Category: Science/Nature

President Biden said yesterday he still wants a bipartisan infrastructure deal. Then he climbed behind the wheel of a potential deal breaker for Republicans: an electric vehicle. Biden sped through Ford Motor Co.’s test site before rolling down his window and delivering his verdict on the new F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the country’s… Continue reading Biden Touts Electric Vehicles Amid Negotiations on Infrastructure Spending

Nineteenth-century American clergyman and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher once wrote, “A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complex tool.” These words presaged, by more than a century, a line of scientific research into “embodiment”: how humans’ wealth of sensory inputs—including the touch and visual perception involved… Continue reading To the Brain, a Tool Is Just a Tool, Not a Hand Extension

The staff at Scientific American are mostly—if not completely—vaccinated against COVID-19, and we’re grateful and relieved. An enormous amount of evidence shows that we are almost entirely protected from severe illness or dying of COVID, and more coming out all the time shows that we’re highly unlikely to pass the virus along to other people.… Continue reading How the Scientific American Staff Is Reacting to the CDC’s New Mask Guidance

The deaths of more than 586,000 people in the U.S. from COVID since the spring of 2020 have left many millions grieving. A sizable number of these bereaved individuals will find their anguish lasts an unusually long time, does not diminish, and renders their life almost unlivable, mental health specialists say. People who sufferer this intense… Continue reading The Pandemic’s Next Effect: A Giant Wave Of Disabling Grief

The point at which our nerve cells meet to share information was thought to be a one-way street, with electrochemical signals strictly flowing from one neuron’s sending axons to the next neuron’s receiving dendrites.   Now, for the first time, researchers have shown that information can also flow in the opposite direction at the neuron intersection… Continue reading In Major Find, Scientists Catch Nerve Cells Send Information in The ‘Wrong’ Direction

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre European fire ants (Myrmica rubra) seem to keep spiders away Richard Becker/Alamy House-dwelling spiders avoid surfaces that certain aggressive ants have walked over, suggesting that there may be some sort of chemical the ants leave in their wake that could form the basis of an ecologically sound way to keep spiders out… Continue reading Spiders avoid surfaces that have previously been covered with ants

To make a spider flee, bring on the fire ants. Or rather, just their chemical signals. Some spiders common in North American homes avoid building their webs in chambers that recently housed European fire ants, researchers report May 19 in Royal Society Open Science. The ants probably left behind chemical traces, the researchers say. That… Continue reading European fire ant chemicals may send spiders scurrying away

HAPPY TUESDAY!  Welcome to Overnight Energy, your source for the day’s energy and environment news.Please send tips and comments to Rachel Frazin at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter: @RachelFrazin. Reach Zack Budryk at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @BudrykZack. Signup for our newsletter and others HERE.  Today we’re looking at a global energy… Continue reading OVERNIGHT ENERGY: IEA calls for no new investment in fossil fuels in net-zero plan | Biden frames EV goals as competition with China | US considering carbon import tax, Kerry says

Many energy experts and climate scientists question whether it is feasible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by century’s end. Today, the world’s preeminent energy institution offered a rebuttal. In a 227-page report, the International Energy Agency said it is possible to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and limit warming to 1.5 C.… Continue reading Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 Are Possible, Landmark Report Says

As Hurricane Sandy bore down on the New York City area in 2012, its storm surge swamped lower Manhattan, unmoored a roller coaster on the Jersey Shore, submerged runways at LaGuardia Airport and pushed the toxic waters of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal into nearby basements. All told, the storm’s floodwaters did more than $60 billion in… Continue reading Climate Change Added $8 Billion to Hurricane Sandy’s Damage