Don’t Trust the Applause
▻http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/06/dont-trust-the-applause.html
by Nisha Giridharan on 18 June 2013
The next time you hear extended applause for a performance you didn’t think was that great, don’t feel like a snob. A new study reveals that audience response has more to do with the people in the seats than those up on stage.
Predicting Collapse
▻http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/predicting-collapse.html?ref=hp
Now, physicists studying laboratory yeast have found a new way to tell when such a collapse is imminent. The researchers hope their warning signal can help fishery and wildlife managers act in time to save stressed populations.
The team’s work is “a really nice paper” that “could potentially lead to some new insights,” says Stephen Carpenter, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin. Madison, who has studied similar early warning signals in lakes.
The key to preventing a population collapse is spotting early signs of trouble. One recognized warning signal is that unhealthy systems often take longer than healthy ones to recover from a disturbance. Scientists call this “critical slowing down.”
Ticking Arctic Carbon Bomb May Be Bigger Than Thought
►http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/ticking-arctic-carbon-bomb-may-b.html
by Eli Kintisch on 7 December 2012
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Scientists are expressing fresh concerns about the carbon locked in the Arctic’s vast expanse of frozen soil. New field studies, presented here this week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, quantify the amount of soil carbon at 1.9 trillion metric tons, suggesting that previous estimates underestimated the climate risk if this carbon is liberated. Meanwhile, a new analysis of laboratory experiments that simulate carbon release by thawed soil is bolstering worries that continued carbon emissions could unleash a massive Arctic carbon wallop.
Why #Tuberculosis Is So Hard to Cure - ScienceNOW
►http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/why-tuberculosis-is-so-hard-to.html?rss=1
When microbes divide, you usually get more of the same: A cell splits up and creates two identical copies of itself. But a new study shows that’s not true for mycobacteria, which cause tuberculosis (#TB) in humans—and that may explain why the disease is so difficult to treat. (...)
“It is incredible that we are finding such basic things out only now,” says immunologist Sarah Fortune of at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the paper’s lead author. “But it reflects the fact that mycobacteria are relatively understudied.”
Normal que l’or soit si cher : il est d’origine extra-terrestre ! - ScienceNOW
►http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/scienceshot-meteorites-brought.html?rss=1
According to high-precision measurements of two isotopes, or atomic variants, of tungsten in 4-billion-old rocks from Greenland published online today in Nature, precious-metal-bearing meteorites struck Earth around this time, coating the planet in a veneer containing gold, platinum, and other elements long after their native counterparts had disappeared into the planet’s core. Proof positive that your bling really is out of this world.