The world is in desperate need of protective gear to keep health care workers safe and ventilators to help severely ill COVID-19 patients breathe. In the face of massively increased demand and stalled supply chains, engineers are scrambling to redesign equipment so it can be produced outside of specialized factories. Researchers at academic institutions are […]
Census Day, when census takers usually begin to knock on households tracking down those less likely to be counted, was April 1. This year, however, because of the pandemic, they have been unable to do that, and the Census Bureau is now asking Congress for a four-month extension for delivering the final figures. If this […]
Originally published in January 1860 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “The celebrated African traveler Dr. Livingstone relates by letter: ‘The luxuriant valley of the Shire River is marshy and abounding in lagoons, in which grow great quantities of the lotus plant. The people were busy collecting the tubers, which when boiled or roasted, resembled chestnuts. Another […]
As the global strategy for slowing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic changes from containment to mitigation, millions of residents are being asked to shelter in place, leaving their homes only for essential needs. This limitation of movement and social interaction has been a major stress test for marriages. In China, the strain of life […]
“In the beginning, everything was void, and J.H.W.H Conway began to create numbers.” This is how mathematician John Horton Conway appears in Donald Knuth’s novella Surreal Numbers—a seemingly all-knowing force that brought all of the numbers into existence, whose methods were written down so others could deduce and explore them, too. It’s a fitting description […]
London, at an hour that made Rosalind glad she’d nicked her brother’s black cloak instead of wearing her scarlet one. The factory alongside her had quit belching smoke for the night, but it would start again soon. A noise caused her to draw back against the brick wall. Glancing up, she gasped. An oblong hulk […]
On April 4, Licho, one of the four last speakers of the Great Andamanese language family, died of tuberculosis and heart disease in Port Blair on South Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal. I received the news with a profound sense of loss. I had worked with Licho for two decades to document the […]
This essay first appeared on Last Word on Nothing on April 15, 2020. Twenty biomedical companies. Seventy nations. An aggressive search for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines is underway worldwide. Yet even 21st-century technology can’t match one man who curbed a major influenza pandemic spreading across the United States in 1957. Pioneering virologist Maurice Hilleman, now […]
On March 6, 1987, a ferry traveling from England to Belgium capsized, causing the death of 193 people. In the months after the disaster, many of the approximately 300 survivors suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including upsetting dreams; anxiety; emotional detachment and numbness; and difficulties with sleep and concentration. However, in time, some of […]
Unconcerned about climate change on Earth, senator wants to create atmospheres on other planets — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com Source link