For years, the limiting factor of increasing computational power has been how much electronic circuitry manufacturers can cram onto a single chip. Moore’s Law describes a trend that’s held true since 1971 in which CPUs have essentially doubled in capacity every 18 months, and data storage such as hard disks have generally kept up the…
As we go back in time, we find that heat intensifies to such a level that all bonds that keep matter together break: no more molecules, atoms, atomic nuclei; even protons and neutrons get broken down to their constituent quarks. If we keep going back, we quickly reach a time when energies were beyond what…
Elusive molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere may be helping to cool the planet more efficiently than scientists previously thought, a new study suggests. They are called Criegee intermediates, or Criegee biradicals (named after the German chemist Rudolf Criegee), and are short-lived molecules that form in the Earth’s atmosphere when ozone reacts with alkenes (a family…
The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time is making available detailed information on sources of greenhouse gas emissions, from the Mount Sinai Hospital heating plant in Manhattan to the nation’s largest coal-burning power plant in Georgia. The agency unveiled a searchable computerized map that allows users to identify the nation’s major stationary sources of…
A recent analysis of a survey of 10,000 people found that each sex has firmly entrenched characteristics, with women showing more sensitivity, warmth and apprehension than men. In contrast, emotional stability, dominance, rule-consciousness and vigilance are more typically male characteristics, experts said. Previous research has claimed that that average personality differences between men and women…
Of all the domestic policy differences between the Bush and Obama administrations, just about the sharpest and most telling may be their opposite responses to the drive by Republican-dominated states to require voters to present photo identification at the polls. The Bush administration thought photo ID was a dandy idea. The Obama administration recognizes it…
Astronomers have determined that each of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way probably has at least one companion planet, on average, adding credence to the notion that planets are as common in the cosmos as grains of sand on the beach. The finding underscores a fundamental shift in scientific understanding of planetary systems…
To help prevent overtesting and overtreatment of older patients — or undertreatment for those who remain robust at advanced ages — medical guidelines increasingly call for doctors to consider life expectancy as a factor in their decision-making. But clinicians, research has shown, are notoriously poor at predicting how many years their patients have left. Now,…
None of us would be here today if, billions of years ago, a tiny, single-celled organism hadn’t started using oxygen to make a living. Researchers don’t know exactly when this happened, or why, but a team of scientists has come closer than ever before to finding out. They’ve identified the earliest known example of aerobic…
Scientists say the lengths of tiny pieces of DNA called telomeres indicate whether a young creature is likely to live long into old age.