Landmark Webb Observatory Is Now Officially a Telescope

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January 10, 2022

Astronomy Landmark Webb Observatory Is Now Officially a Telescope The observatory has flawlessly unfurled its mirrors and sunshield—although more steps are needed before the science can begin By Alexandra Witze,Nature magazine

Astrophysics ArXiv.org Reaches a Milestone and a Reckoning Runaway success and underfunding have led to growing pains for the preprint server By Daniel Garisto

Evolution Fossils Reveal When Animals Started Making Noise For billions of years Earth was quiet. Then life got loud By Michael B. Habib

Natural Disasters Rebuilt New Orleans Levees Saved Lives and Property The storm caused $65 million in damage across the U.S., according to the global reinsurance company Munich Re By Thomas Frank,E&E News

Physiology The Surprising Physics of Finger Snapping You might not think that you can generate more body acceleration than a big-league baseball pitcher, but new research shows you can. By Karen Hopkin | 05:12

Climate Change Don't Look Up Illustrates 5 Myths That Fuel Rejection of Science The farcical allegory of climate change shows the pitfalls of relying solely on technology and misunderstanding scientific certainty By Gale Sinatra,Barbara K. Hofer,The Conversation US

Public Health How Communication around COVID Fuels a Mistrust of Science The CDC's recent move highlights the growing problems that arise when federal agencies ignore scientific data By Joseph V. Sakran,Kavita K. Patel

Animals Desert Beetles Rely on Oral Sex for Successful Mating The more time the insects spend on the courtship ritual, the better mating goes By Saugat Bolakhe

Public Health 'Flurona' Is a Great Example of How Misinformation Blooms A catchy name has spawned false statements and panic over being infected with two viruses at once By Raghu Adiga

Animals Dogs Can Distinguish Speech from Gibberish--and Tell Spanish from Hungarian A new study's authors say their investigation represents the first time that a nonhuman brain has been shown to detect language By Annie Melchor

Ecology See the Bizarre Fruiting Bodies of Slime Molds Only about a tenth of an inch tall, these protist growths take on truly strange forms By Leslie Nemo

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FROM THE ARCHIVE What Will NASA's Biggest-Ever Space Telescope Study First? To fully utilize the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope, researchers will have to squeeze a generation of scientific studies into the multibillion-dollar observatory's short lifetime By Lee Billings | December 2017

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The Webb deployments have been perfect." Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division in Washington DC

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