DiscoverNovember 2018的目錄

I’m still a relative newbie to motorcycling. It took about a year of being on the back of my husband’s BMW before I was itching to be on my own bike. So, when I swing a leg over my Suzuki V-Strom, I’m hyper-tuned to everything — the smell of the dry autumn air, the sound of the wind sliding around my helmet and the feel of the bike as it picks up speed in second gear. And I’m constantly assessing risk and tweaking my behavior. When you’re new to riding, your perception of reality is in overdrive. Maybe it’s like when we’re little kids, our senses lighting up as we explore a new space. As adults, our reality is so established, we take it for granted. We expect things in…

CAN WE GO TO MARS without going crazy? In May 2001, Discover’s cover story asked exactly that, exploring unanswered questions about the psychological perils of humans crammed together and flung through space. At the time, scientists didn’t have much data to predict how people would handle the six-month journey. Researchers realized interpersonal skills and camaraderie would be critical to success. We’re still not sure how things would go. But growing interest in the mental risks of space travel — which NASA lists as one of the biggest threats to astronauts — has spawned a wave of new research and technology. Experts are developing stress-management systems, including virtual reality programs and robotic companions, to help interplanetary travelers cope on their trip. And projects that simulate long-term space travel are giving researchers…

Stars are born from gas, and spiral galaxy Messier 66 (aka M66, or NGC 3627) has a lot of both. When gas gathers, it clumps into dense clouds, which can then collapse to form stars. Astronomers can find such areas of stellar birth by looking within the ultraviolet spectrum of light, since newborn stars emit more of it than older stars. Hubble’s recent Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) explored M66 and 49 other nearby star-forming galaxies, aiming to better understand how, where and when galaxies create stars.…

An Unappetizing Illustration (“A New Animal Farm,” July/August 2018) I have been reading a lot of articles about insect consumption as a good source of protein, and your article was a welcome addition to my growing knowledge. However, you’re not furthering the concept of insect consumption by saying, “But for an entire culture shift to occur, Ashour [one of the Aspire Food Group’s founders] wants to change how we talk about entomophagy,” and then including a full-page illustration of a fork filled with a living, squirmy mealworm and a cricket. How are we to get past the idea of eating insects if the visual is counter to the message? Patricia Dittoe Conroe, Texas An Electric Issue (“Everything Worth Knowing,” July/August 2018) The latest “Everything Worth Knowing” issue was a fantastic…

DESPITE THE NAME, THE WORLD WIDE WEB … ISN’T. Some 52 percent of the world — roughly 4 billion people, mostly women — don’t have access to the open web. This has sparked something like a new space race, featuring satellites, high-altitude balloons, drones, even lasers. The rush of startups and tech companies, including SpaceX, Google and Facebook, make it only a matter of time before most humans are online. The benefits are already clear. Getting online is financially advantageous for folks in low-income regions, especially Africa and Asia, where lack of connectivity is highest. Connectedness also promotes greater participation in politics and society. “If people have access to faster internet speeds, then you will also see improvements in economic growth,” says Dhanaraj Thakur, a researcher at the Alliance for…

In a sleek biochemistry laboratory at the University of Washington, postdoctoral fellow Yang Hsia is watching yellowish goo — the liquefied remains of E. coli — ooze through what looks like a gob of white marshmallow. “This isn’t super exciting,” he says. While growing proteins in bacteria and then purifying them, using blobby white resin as a filter, doesn’t make for riveting viewing, the end product is extraordinary. Accumulating in Hsia’s resin is a totally artificial protein, unlike anything seen in nature, that might just be the ideal chassis for the first universal flu vaccine. David Baker, Hsia’s adviser, calls this designer protein a “Death Star.” Imaged on his computer, its structure shows some resemblance to the notorious Star Wars superweapon. Though microscopic, by protein standards it’s enormous: a sphere…

A Little Personality (“Everything Worth Knowing: Personality,” July/August 2018) From theories to tests, we took you through the essentials of the psychology of personality. Here’s what some Facebook readers had to say in response: Fino Menezes: It seems to me a great injustice that while a growing number of people can boast “multiple” personalities, there are others, less fortunate, who have been left with none at all. This is the plight of the charismatically challenged in today’s two-tier society. Evelyn Haskins: But far better to have no personality than multiple horrible ones. Feedback is edited for space and clarity.…

HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR THOMAS DEERINCK didn’t expect his life to change when he walked into his science class one day in the mid-1970s. Local research scientist Betty Barbour had come to share her stunning images of the microscopic world. She was hoping to recruit students for her electron microscopy training program, eager for new helping hands. Deerinck promptly enrolled. Forty years later, his award-winning photos have appeared on the covers of scientific journals. He’s also one of the most senior researchers at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research in La Jolla, California, where he and his colleagues expand the boundaries of what a microscope can see and do. But as his subjects have gotten smaller over the years, the large streams of data the photos produce need heavy-duty processing.…

Mid-1990s: The internet becomes widely available with the emergence of affordable personal computers and web browsers like Netscape. 1999: Apple offers Wi-Fi compatibility in its iBook laptops, the first tech company to do so, spurring an industry-wide trend. 2006: Facebook, which originally only allowed people with. edu email addresses to join, opens up membership to anyone. The move sparks Facebook’s rise through the ranks of social media sites. 2007: Apple releases the iPhone, pushing smartphones and mobile apps into the mainstream.…

“It’s like being electrocuted,” said Alana, her body quivering. “It keeps happening. Doctors can’t tell me why.” The 25-year-old had been walking with a friend on a sidewalk when everything started spinning and her body shook. Her chest tightened and she couldn’t breathe. Her friend called an ambulance, which brought her to the emergency room. Dizzying, heart-thumping experiences like this one had been happening to her every few weeks for eight months. Brain scans showed nothing amiss. A specialist had found no inner ear problem. Her neurologist suspected arrhythmia (or irregular heartbeat), but she hadn’t seen a cardiologist yet to have it checked out. Her vitals, such as blood pressure, pulse and body temperature, were all normal. It wasn’t making sense. Here was a fit, young woman who didn’t drink…

1 Chances are, you can thank a laser for helping you get through the day. The technology lets us do everything from scan groceries at the checkout to remove regretted tattoos. 2 The word laser, coined in 1957, is an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Since thater ending makes a laser seem like a doer of … something, it soon spawned the verb “to lase.” 3 Unlike the sun or a flashlight, which shines in a broad range of colors combined to produce white light, lasers lase by producing a concentrated beam of a single wavelength, or color. 4 In 2016, scientists created a new type of microlaser, smaller than a red blood cell, which could lead to innovations in medical imaging. 5 That same year,…