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Transforming a feature story into news
Read a feature story in a popular science magazine (e.e., New Scientist or Scientific American). Write a one-paragraph news summary of the article and post it in the comments box, below. DEADLINE: 9 AM on Tuesday May 1.
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ReplyDeleteFeature story: "Swarm Troopers," New Scientist, Sept. 10-16, 2011, by Henry Nicholls
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Scientists have recently implemented a new, eco-friendly way to target specific pest species for elimination. Essentially, this technique involves "designing," breeding, and then releasing genetically modified animals that will lead to lethal mutations in their offspring. While prior efforts focused on chemical sterilization of male pests (therefore resulting in unviable eggs), this strategy was overly work-intensive and was not particularly successful. Instead, scientists are now trying to create transgenic pests that delay death until further on in animal development. Trial runs with A. aegyptia, a mosquito in the Cayman Islands, have been very successful thus far. The project is spearheaded by biotechnology company Oxitec based out of Oxford, and they believe that this new technique will drastically reduce the amount of chemical pesticides used throughout the world. In the future, they hope that this approach can also be used to control other, non-insect invasive species like cane toads or carp.
Feature story: "Smarter cities" Scientific American, Sept. 2011, by Carlo Ratti and Anthony Townsend
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On January 6 one notification on the mobile social app Foursquare accelerated the Jasmine Revolution of Tunisia by putting the Tunisian regime in the worldwide media’s spotlight. Social apps as Foursquare have come to change our idea of how we communicate and interact. As a contrast to the revolutions of North Africa city officials in other parts of the world are implementing “smart” apps to monitor anything from traffic congestion to nitrogen oxide levels. The smart city of the future is working along with its inhabitants in new and creative ways to increase efficiency and create new opportunities for the smart people.
Feature story: "The Twilight Zone," New Scientist, Nov. 26 - Dec. 2, 2011, by Linda Geddes
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Recent data from brain-imaging techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI) scanning and electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements shed light on brain function when individuals are given anesthesia. The use of anesthesia has been around since the early 19th century. Since then, scientists have discovered a variety of chemicals that cause people to lose consciousness. Scientists believed that anesthetics bound to neurons in the brain and caused them to malfunction leading to brain inactivity. However, newer data fMRI and EEG scans have shown that the brain is active when unconscious. Normally, a sensory stimulus first activates the brain's primary sensory cortex, which then sends signals to other regions that control behavior or memory. Under anesthesia, this communication is disrupted, and the individual cannot respond to respond to stimuli or recall what occurred. Anesthesia studies have many applications. Not only have scientists learned more about consciousness, these studies have contributed to their understanding of disorders in consciousness such as comas and persistent vegetative state.
Feature Story: "Once More Unto the Deep", New Scientist, Sept. 3 2011, by Matt Kaplan
ReplyDeleteVirgin’s Branson to Explore Ocean Depths
It is a stark and unusual fact that more people have walked on the moon than have been to the bottom of the ocean. But it’s true; over the course of the six Apollo missions, 12 men walked on the lunar surface, whereas only two have ever been to the deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench – but that all may be about to change. Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur, plans to send a single-manned Virgin Oceanic submarine to the base of the Marianas Trench, along with the four other deepest places in the ocean. Working in tandem with multiple science teams around the globe, the goal is to explore and document the unique ecosystem at 1000 times the pressures of the surface. The high pressures, however, mean that most of the specimens thought to live in this isolated environment would not survive ascension to the surface, and so research would have to be conducted in situ. In addition, geologists are also hoping that exploration of the trench – the result of where two tectonic plates are colliding – will give crucial insight into how the Earth’s continents first formed. Branson is optimistic about the broader implications of the mission, planned for late 2012. “I hope projects such as Virgin Oceanic will inspire generations who didn’t witness the lunar landings to become great scientists of the future,” he says.
-- Joel
Feature Story: "Powers of Babel," NewScientist, Dec. 10 2011, by David Robson.
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When humans attempted to build the Tower of Babel, the legend goes, God "confounded the one language." In doing so, humans were left with many mysteries of linguistics. Questions such as 'why do languages have grammars of different complexity?' have remained unanswerable until very recently, thanks to a number of new studies. Scientists have found, for example, that language diversity mirrors biodiversity. We find that there is a large variety and number of species in hotter regions; interestingly, there are also more languages around than equator than in temperate regions. One explanation for this phenomenon is that climates rich in vegetation encouraged the splintering of early human groups. Once isolated, each group came up with a distinct language. Explanations have been constructed to explain differences in difficulty of grammar, too--one hypothesis states that larger communities naturally simplified their grammar to ease communication. Thus, languages such as Mandarin and English have some of the easier grammar structures. With research ongoing in these and many more linguistic fields, it would appear that the curse of Babel will soon be ancient history.