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April 29, 2022

Vaccines Here's Who Should Get a Second COVID Booster An individual’s health risks, treatment access and local case levels come into play for those who are eligible By Esther Landhuis

Oceans A Major Ocean Current Is at Its Weakest Point in 1,000 Years Natural variations are currently the main cause, but climate change should continue to cause it to slow down By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

Engineering Record-Breaking Jumping Robot Can Leap a 10-Story Building To propel itself higher than any known engineered jumper or animal can, it had to ignore the limits of biology By Sophie Bushwick

Sponsor Content Provided by Worcester Polytechnic Institute WPI’s unexpected outcomes begin with our distinctive approach At WPI our interdisciplinary research approach is like nowhere else—meaning our impact solves problems in ways others don’t. Our faculty and students collaborate to amplify the potential of everything we do—and the results are extraordinary.

Neuroscience Brain-Reading Devices Help Paralyzed People Move, Talk and Touch Implants are becoming more sophisticated—and are attracting commercial interest By Liam Drew,Nature magazine

Psychology Darwin Was Wrong: Your Facial Expressions Do Not Reveal Your Emotions The emotion AI industry, courts and child educators are unknowingly relying on a misunderstanding of Darwin’s ideas By Lisa Feldman Barrett

Particle Physics Large Hadron Collider Seeks New Particles after Major Upgrade Long-awaited boosts to the world’s most powerful collider could spur breakthroughs in the hunt for physics beyond the Standard Model By Daniel Garisto

Genetics Dogs' Personalities Aren't Determined by Their Breed A new genetic study shows generalizing breeds as affectionate or aggressive doesn’t hold up By Jack Tamisiea

Cancer How to Tell whether a Cancer Is Caused by Plain Bad Luck A new study offers a possible answer to the question “Why me?” By Viviane Callier

Climate Change Climate Change Is Shrinking Animals, Especially Bird-Brained Birds As the world warms, many animals are getting smaller. For birds, new research shows what they have upstairs may just make a different in how much smaller they get. By Shahla Farzan | 04:00

Space Exploration Europe Cancels Joint Moon Missions with Russia Russia will move forward with lunar exploration without its European partners By Leonard David

History Offensive Names Should Be Removed from Public Lands Efforts to change problematic names, whether on federal, state or local lands, are steps toward justice and reconciliation By Bonnie McGill

Ecology Cities Build Better Biologists Urban environments naturally train critical thinkers and observational experts who are the future of ecology By Nyeema C. Harris

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BRING SCIENCE HOME When a Flashing Light Shows More Believe what you see? It might depend on your light source. Not all light sources provide our brains with the same information. Whip up this fascinating optical illusion to see for yourself! Credit: George Retseck Do you have to see it to believe it? You might want to rethink your strategy. Scientists now know that what we perceive can be very different from what is really there. Our brains are quite clever in helping us interact with the world, but they can be fooled. Try this activity, and you will find out how!

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Secrets of the Moon’s Shadows Are Coming to Light

Khan-Kalai conjecture proved in six pages; New clues to mitochondria's origins; Disease spillback; Quantum approaches to machine learning

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser PLANETARY SCIENCE | ALL TOPICS   Secrets of the Moon's Permanent Shadows Are Coming to Light By JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN Robots are about to venture into the sunless depths of lunar craters to investigate ancient water ice trapped there, while remote studies find hints about how water arrives on rocky worlds. Read the article GRAPH THEORY   Elegant Six-Page Proof Reveals the Emergence of Random Structure By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ Two young mathematicians have astonished their colleagues with a full proof of the Kahn-Kalai conjecture — a sweeping statement about how structure emerges in random sets and graphs. Read the article Related:  How Big Data Carried Graph Theory Into New Dimensions by Stephen Ornes (2021) EVOLUTION   Ancient Genes for Symbiosis Hint at Mitochondria's Origins By VERONIQUE GREENWOOD Was the addition of mitochondria a first step in the formation of complex cells or one of the last? A new study of bacteria tries to answer this contentious question in evolutionary biology. Read the article Related:  Cell-Bacteria Mergers Offer Clues to How Organelles Evolved by Viviane Callier (2019) QUANTIZED COLUMNS   What Happens When We Give Animals Our Diseases? By TARA C. SMITH While it's understandable to focus on the diseases affecting humans, it's important to study how our illnesses may affect animals. Read the column Related:  The Animal Origins of Coronavirus and Flu by Tara C. Smith (2020) QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST   Machine Learning Gets a Quantum Computing Speedup Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT; Story by MAX G. LEVY Two teams have shown how quantum approaches can solve problems faster than classical computers, bringing physics and computer science closer together. Listen to the podcast Read the article Around the Web On Second Thought Our current standard unit of time, the second, is based on the cesium clock. But scientists are now planning to redefine it with optical atomic clocks, which have achieved far greater precision, as Alanna Mitchell reports for The New York Times. Optical clocks are sensitive to infinitesimal changes in their environment, even gravitational ones. In 2021 Katie McCormick wrote for Quanta about a clock that revealed gravity's changing influence on time across a 1-mm cloud of atoms. Explaining the Higgs Mechanism Symmetry dictates that the W-boson and other particles in the Standard Model should be massless. So why aren't they? Matt O'Dowd explains for PBS Space Time how the Higgs mechanism gives things mass. The key to the Higgs mechanism is that an underlying symmetry of the laws of nature can be "spontaneously" broken by the state of a system, as physicist David Kaplan explained in a 2015 video for Quanta. Follow Quanta Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010 Unsubscribe | About Quanta Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2022 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation