Science News for Writers

astronomy.stackexchange.com New research concludes that Earth's infrequent but predictable path around and through our Galaxy's disc may have a direct and significant effect on geological and biological phenomena occurring on Earth. Scientists conclude that movement through dark matter may perturb the orbits of comets and lead to additional heating in the Earth's core, both of which could be connected with mass extinction events. And does dark matter cause mass extinctions and geologic upheavals? One U.S. researcher thinks so.  Research by New York University Biology Professor Michael Rampino concludes that Earth's infrequent but predictable path around and through our Galaxy's disc may have a direct and significant effect on geological and biological phenomena occurring on Earth. In a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, he concludes that movement through dark matter may perturb the orbits of comets and lead to addi...

Credit: iStockphoto Vintage engraving of the Dodo (Raphus cucullatus), a flightless  bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.  The  dodo has been extinct since the mid-to-late 17th century. Yesterday, we published a post about how researchers demonstrated that the loss of just 29 species of large animals over the 6,000 years of Egyptian history caused dramatic environmental change as well as social and political turmoil. Step forward to today.  Globally, the extinction rate of entire species is at a never before seen pace, the highest since the last major extinction 65 million years ago.  Last time, it was a meteor slamming into the Gulf of Mexico causing several years of "nuclear winter".  Today, in simplest terms, it's us.  We are driving species to extinction at a rate that many argue that we won't last much longer as a species either. And it's not doomsday freaks and whack-jobs saying this.  It's the majori...

Credit: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, Brooklyn Museum Carved rows of animals, including elephants, lions, a giraffe, and sheep cover both sides of the ivory handle of a ritual knife from the Predynastic Period in Egypt . There are those who argue that the climate change we are experiencing is a normal phenomena, and part of the natural cycle of things.  This study of Egypt from ancient times through today identifies almost thirty native species that have gone extinct, much to the detriment of the regions ecology, as well as its social and political stability. A question for any author or screenwriter is how our current decline in species and increasing instability of our environment is going to effect the way we live.  In this study, it's noted that environmental change coincided with a change in the ruling dynasties and political realities in the world's oldest known civilization. Are we on the verge of social and political upheaval due to loss of  species and...

Vallo Castle Ring from the air. Graphic by processed satellite photo,  September 7th 2014 . Vallo Castle Ring Vallo Borg Call or Borg ring at Lellinge is a Sealand Viking fortress, located in a field belonging to the estate of the Vallo Diocese west of Køge . Harald Bluetooth is considered be builder of other Danish ring forts and very likely also Vallø Borg Scale.    Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson (c. 920 AD - c. 986 AD) was the King of Denmark from around 958 and King of Norway for a few years around 970. Vallo Castle Ring is circular with 145 meters in diameter, making it the third largest of the six original Danish Trelleborge . It was equipped with a 10-11 meter wide violence , surrounded by a palisade, a redoubt work of tapered wooden posts. Vallo Castle Ring is near the old main roads from Roskilde and Ringsted met in the Køge River Valley .  During the Viking Age the Køge was a navigable fjord and one of Copenhagen 's best natural ...

Ancient Colosseum in Rome (stock image)                                             . Credit: © wajan / Fotolia By the end of the Roman Empire, humanity had crossed a critical threshold of social organization that allowed more people to take advantage of economies of scale, says anthropologist Aaron Stutz. I remember reading more than once that our current world-wide population explosion came about because of the industrial revolution over the past two hundred or so years.  This research demonstrates that the basis of this the groundwork laid down over the last 2,000 years. Things to think about:  Is climate change but a symptom of a growing population that threatens to outpace our ability to feed it while changing the very character of our planetary environment?   Is human population growth forcing other species out of existence? Other recently ...

Were Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci born brilliant or did they acquire their intelligence through effort? The authors of this report point out that their research"does not weigh in on the age-old "nature vs. nurture" debate." Yet to my reading it does, and comes down on both sides of the issue.  Basically, this research states that having smarts and talent can be boosted by the words you.  Now, this isn't exactly news.  Research released last year pointed out that five minutes of relaxation during which you replay past successes actually increases your I.Q. by about 10 points. So you can increase the power of the tools and abilities nature has given you by a simple relaxation technique combined with positive self-imaging. The power of words, whether your own internal conversation or what others tell you, has a powerful impact on how you are able to express your natural gifts.  Here's a story that explains this. S imply telling people ...

Credit: © Fraunhofer Fraunhofer IFF/Anna Mahler Air freight being loaded. Researchers at the Fraunhofer IFF are working  with other partners on a digital fingerprint for security-sensitive air freight  in the project ESecLog. This is intended to make tampering with shipments easily detectable in the future. You're writing crime fiction, or an adventure or spy novel, and a character is shipping something via airline or your story involves theft or tampering with an airline shipment.  Then this is a report you should consider, the latest technology that will be introduced at a conference in October, 2014. In the release, the authors state that this new system are, "Fingerprints for freight items."  Something to consider as you develop your story. S ecurity is a top priority in air freight logistics but screening procedures can be very time consuming and costly. Researchers intend to boost efficiency with a new approach to digital logistics...

Credit: Toby Ault, Cornell University; From "Assessing the risk of persistent drought using climate model simulations and paleoclimate data" Risk of megadrought in Southwestern U.S. Establishing the setting for your story and characters is a choice.  You obviously can go with the way the way things are.  Or, you can opt for a world of your own making.  Or, you can put your characters into a world science predicts we may be experiencing in the future. With the certainty of global warming on the horizon, the predicted changes to our environment will impact people, giving you the opportunity to explore how we all may be living, in this case, in the year or two.   Choice of setting applies to any genre' of fiction from science fiction to romance to young adult to history.  "History," I hear you ask.  Sure.  A novel set in the distant future that looks back at the past - a past we have yet to experience.  The options are unlimited. ...

Credit: Navigation Center, United States Coast Guard T he iceberg thought to have been hit by Titanic, photographed by the chief steward of the liner Prinz Adalbert on the morning of 15 April 1912. The iceberg was reported to have a streak of  red paint from a ship's hull along its waterline on one side. One of the most popular disasters of the early 20th Century is the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic, a story featured in books, movies and real life.  Here's a little additional information about the probable cause with a warning of similar disasters to come. The suggested reading below is a book that details nine disasters - a source of possible stories to develop similar to the Titanic sinking. Suggested reading click on image for more information W hile the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is typically blamed on human, design and construction errors, a new Significance paper points to two other unfavorable factors outside human control:...

Credit: Courtesy of the researchers Before-and-after stills from the video "An End-to-End Approach to  Making Self-Folded 3D Surface Shapes by Uniform Heating."  The left image shows the self-folding sheet for a humanoid shape,  while the right image shows the completed self-folded humanoid shape . I can't cook.  Don't pretend to know how.  But, given the recipe to bake an actual working robot in the oven of my home kitchen?  I'm into it.  You may feel that the eggheads at MIT rarely come up with anything useful, and perhaps they rarely do, but bake a robot?  One that could walk the dog or make the bed?  Or better yet, clean the cat's box?  Wowzers, Batman.  How cool would this be? The story : New algorithms and electronic components could enable printable robots that self-assemble when heated. Printable robots — those that can be assembled from parts produced by 3-D printers — have long been a topic of resea...

Source:  www.nides.cz The Hot Print System is a new development to automatically and  consistently develop fingerprints on thermal paper such as till receipts. In the real world as in fiction, it's getting harder and harder to be a successful bad guy.  Admittedly, many if not most criminals are, to be polite, dolts, and, according to other research released in the past year, opportunists rather than thoughtful.  Still, technology is making it harder for both the opportunists and the meticulous.  For example ~ A new technology in the fight against theft and fraud, developed by Dr John Bond OBE from the University of Leicester's Department of Chemistry, uses a specially tailored UV light source to visualize fingerprints not possible to see on 'thermal paper' using any other technique, specifically the paper used for receipts and statements from ATMs. Historically, the process of visualizing fingerprints on thermal paper has been impossible, as the ...

Source: short-sharp-shock.blogspot.com I  find this result fascinating.  People tend to choose partners with similar DNA?  How do we do this?  Is it smell?  Appearance?  Some psychic connection? Scientists already knew that people tend to marry others who have similar characteristics, including religion, age, race, income, body type and education, among others. Scientists now show that people also are more likely to pick mates who have similar DNA.  As the researchers state, "Individuals are more genetically similar to their spouses than they are to randomly selected individuals from the same population." Thinks about this: if you've had a bad relationship that left you scarred, and that person was genetically similar to you, what does that tell you about yourself?  Do you also have the traits that led to the situation?  There is much to consider in this finding, something writers might consider in their personal lives a...

From the trailer for the movie, "Meet the Parents", starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller.  fMRI brain scans are 99 percent accurate in identifying  when a person is lying in response to questions. I f conventional lie detector machines, polygraphs, have been endlessly debunked and shown not to provide admissible nor even valid evidence, then the 21st Century tool of choice for reading the minds of witnesses and suspected criminals may be the brain scanner. More specifically, the kind of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that can seemingly probe our inner selves and reveal the flow of blood in the different regions of the brain that light up when we lie. Suggested reading click on image In England and Wales, there have been legal experiments undertaken at the pre-charge stage using both conventional polygraphs with suspected criminals of low risk who have volunteered to be assessed using these technologies. The benefits for the police being ...