000 election. But this time, the feds weren’t coughing up any cash. Even if she had the money, though, she didn’t like her choices. Computer scientists had been sounding alarms about the rampant security flaws in voting machines for years, and the manufacturers hadn’t responded. So DeBeauvoir took a very unusual step: She gave the keynote speech at a computer voting security conference, challenging the assembled computer scientists to build her the voting system of her dreams. She outlined four requirements. First, the…

Fresh from prenatal yoga, a woman walks into her 35-week OB appointment glowing. But the doc frowns as she watches the woman’s normally low blood pressure soar past 140. Then a routine test shows protein in her urine. Diagnosis: preeclampsia. These few symptoms are often the only indication of the condition; the mom-to-be feels fine, but until she has her baby, she’ll likely be put on bed rest and monitored closely, as preeclampsia can quickly escalate to severe swelling, seizures, and even coma or death. As many as 8 percent of pregnant women worldwide are diagnosed with preeclampsia, and while the condition is on the rise in the U.S., no one knows exactly what causes it. Some researchers have suspected fetal DNA or pieces of the placenta — long known…

Unlike the relaxation associated with Roman baths, ancient Roman bathrooms triggered trepidation. They consisted of dark, dank holes leading to sewer channels from which emerged biting creatures or even, because of methane buildup, naked flames. Independent archaeologist Gemma Jansen has studied these unsavory sites for the past 20 years, becoming one of the go-to latrine gurus among classical researchers. In January 2013, beneath layers of architectural ruins in Rome’s Palatine Hill, Jansen examined something of a treasure among toilets: a chamber likely to be the loo that slaves in Nero’s palace would have frequented 2,000 years ago. The stone bench that wraps around the room would have housed some 50 soccer ball-size holes, but no dividers. “Like public toilets today, they are convenient if you need them, but mostly they…

They may not be white whales named Moby, but Antarctic minke whales can be just as elusive. Generally shy and abundant only around the inhospitable southern continent, the dark bronze beasts — among the smallest baleen whales at roughly 5 to 10 tons each — have been difficult to study in their environment, so biologists know little about their behavior. In fact, their elusive nature has been used by some as an excuse to hunt and kill the whales, saying it’s the only way to study them. But last year, Ari Friedlaender, a marine mammal ecologist then at Duke University, discovered a new method. He was aboard a research vessel off the Antarctic Peninsula studying humpback whales when an unusual group of minkes let his team into their midst. Data…