Popular Scienceの April 2015 の目次

Like many people, I have been watching the recent measles outbreak with mounting dismay. As of press time, there were more than 120 reported cases and climbing. This, for a disease the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared eradicated in the U.S. 15 years ago. That more people are at risk today than a decade ago is sad. We should be moving forward, not backward. But how we got here is perhaps even sadder. As someone who makes a living communicating science, I can’t help but notice an extraordinary disconnect on the issue of vaccines. On one side, there are those who believe a discredited and de-licensed doctor, Andrew Wakefield, as well as various celebrity anti-vaxxers. Politicians who can’t seem to decide where they stand only make things…

Many of you voiced additional concerns about the Keystone XL pipeline in response to the five we investigated in “Slippery Truths” [February 2015]. Information editor Katie Peek responds to a few of them. Darell Potter: I would have liked to see how many miles the Keystone XL pipeline would add to the existing lines transporting oil and the total miles of all pipelines. KP: There are something like 50,000 miles of crude-oil pipeline in the U.S. today, and the new Keystone XL segment would add about 800. Martin H. Crowe: If it costs $8 billion to build the pipeline, what does it cost to build a refinery closer to the source? Or along existing pipelines? It is likely less than $8 billion and would avoid all the increased environmental risk.…

Standout SAMSUNG JS9500 Size 88 inches Screen Curved Resolution 3840 x 2160 Smart OS Tizen 2.5 Number of times brighter an SUHD TV is than a conventional LCD screen NEXT-WAVE HIGH DEF Building a home entertainment center is a lot like building a house: You need a solid foundation—and that’s your television. If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll want a TV that will last more than five years, which means going with the highestresolution screen available. Right now, that means buying a 4K TV. But there are a lot of different models (and gimmicks) out there. Happily, only one type really matters: the new Samsung SUHD TVs. The new 4K TV line is one of the first to use nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots. When paired with blue light-emitting…

Geeking Out When President Jimmy Carter set out to eradicate guinea worm disease 30 years ago, it afflicted 3.5 million people in rural Asia and Africa. In 2014, that number had dropped to 126. The parasite, spread via stagnant water, grows and breeds in a person’s body cavity before burrowing out of its host, causing tremendous pain. Guinea worm is on track to join smallpox as the second human disease ever to be expunged. The Carter Center’s coup proves that, even without vaccines or treatments, we can wipe certain illnesses off the Earth. Today’s faster, cheaper genomics will only hasten the elimination of future targets. “The biggest challenge in eradicating diseases is simply implementing what we already know. With guinea worm, you have to tell people to pour their drinking…

As species move into different regions, they’ll have to interact with new neighbors. In South Dakota, for example, northern mockingbirds are encroaching on brown thrasher territory. Soon they’ll be competing for the same resources. Timing is an issue too. A European bird study found that species that began migrating earlier enjoyed stable or growing populations, while birds that stuck to the usual timetable saw declines. But the early birds face risks too. In response to warming temperatures, a species called the great tit has started laying its eggs sooner. Chicks hatch about 10 days before their primary food source, caterpillars, emerge. That’s a problem. For the nonmigrators, behaviors may need tweaking. A study of the grey shrikethrush in southeastern Australia found that the roadside-dwelling bird chirps at a higher frequency…

For more than 100 years, the baseball has remained more or less unchanged. This spring, college players will start their season with a new design. With seams that rise to only 0.031 inches, the ball shaves 0.017 inches off the standard seam height. Flatter seams make for a smaller wake and less drag, so a strong hit will send the new ball 20 feet farther than a standard one. For players, that means more home runs. For the NCAA, it means more exciting games and, hopefully, more spectators.…

In the war against cancer, doctors have discovered a powerful new tool: the immune system. The FDA recently fast-tracked approval of three new immunotherapy drugs, called PD-1 inhibitors, designed to help white blood cells hunt down and eradicate hardto-fight tumors—indefinitely. “Chemotherapy almost always stops working,” says Jonathan Cheng, executive director of oncology clinical development at Merck. “The promise of immune therapy is that you’re training the immune system to attack something foreign, so you’re able to maintain that activity for a very long time— hopefully for the rest of a patient’s life.” 1 THE DEFENDERS It’s the job of T cells to protect the body. When presented with bits of foreign protein from intruders, they activate and destroy infected cells. 2 THE CHECKPOINT To prevent an uncontrolled immune response, T…

STATS Time 6 hours Cost $129 Difficulty It’s all too easy to forget an umbrella on a rainy day. But this is the 21st century—shouldn’t your umbrella remind you when it’s needed? Well, yes, it should. And it can do that via a stand that lights up when the forecast calls for rain. There are several ways to make a smart umbrella stand, but the easiest uses little Bits modules, miniature circuit boards that snap together with magnets. The stand communicates with an online weather forecast through the Internet-connected cloudBit module and a service called IFTTT (short for “If This Then That”), which helps Web applications talk to one another. For example, if Yahoo Weather predicts rain, then IFTTT will send a command to the cloud Bit, telling the electro…

Q: How can I make conductive paint into a liquid switch that turns a lightbulb on and off? —PATRICK STEVENSON-KEATING A: You’ll need to suspend the water-soluble conductive paint in a liquid it can’t mix with: an oil with low viscosity. We recommend clear baby oil. Put the paint and oil in a hollow glass base below the light bulb. You can turn on the lamp by tilting the base until the blob of electric paint makes contact with two electrodes extending from the bulb. To turn off the light, simply rotate or tilt the lamp until the paint is no longer bridging the gap between the electrodes. — PETER KRIGE, BARE CONDUCTIVE AS TOLD TO ALISSA ZHU…

Cassandra Willyard Whether reporting on New York’s dirtiest stretch of water or on circumcision to prevent HIV in Uganda, writer Cassandra Willyard has an eye for science and public impact. While researching “Yes, You Can Reverse Disease” (page 50), she was amazed by the pace of recent medical progress. “Often in medicine, you see incremental advances,” she says, “but these are big, bold efforts.” Steve Featherstone Like most of us, writer Steve Featherstone is gadget-dependent. So when he visited a region in West Virginia where electromagnetic waves from cellphones and Wi-Fi are forbidden, it was disorienting. “I couldn’t text, email, or call to set up meetings,” he says. His story, “Greetings From the Quiet Zone” (page 54), follows electrosensitives—people who claim such waves harm them. Heather Hansman The idea of…

WORST JOB AWARD We asked about your worst jobs.Ben Coatsof Ventura, California, wrote: “When I was 27, I got a job at a record company dialing Total Request Live on MTV (pressing redial over and over again, all day long) to request its big song. If you got through without a busy signal, which happened two to three times a week, you had to request the song ‘Punk Rock Girl’ by the Dead Milkmen [above] and keep redialing. The first time I got through, I gave an enthusiastic request. Then (hours later) the guy next to me gave a monotone ‘Punk Rock Girl, Dead Milkmen.’ I quit after a week.” SEND US PICS! Show & Tell: Electronics can have a fine life as intended, but it’s more fun to give…

1 THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF LOVELACE AND BABBAGEIn her debut graphic novel, Sydney Padua imagines what might have happened if inventor Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (the first programmer) had actually built the first computer, which they conceived of in the early 1800s but never created. $29 2 BOX Bitdefender’s BOX protects your smart home devices from hackers. It plugs into a router and protects connected devices at the network level. That way you don’t have to download separate antivirus software for each operating system. $199 3 SEAGATE SEVEN If the name didn’t give it away, Seagate’s new 500GB solid state drive is just 7 millimeters thick. It draws power from a USB port (over a USB 3.0 cable), making external power sources unnecessary. $99 4 STARTALKNational Geographic is turning…

The Big Fix PROBLEM: Hurtling fastball, after curveball, after slider puts incredible strain on a pitcher’s arm, which, over time, can cause painful tears in the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL). To make matters worse, pitching coaches can do little to predict the injury. They look at certain metrics— throwing speed and pitch count—to guess when a player’s arm might be in overdrive, but those aren’t all that accurate. Last year, for example, 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers were benched to undergo UCL reconstructions, dubbed Tommy John surgery after the first player to get it, in 1974. SOLUTION: During spring training this year, more than 10 MLB teams began using the Motus mThrow motiontracking system to keep tabs on pitchers’ arm health. Players wear a 1.3-inch device with three gyroscopes…

ANONYMIZING BROWSER Tor—short for The Onion Router—is one of several software programs that provide a gateway to the Dark Web. Tor reroutes signals across 6,000 servers to hide a page request’s origin, making clicks on illicit material nearly impossible for law enforcement to trace. It uses secret pages with .onion sufxes—rather than.com—which are only accessible with a Tor browser. SECRET SEARCH ENGINES In mid-2014, a hacker created Grams, the Dark Web’s first distributed search engine. Grams allows would-be criminals to search for drugs, guns, and stolen bank accounts across multiple hidden sites. It even includes an “I’m Feeling Lucky” button and targeted ads where drug dealers compete for clicks. CRIMINAL WIKIS Carefully organized wikis list hidden sites by category, such as Hacks, Markets, Viruses, and Drugs. Descriptions of each link…

Concepts & Prototypes For all their convenience, most commuter ferries are dirty machines. A high-speed one burns, on average, 6,600 gallons of fuel a day. Multiply that by the number of passenger boats on a busy waterway, like San Francisco Bay, and you’ve got a lot of spent diesel. Wind + Wing Technologies (WWT), a Napa, California, company, claims it can reduce that consumption by up to 40 percent. WWT is developing a ferry that makes use of an abundant—and free—natural resource: wind. Instead of relying solely on engine power, specially designed catamarans will be equipped with vertical carbonfiber “wing sails” similar to those introduced in the last America’s Cup sailing race. Used in conjunction with an electric or clean diesel engine, the solar-powered wings automatically adjust position to capture…

PALM-SIZE PILOT The Zano flying camera is a great tool for snapping pictures of yourself—and it’s far more sophisticated than a selfie stick. The $300 quadcopter uses a suite of instruments to dodge obstacles while autonomously tracking its subjects whether they’re walking through an office, biking down mountain trails, or even diving off cliffs. Lead engineer Ivan Reedman of Torquing Group advises against underestimating Zano’s abilities: “It’s not just a selfie drone.” 1 REMOTE CONTROL Zano connects to a user’s smartphone via Wi-Fi. Users can pilot the drone using a virtual joystick on their smartphone screen; they can adjust its altitude via a simple slide bar; and they can instruct the camera to stay fixed or rotate to capture different views 2 TRACKING OUTDOORS In follow mode, a user sets…

TUCKED INTO A SLIP AT THE PORTSMOUTH NAVAL SHIPYARD, GHOST LOOKS MORE LIKE A SPACECRAFT THAN A SEABORNE COMBAT VESSEL. As we approach in a small inflatable craft, I get a full view of the cabin—sharp and angular like a stealth fighter—looming over the dark water. The roof holds a mount for a machine gun and rocket launcher. Greg Sancoff, the founder of the New Hampshire start-up Juliet Marine Systems, asks the pilot to swing around to the stern. He points out two 12-foot struts, each of which connects to sleek pontoons. At full bore, he tells me, the pontoons ride just beneath the surface, while the cabin rises 20 feet above the waves. It is a case study in ominous, efficient engineering—a machine designed to fly through the ocean…

Young blood repairs memory MORE THAN FIVE MILLION Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease, a number that’s expected to nearly triple by 2050. Despite billions spent on research, the hunt for a cure has had little success. But new studies led by Tony Wyss-Coray, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, point to an unusual solution. When Wyss-Coray began studying the blood of Alzheimer’s patients, he noticed a marked difference from that of healthy individuals. Because the composition of blood changes with age, he wondered whether simply providing an infusion of young blood could impact the aging brain. To find out, he and his colleagues conducted a rather gruesome experiment: They stitched old and young mice together so that they shared a single circulatory system. Over the next five weeks, the…

“No movement of the insects is left unobserved,” wrote Popular Science in May 1924. Indeed, to gather data that might help commercial beekeepers, government researchers trained their eyes and a number of sensors on hives of 3,750,000 honeybees. With anemometers, barometers, hydrometers, and thermometers they monitored the bees’ response to changing weather conditions. Magnifying glasses on the hives gave researchers a safe view of life inside. “Woe betide the unfortunate investigator—human or otherwise—who would personally invade the privacy of the bees’ home!” we wrote. Now, scientists are outfitting insects with sensors to probe our environment. For example, cockroaches carrying a microphone and a microcontroller will be sent into disaster sites to detect survivors. To learn about how they work, turn to page 43. 10 Estimated global population of insects, in…

40 Number of architectural drawings used to design Chicago’s Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower) 5,000 Number of drawings used to design the Shanghai Tower AN EARLY LOOK AT VIRTUAL REALITY In June 1993,Popular Science tested virtual reality headsets. The technology was much less mature than it is today [page 37], but the experience was no less eye-opening: “As I put on a belt pack, an attendant tightens the visor over my glasses like a blindfold. I’m given about a minute to orient myself in a cartoonlike world. The resolution is noticeably lower than the pictures on the monitors. Pushing a button on the joystick moves me forward in the picture. I can also turn around 180 degrees, look up over my shoulder, or squat down, and the…

ALWAYS HEAR YOUR FAVORITES! BANG & OLUFSEN BEOLAB 18 Price $7,120 Mid-range/woofer amps 160 watts x 2 Not everyone enjoys being a DJ. Many music fans just pick a playlist and leave it running. That’s why Bang & Olufsen created a smart music-streaming hub to anchor its high-fidelity BeoLab 18 wireless speaker system. The BeoSound Moment is a two-sided tablet and dock that plays songs it thinks you want to hear. The device learns your listening habits over time (like the fact that you rock out to Katy Perry on Sunday mornings) and creates custom mixes on the fly. The Moment selects tracks from the music-streaming service Deezer and its 35-million-song database, plus any audio files available on your home network. Smartphones and tablets can also connect to the Moment…

Testimonial CADENZA Price Free Operating system requirements iOS 8.0 If you’ve ever been behind the mic at a karaoke bar, you know the agony of a senseless backing track. Slow down your tempo for dramatic effect and the track blindly rolls forward. Speed up and the track stubbornly lags. Creative freedom is lost. For decades, classical musicians have wrestled with the same problem. Many of them practice solos against backing tracks, and the inability to modify tempo can limit their creative expression. Cadenza, an orchestral accompaniment app developed at Harvard Innovation Lab, aims to change that by listening to soloists as they play and syncing the tempo of the backing track to them. At the heart of the software, Cadenza uses pitch analysis to track where a musician is in…

Too Much Innovation Worried your coffeemaker might find its way beneath a pickup truck? Or get blasted by a water hose? Well, now there’s the Oxx Coffeeboxx. Complete with an IP55 rating (which means it’s protected from dust and water), the coffee maker has an internal framework that can withstand a 1/4-ton load and a double-sealed water tank to prevent leaks. The machine brews single-serve coffee pods and is styled to fit in among power tools. Oxx founder and former Whirlpool designer Jim Doan says, “We had to build this from the ground up. It’s not like any other appliance.” Truer words could not be spoken.…

Decoded 141 The economic return in USD on every dollar the federal government invested in the 17-year Human Genome Project In January, the biotech company Genentech reportedly committed $10 million for access to the DNA of 3,000 Parkinson’s patients and their families. A week later, Pfizer made a similar deal for the genomes of 5,000 people with lupus. At least 11 more similar transactions are on the way—deals in which the private genomics company 23andMe stands to profit by commodifying its customers’ biological identities. Off the bat, that sounds pretty creepy: offering up genetic information to the highest bidder. It’s sort of like what Google does with your whereabouts and searches. The thing is, selling or volunteering personal information may just transform medicine. A trove of data could give scientists…

After three years of development, the Oculus Rift—the most advanced virtual reality (VR) headset ever created—is nearly ready for its consumer release. The Rift is hardly the first VR headset (remember the Nintendo Virtual Boy?), but it’s set to succeed where others failed. Today’s displays are sharper and smaller, the processors are more powerful, and the head-tracking sensors are more accurate. For users, that translates into more immersive experiences from a more compact device. The first VR demonstrations will probably be games. Imagine titles that plunge players into realistic war zones or rich Tolkien-inspired worlds. But VR’s true impact will only become clear later, when artists, filmmakers, researchers, and educators begin to use it in ways no one has thought of yet. Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus VR, and…

LONG RANGE As soon as a vessel appears on the horizon, Matrix, an early-detection system still looking for its first customer, uses rotating thermal cameras to identify it. People paid to monitor a feed of 12 images, which refreshes constantly, look for the telltale glow of a boat’s engine or occupants. In clear conditions, potential attackers can be spotted up to 16 miles out. Ships have reported using Long Range Acoustic Devices to deter pirates from as far as a mile away and as close as 250 yards. The concentrated acoustic energy can blast warnings in various languages— and so also redirect innocent fishermen— or simply hammer assailants at up to 153 decibels, potentially rupturing eardrums. MEDIUM RANGE One of the best deterrents is also one of the most expensive—armed…

Biohacks STATS Time 8 months Cost $70 Difficulty Four hundred million years ago, our ancestors crawled out of the sea. Last year, biologist Emily Standen imitated the ancient feat by raising pet store fish on land. A species called the Senegal bichir can breathe moist air through a primitive lung and scramble around on its front fins. After raising juvenile fish out of water for eight months, Standen’s experiment revealed that the bones supporting the bichirs’ fins had changed shape to make walking easier. In our fishy forebears, similar adaptations may have paved the way for genetic changes. Find out for yourself—create a living fossil in your living room. MATERIALS • Medium-size acrylic aquarium • Sand and gravel • Water • Airline tubing and control kit • Bucket •…