Category Archives: Science

“Die Erde. Endliche Weiten. Das sind die Abenteuer der Menschen im 21. Jahrhundert.”

ZDF “Die Anstalt” vom 27.02.2018: Zukunftszenario Klimawandel – Zurück im Jahr 2100. (52min, auch als Download)

Hintergrundinformationen: Faktencheck (PDF, 564kB)

“Das Abschmelzen der Polkappen und das Verschwinden von Florida wird noch ein bisschen dauern, aber durch den Anstieg des Meeresspiegels sind weite Teile von Norddeutschland, den Niederlanden und Dänemark bereits überflutet. Hamburg und Amsterdam haben große Probleme und können nicht gehalten werden. 13 Millionen Menschen in Europa haben ihre Heimat verloren und in Indonesien 200 Millionen. Durch den Temperaturanstieg ist ein Drittel der Erdoberfläche unbewohnbar, und die Hitze zusammen mit der hohen Luftfeuchtigkeit hat dazu geführt, dass die Tropen, also von Brasilien über Afrika bis nach Thailand, Indonesien und Vietnam zu einer Todeszone geworden sind. – Moment, über welches Jahr reden wir hier? – 2100.”

Prost!

The New York Times: German Olympians Drink a Lot of (Nonalcoholic) Beer, and Win a Lot of Gold Medals.

“If nonalcoholic beer helped athletes recover more quickly from grueling workouts, then it could allow them to train harder. Scherr credits the nonalcoholic beer’s salubrious effects to its high concentration of polyphenols, immune-boosting chemicals from the plants with which its brewed.”

NPR the salt: Olympians Are Using Non-Alcoholic Beer As Recovery Drinks. Here’s The Science.

“In greek mythology, the Olympians were said to drink ambrosia, which bestowed upon them immortality. […] Today’s Olympians have been swept up in a new trend largely emerging from Bavaria: non-alcoholic athletic recovery beers. A number of breweries, such as Erdinger and Krombacher have, over the last few years, expanded their offerings of sober sports beers. This year, beers from both brands are a common sight in the Olympic Village.

But how much science is there to support the use of beer as an athletic recovery drink?”

“Food for thought for the future. Or maybe the past?”

NPR cosmos & culture: Can We Change The Past?

“An important detail is that the switching over of detecting apparatus must be faster than the time the photon has to travel to the detectors. This way, there is no way the photon could “know” what to do. (If a photon knows anything, anyway.) Experiments presented in October extended the range of the photon’s trip to about 2,200 miles, and still the photon seems to always choose the path consistent with the delayed choice. It is as if — Mike McRae wrote in this Science Alert piece — “that even after the horse has bolted 2,200 miles out of the gate, it can still wait until the finish line to decide which race it ran.” That is, which path to the finish line it took.”

Superhero-vision camera

NPR all tech considered: Super Sensitive Sensor Sees What You Can’t.

“A team of engineers at Dartmouth College has invented a semiconductor chip that could someday give the camera in your phone the kind of vision even a superhero would envy. […] Fossum calls his new technology QIS, for Quanta Image Sensor. Instead of pixels, QIS chips have what Fossum and his colleagues call “jots.” Each jot can detect a single particle of light, called a photon.”

Clinical trials seem promising

Gone With A Shot? Hopeful New Signs Of Relief For Migraine Sufferers.

“Humans have suffered from migraines for millennia. Yet, despite decades of research, there isn’t a drug on the market today that prevents them by targeting the underlying cause. All of that could change in a few months when the FDA is expected to announce its decision about new therapies that have the potential to turn migraine treatment on its head.

The new therapies are based on research begun in the 1980s showing that people in the throes of a migraine attack have high levels of a protein called calcitonin gene–related peptide (CGRP) in their blood.”

See also New Drugs Could Prevent Migraine Headaches For Some People and the older article What’s Triggering Your Migraine? by David Buchholz of Johns Hopkins University, author of Heal Your Headache.