New Insights on Dinosaurs, Ache and Carbon Seize

New Insights on Dinosaurs, Ache and Carbon Seize

By Laura Helmuth

A 1974 essay referred to as “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” which continues to be taught in cognitive science and philosophy programs, argues that we are able to by no means utterly un­­der­stand one other organism’s consciousness. That could be, however we’re getting nearer, and never only for bats. New analysis combining neuroscience with superior fossil scanning is revealing the dimensions, form and specializations of dinosaurs’ brains, which may inform us loads about what it was prefer to be a dinosaur. On this problem’s cowl story, evolutionary biologist Amy M. Balanoff and paleontologist Daniel T. Ksepka reconstruct the perceptions and actions of Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and different traditional characters. I hope you benefit from the lush and dramatic illustration by Beth Zaiken; see our Contributors column for extra about her paleo-art profession.

We at Scientific American have been fascinated for many years by the invention that darkish matter exists and the following seek for its true nature. At first, as physicists Tracy R. Slatyer and Tim M. P. Tait recall, scientists got here up with fairly just a few nice hypotheses, a few of which linked darkish matter to different puzzles in physics. However now many of the simple solutions have been eradicated, in addition to lots of the not-easy ones. Physicists are increasing the search, and to get a way of the search area, please delve into the graphic by Tait and senior graphics editor Jen Christiansen. Because the authors write, “the scope of the problem is both intimidating and exhilarating.”

An extended-awaited class of ache relievers might turn out to be out there quickly. One in 5 adults within the U.S. suffers from persistent ache, and lots of extra folks endure short-term, acute ache. Over-the-counter medicines can’t present sufficient aid, and opioids have harmful unwanted side effects. The brand new medicine, certainly one of which has made it by a number of levels of medical trials, block sodium channels in nerves, dampening ache alerts earlier than they attain the mind. Well being author Marla Broadfoot discusses this strategy and what it might imply for folks in ache.

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Right now new ache medicines and different medicine are examined in animals earlier than they go to human trials. However laboratory fashions which might be extra environment friendly and correct are being designed to re­­place a minimum of some rats, monkeys, rabbits, and different guinea pigs. As creator Rachel Nuwer explains, organ-chip expertise mimics human cells and tissues; organoids constructed from a affected person’s stem cells can present indicators of their pathology in a dish; and engineered organs could make it simpler for scientists to check uncommon ailments.

Final yr was the hottest yr on document, in response to the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 175-year local weather historical past. The typical temperature for 2023 was 0.15 de­­gree Celsius hotter than the second-hottest yr, 2016, and that margin is itself a document. We have now to do one thing; now we have to do quite a lot of issues. Direct air seize would suck carbon dioxide out of the ambiance, and it’s getting loads of personal and public funding. Journalist Alec Luhn reveals the way it works, the way it might scale up, why it appears promising, and why we must be cautious of among the claims that it’s going to repair local weather change.

Einstein’s common principle of relativity explains virtually every part there may be to learn about gravity. However it doesn’t clarify the quantum nature of spacetime, and physicists have been attempting for many years to grasp quantum gravity. Now a proposed sequence of lab experiments might lastly level us in the suitable route, as thinker Nick Huggett and physicist Carlo Rovelli spell out, with illuminating graphics, once more from our very personal nice Jen Christiansen.