Method & Madness

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The Danish research, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, used data from an average of 65 car journeys a year on the same stretch of road and at the same speed between 1997 and 2017. Møller took account of the time of day, temperature, wind speed and date of the journey and found an 80 percent decline in insect abundance over the 21-year period. Checks using insect nets and sticky traps showed the same trend.

Human Hybrids: Researchers are surprised to discover that the prehistoric world may have been filled with blended peoples who called Neanderthals, Denisovan, and a blend of other early homids their ancestors.

“I was wondering, ‘What did I do wrong?’” recalled Dr. Slon, now a postdoctoral researcher at the institute.

Sadness Circuit: Researchers find a common brain signature of bad moods in human volunteers.

Sohal says the team hoped those recordings would help answer a basic question: "When patients are sitting there, or watching TV or talking with their family or waiting or being anxious, which regions of the brain are talking to each other?"

Bay Native: A growing Ohlone community in the Bay Area meets each year to strengthen their communal ties and millenia-old roots. Who used to live in your neighborhood? 

Coyote Hills is an exceptional location for the public to come and appreciate the ancient and enduring Ohlone legacy. This relatively small parkland has four Ohlone village sites that are more than 2,000 years old. Although substantially changed over the centuries since European colonization, there is still vegetation, water elements, fragrant plants and landscape features that Ohlone Ancestors of millennia ago would likely find familiar. It is these things and more, that draw Ohlone People to return here in the present. A number of Ohlone come periodically to the park to participate in public programs and to demonstrate aspects of Ohlone heritage, such as native uses of plants and animals, tule boat making, and other expressions of Ohlone knowledge that sustained “The People” for countless generations.

Fact or Fiction: French philosopher Bruno Latour was controversial for questioning the objective truth of scientific facts, but may be perfectly placed to explain the rise of our post-truth moment, and perhaps how to combat it.

What journalists, scientists and other experts fail to grasp, Latour argues, is that “facts remain robust only when they are supported by a common culture, by institutions that can be trusted, by a more or less decent public life, by more or less reliable media.” With the rise of alternative facts, it has become clear that whether or not a statement is believed depends far less on its veracity than on the conditions of its “construction” — that is, who is making it, to whom it’s being addressed and from which institutions it emerges and is made visible. A greater understanding of the circumstances out of which misinformation arises and the communities in which it takes root, Latour contends, will better equip us to combat it.

Cancer Conundrum: New research suggests cancer-driving mutations are common in healthy adults. So why don’t more people get cancer?

Dr. Martincorena and his colleagues found that new mutations arose more slowly in the esophagus than in skin. But once those mutations emerged, they caused the esophageal cells to multiply faster than normal esophageal cells. Over time, these rogue cells spread out across the esophagus, forming colonies of mutant cells, known as clones. Although these clones aren’t cancer, they do exhibit one of cancer’s hallmarks: rapid growth.

“These mutant clones colonize more than half of your esophagus by middle age,” said Dr. Martincorena. “It was eye-opening for me.”

Mystery Malady: A new illness is causing polio-like paralysis in young children, and scientists are racing to understand what it is causing it.

Diseases are complicated. If anything, scientists have been lucky to study many viruses—flu, Ebola, and smallpox, to name a few—that are potent enough for their consequences to be clear, regardless of other variables. But there’ll be many instances in which the threads of cause and effect are harder to untangle. Epstein-Barr virus, for example, infects half of Americans before they get to middle school, and 90 percent of them by adulthood. It usually does nothing, sometimes leads to mono, and very infrequently causes cancers.

Photo Fiend: How photography disrupted traditional notions of the right to privacy and created a new legal precedent.

The term “Kodak fiend” was coined for unscrupulous peeping Toms who would lie in wait in trees or behind walls to snap pictures of unsuspecting passers-by. In 1890, two Harvard legal scholars, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, tackled the then-new technology in a now-famous (among students of the law) Harvard Law Review article arguing that because “instantaneous photographs … [had] invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life,” people needed a constitutionally recognized right to be let alone, or a “right of privacy.”

“Hotter hikes are one of the milder consequences of this vegetation change. Jackson noted that the shade provided by ponderosa pines helps preserve snowpack well into the start of summer. The later meltwater is necessary to sustain the streams and rivers on which plants, animals, farms and cities all depend. The loss of those pines will trigger domino effects all across the watershed, altering landscapes from the mountains to the sea.”