New Insights on Dinosaurs, Ache and Carbon Seize

New Insights on Dinosaurs, Ache and Carbon Seize

By Laura Helmuth

A 1974 essay known as “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” which continues to be taught in cognitive science and philosophy programs, argues that we will by no means fully un­­der­stand one other organism’s consciousness. That might be, however we’re getting nearer, and never only for bats. New analysis combining neuroscience with superior fossil scanning is revealing the scale, form and specializations of dinosaurs’ brains, which might inform us so much about what it was prefer to be a dinosaur. On this situation’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 basic 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 next seek for its true nature. In the beginning, as physicists Tracy R. Slatyer and Tim M. P. Tait recall, scientists got here up with fairly a number of nice hypotheses, a few of which linked darkish matter to different puzzles in physics. However now a lot of the simple solutions have been eradicated, in addition to most of the not-easy ones. Physicists are increasing the search, and to get a way of the search house, 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 develop into obtainable quickly. One in 5 adults within the U.S. suffers from power ache, and lots of extra individuals endure momentary, acute ache. Over-the-counter drugs can’t present sufficient aid, and opioids have harmful unwanted side effects. The brand new medication, certainly one of which has made it by a number of levels of medical trials, block sodium channels in nerves, dampening ache indicators earlier than they attain the mind. Well being author Marla Broadfoot discusses this strategy and what it might imply for individuals in ache.

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As we speak new ache drugs and different medication are examined in animals earlier than they go to human trials. However laboratory fashions which can be extra environment friendly and correct are being designed to re­­place at the least some rats, monkeys, rabbits, and different guinea pigs. As creator Rachel Nuwer explains, organ-chip know-how mimics human cells and tissues; organoids created 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 review uncommon ailments.

Final yr was the hottest yr on report, based on the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 175-year local weather historical past. The common temperature for 2023 was 0.15 de­­gree Celsius hotter than the second-hottest yr, 2016, and that margin is itself a report. We’ve to do one thing; we have now 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 exhibits the way it works, the way it might scale up, why it appears promising, and why we ought to be cautious of a few of the claims that it’s going to repair local weather change.

Einstein’s basic principle of relativity explains nearly all the pieces there may be to find out about gravity. Nevertheless it doesn’t clarify the quantum nature of spacetime, and physicists have been making an attempt for many years to know quantum gravity. Now a proposed sequence of lab experiments might lastly level us in the fitting course, as thinker Nick Huggett and physicist Carlo Rovelli spell out, with illuminating graphics, once more from our very personal nice Jen Christiansen.