The Nature of All Things: E = mc2

by
Scope Correspondent

It’s plastered on coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and t-shirts. There is a thirteen-foot statue of it in central Berlin. People rattle it off when trying to sound impressive. It has become synonymous with genius. It is the most well-known physics equation in the world. I’m talking, of course, about E = mc2, Albert Einstein’s most lasting contribution to the popular conception of physics. Full Article »

The Art and Science of Glassblowing

by
Scope Correspondent
The glass on the end of the pipe is so hot that it has the consistency of corn syrup as Marty Demaine rotates the metal rod in his hands. The glass lab is small and intimate, only large enough for a few people to work near the furnaces at any given time. Everything has an orange glow to it, including the glass, which seems to be smoldering from within. The two coal furnaces on each side of him burn brightly and everyone is sweating. He puts a puff of air into the end of the pipe and watches as a bubble expands in the center of the gooey blob. The glass gradually begins to cool down and takes on a hard candy sheen, a reminder that it is still fragile and at risk for shattering.

Demaine goes to the furnace to heat the piece up again and at this point, this malleable blob can be transformed into a cup or a bowl, a beaker or a flask, as they were made throughout history. He decides to make a cup and blows into the pipe again, expanding the bubble until it is more air than glass. After transferring the piece to another pipe, he opens up the glass bubble with a tool resembling oversized tweezers, all the while being careful to make sure that the walls don’t collapse, heating frequently so the piece doesn’t crack, because glass, like many things, requires constant attention. After careful manipulation, the glass has taken on the shape of a cup and Demaine knocks the piece off the rod to be slowly cooled down in an annealing kiln. Full Article »

The Grand Puzzle

by
Scope Correspondent

A review of The Species Seekers, by Richard Conniff
464 pages, W. W. Norton 2010

Last week brought word of several new discoveries in the animal kingdom: leaf-cutter bees in Texas, transparent fish in Brazil; mouse-like lemurs in Madagascar; spiders in Sri Lanka described (worrisomely, to this reader at least) as “face-sized.” It should hardly come as a surprise that novel forms of life continue to crop up. Scientists identify over 15,000 new species each year, making it highly likely that another fascinating critter will have been uncovered in the time it takes you to finish reading the morning newspaper.

And yet, no matter how many times we hear of such discoveries, each one still carries a thrill, a small feeling of delight. For who doesn’t enjoy it when another exotic member of our teeming menagerie is uncovered? This instinct is an old one; humans have long sought to compile encyclopedic knowledge of all creatures great and small. From Aristotle’s earliest biological sketches, to the richly illustrated bestiaries of the Middle Ages (which included fantastical sea monsters and unicorns drawn from apocryphal stories), to the sixteenth century zoological work of Swiss physician Conrad Gessner, progress was consistent if uneven up until Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published his first rigorous taxonomical classifications in 1735. Full Review »

A Binder Full of Women Physicists

by
Scope Correspondent

Vera Kistiakowsky was not pleased. It was February 3, 1971, and the MIT nuclear physicist was sitting in the audience at the American Physical Society’s first session on women in physics. The problem wasn’t the session itself, but, as she put it, “all these idiots in the audience responding.”

Case in point: Valentine Telegdi, a Hungarian physicist at the University of Chicago, said with a big smile on his face, “If I had been married to Pierre Curie, I would have been Madame Curie.”

Kistiakowsky recalls that it “made me want to get up and scream, but I didn’t.” Instead she decided to form a Committee on Women in Physics, “so I could rub the facts in.” Full Article »

It’s Not the Twinkie, It’s the Triglycerides

by
Scope Correspondent

Even if you’re not trying to lose weight, your fat may be working against you. Researchers have found that in healthy and moderately overweight people, fat cells can lose their ability to break down and release fat molecules normally.

When this process, called “triglyceride turnover,” is disrupted, triglycerides (the building block molecules of fat) can stay in the body longer — which may contribute to weight gain. While this research does not pin down exactly what causes some people to gain weight while others stay thin, identifying this process gives scientists a new potential target for weight loss research. Full Article »

Controversial New Hypothesis Probes Complexities of Obesity Epidemic

by
Scope Correspondent

The National Institutes of Health describes the childhood obesity epidemic as “a devastating public health crisis.” In just thirty years, obesity rates in American children in have doubled, reaching 18% as of 2012. An excess of body fat places these children at increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. But how did we get here? A controversial hypothesis published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings has proposed a new way to answer the question—and it doesn’t begin with the usual suspects.

Full Article »

How to Kill a Boxer

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The kids at my rural high school put down their forks. In the far corner of our wide, concrete lunch room, an unmistakable tone had entered someone’s voice.

The closest onlookers began chanting, and within seconds the whole room swelled.

“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”

We were out of our seats. We were up on the tables. We were climbing on top of each other to see. Two guys were going at it, ripping with clenched bare fists into each other’s cheeks, pulling hair, swinging for teeth, trembling with the effort of trying to shove one another through the cinderblock walls. Cheated, we felt, when the school policeman wedged his way through the crowd and pried them apart.

All day, through the halls, by our lockers, and in snatched conversations during class, we talked about the exhilarating event. What had we witnessed? Why’d it start? What will happen to the pugilists now? If anyone questioned the source of our own violent pleasure, the blood lust, the vicarious passion, I never once heard it.

I also never once saw anyone turn away in disgust. Fights at school were like the fatal accident that slows traffic on the other side of the highway. We want to see. Let us see. Thank God that’s not me.

Full Article »

Search for the Loneliest Whale

by
Scope Correspondent
Somewhere off the west coast of British Columbia wanders a whale—at least, his voice can be heard there. He appears to be alone.

Simply by eavesdropping, scientists have deduced a few details about this whale. He swims the cold waters of the North Pacific, probably in pursuit of food and love. In all likelihood, he is a baleen whale: a long, grey tanker with a pointed head and generous lower jaw. For food, he would chase clouds of plankton and tiny shrimp-like creatures called krill, gulping gallons of water into his mouth and pushing it all out through two long furry-looking plates sprouting from the roof of his mouth where one would expect teeth. These plates, called baleen, filter krill and other crustaceans out of the expelled water. Miraculously, these tiny creatures are all the sustenance this giant mammal needs to survive.

For love, he calls out in long, low moans. Each intonation lasts anywhere from five to fifteen seconds, and he waits up to thirty seconds between each cry, taking ten minute breaks between each song. He will sing like this for hours. His voice carries for miles, and any females nearby would surely take note of his voice’s strength and range, the variety of his repertoire, the duration of his song. In the murky dark where a whale can barely see its own tail, the quality of these musical elements should prove that he is a worthy mate.

Despite his efforts, he receives no reply. Meet 52 Hertz: the loneliest whale in the world. Full Article »

Securing Items with ‘Invisible Ink’

by
Scope Correspondent

Currency, electronic devices, and other frequently counterfeited items may soon be secured by “invisible ink” nano-barcodes.

The high-tech codes, created with fluorescent-dyed nanoparticles, are undetectable under normal lighting and can be sprayed on to any solid surface in just minutes.

Those who know where to look can authenticate the codes using a particular infrared laser, just as someone might use a smart phone to scan the black-and-white Quick Response (QR) codes commonly seen in print advertisements.

A 2006 U.S. Treasury report estimated the value of fake currency in circulation to be between $70 million and $200 million. U.S. Customs officials also recorded 24,172 counterfeit goods seizures from October 2010 through September 2011 (up 24 percent from the previous year) with a total value of $178.9 million. Consumer electronics made up 22 percent of those forgeries, trailed by footwear, pharmaceuticals, computer software, and luxury perfumes. Full Article »

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