The world's tallest building may just be its pinkest.

World Architecture News via Architizer

The eternal competition to build the world’s tallest building has yielded striking landmarks and spectacular rivalries, both of which have escalated in the past century. With its building boom that started in the 1980s, China may have been a late entry, but it’s a force to be reckoned given its penchant for drama and its tenacity. But its most recent entry, announced last week, has the potential to blow all the others out of the water: the paired Phoenix towers will be built on an island and combine every sort of green technology, both feasible and far-fetched. Plus, they’ll be bright pink.

The Phoenix Towers will be built in China’s 10th-biggest city, Wuhan, which is located in the center of the country. The city is split between the banks of the Yangtze River and riddled with lakes. Given its proximity to moving water, it’s only natural that the towers be built with renewable energy in mind. The taller, “male” tower, named Feng, will loom one kilometer high, its sides equipped with photovoltaic panels and a wind turbine couched in its tapering spire. Its sister tower, Huang, will have walls filled with plants (“green walls”), house insect hotels, and be equipped with biomass boilers, which heat the structures by burning plant fuel. At its base, the towers will collect rainwater.

If some of these green technologies seem mysterious to you, you’re not alone; some reviews have called the structures an “environmental novelty act” and “a greenwashed dick-measuring contest.” The green technologies predictable at best (wind turbine), over-ambitious (the biggest biomass boilers ever designed) and downright enigmatic (what is a “thermal chimney”?) at worst.

But according to Laurie Chetwood, the founder of British architecture firm Chetwoods Architects that partnered with a Chinese group on the projec, this over-the-top design was no accident. She told design magazine Dezeen, "In China if you come up with a slightly mad idea, its almost not mad enough...We've applied as many environmental ideas as we possibly could to justify the shape and the size of [the towers].”

The kicker in this excess is that the steel and lattice that give the towers their structure will be a bright, vibrant fuchsia to mirror the spectacular sunsets famous in the region, the architects say. And the name, Phoenix, comes from the Chinese phoenix of legend, Fenghuang, which is often represented by both male and female entities. 

In fact, much of the towers’ significance is more symbolic rather than, well, useful. The Feng ("male") tower can only be inhabited for about 100 floors, or about half of its height; the rest of the space in that and the other tower is devoted to mechanical and eco-friendly functions. Those involved in the project have indicated that their primary goal is to create a spectacular tourist attraction, reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower in utility."This is a big tourist idea right in one of the largest lakes in Wuhan," Chetwood said. "[The group that commissed the project is] turned on to the environmental idea but there's always obviously the commercial element at the base of it."

Some commentators fear that the towers will end up like some of China’s other ambitious construction projects: deserted and eerie, a misguided effort in eco-friendliness. But the plan is to build them in the middle of a huge city, so they won't be isolated at least. Construction is slated to begin later this year, and surely the most interesting challenges are yet to come. 

Schematic of the green technology

World Architecture News via Architizer

Stephanie Kwolek

Taken at the Spinning Elements, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Chemical Heritage Foundation, Photograph by Harry Kalish

It's hard to calculate the lives saved by Stephanie Kwolek. She started working as chemist for DuPont in 1946. In 1965 Kwolek invented Kevlar, the strong and lightweight fibers that go into bulletproof vests, among other safety applications. Kevlar is, ounce for ounce and pound for pound, five times stronger than steel.  Kwolek passed away this week at the age of 90, but her work will continue to save lives for decades and perhaps centuries to come.

Kwolek discovered Kevlar while working with polymers for tires. DuPont anticipated that a future gas shortage meant cars would want lighter tires, but at a similar strength as before. Since then, Kevlar has gone on to have hundreds of uses. Here's just a sampling of stories about Kevlar from the Popular Science archives:

On the polymer itself, there's The Science Behind 4 Of The Greatest Polymers Of All Time. One of the first uses of Kevlar was in tires, as we wrote in our 1976 story "New Materials Promise Safer Tires." As a way to make stronger, lighter boats, we covered it in Kevlar Boats: Say Goodbye To Fiberglass? In "Hot New Shapes - Passenger Planes The Will Revolutionize Aviation," we covered how Kevlar allows new, strange airplane bodies, allowing both strength and flexibility in a lightweight form.

When the military needed to suspend a target across a three-mile stretch of missile range, they used a single Kevlar cord, and we wrote about it in Popular Science's October 1994 story Target Practice.In the hockey rink, Kevlar is one of the Secrets of Easton's Superstick, and nets of Kevlar and still caught not pucks but rockets fired at helicopters in A Chopper Shield prototype. Kevlar protected legs from blades in Chainsaw Chaps, Kevlar jackets could strengthen the weak parts of bridges, and on the battlefields of Iraq Kevlar vestsstopped bullets before they could kill soldiers.

Kwolek started working as a chemist at a time when few women were in the field. Interviewed in 2003 by Jim Quinn for the National Inventors Hall of Fame, she answered a few questions about women and science:

Are you optimistic about the future of women in research?

I think it’s going to get more difficult for them, because of a lesser emphasis on research at the present time. Many women are entering into research with the objective of getting into management after they’ve acquired some experience. I had the opportunity to work in research through my entire career, with the result that I amassed a tremendous amount of knowledge that I was able to use to make discoveries. I think it might be harder for women to make such discoveries without that kind of knowledge base.

What advice would you give to a young woman inventor?

I’d want her to remember that it may take another generation before women are truly accepted on equal terms with men, but that as more women become interested in science, the process will speed up.

Thanks for Kevlar, Ms. Kwolek.

A Port In Cannes, France

Guy Lebègue, via Wikimedia Commons

Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news, designed to capture the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

Advertisers For Advertisers

The "Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity" is a giant international advertising conference held in Cannes in southern France. This year, they set up a drone that takes vine portraits of people standing on a marked spot, and then tweets them out at the "dronies" twitter account. The first one includes Patrick Stewart, so there's that. 

And with our first official #dronie from #CannesLions, a new bromance is born! cc @SirPatStew@joellhttps://t.co/ZL5PthcRkh

— Dronie (@dronie) June 15, 2014

Spies On Soccer

The World Cup is happening! In addition to showcasing the skills of athletes from across the world, it's an opportunity to try new and innovative ways of cheating. The French team formally filed a complaint with FIFA, the sports' governing body, that someone used a drone to observe the team practicing in São Paulo. The drone appears to be commercial quadcopter, which makes it a relatively unsophisticated spy. 

Paintballing Protesters With Pepper

Problems with people picketing and protesting piss-poor conditions at platinum mines, and demanding more than a pittance in pay? There's now a drone police can use to pelt the proletarians repeatedly with pepper spray in paintballs. Designed by the South African firm Desert Wolf, the "Skunk Riot Control Copter" is an octocopter that can fire 80 pepper balls a minute from its four paintball guns, and deplete its entire 4000-ball supply of ammunition in under a minute to disperse a protesting crowd. This is not a great solution, but given South Africa's history of using excessive lethal force to put down miners' protests, nonlethal police weapons are at least a step in the right direction. 

Skunk Riot Control Copter

Desert Wolf

Monitoring Mali

The United Nations announced this week that peacekeeping forces in Mali will get drones to help keep an eye on the northern part of the country. The drones are likely to be unarmed, and will primarily perform surveillance over the vast and empty stretches of the desert where Tuareg rebels operate.

Pest Patrols

High school students at Career Technology Center in Frederick, Maryland designed a drone that inspects crops for a pest. Using professional design software and a 3-D printer made available through the Real World Design Challenge, students designed drones that could protect crops from the European Corn Borer. One of the designs is a copter with arms, that can land next to corn stalks and use two arms to inspect the stalks for grubs without breaking them. Neat!

Did I miss any drone news? Email me at kelsey.d.atherton@gmail.com.

Slingshot Water Purifier

Popular Science

250,000 liters: the volume of water a single, mini-fridge-size Slingshot machine purifies in one year. That's enough for about 300 people. Slingshots are able to purify even seawater and sewage.

288: the number of times a day this experimental bionic pancreas checks the blood-sugar level of its wearer.

60 hours: how long it took Popular Science contributing writer Douglas Main to travel to the Tambopata Research Center in Peru. There, he learned about the latest research into newly discovered, decoy-building spiders.

Spider-box

Reeves transferring a spider from a vial to a box with clear sides, to observe its web-building process. Afterward all the spiders were returned to the jungle.

Douglas Main

1 kilometer: the height of the taller of two hot pink towers developers are planning for Wuhan, China. The towers will feature eco-friendly technology such as solar panels, a wind turbine and rainwater collectors.

The world's tallest building may just be its pinkest.

World Architecture News via Architizer

2: knighthoods Queen Elizabeth II bestowed this week to physicists involved in the detection of the Higgs boson.

7: the number of pins in the Popular Sciencemap of where driverless cars have driven with regular traffic.

18: the number of black-footed ferrets that scientists captured in Wyoming in 1980. The ferrets were the last of their kind and the only ancestors to all of the black-footed ferrets living today.

Proud Parent

A black-footed ferret and kits!

Smithsonian's National Zoo

695,000 square miles: the area by which Obama Administration pledged to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. When the expansion goes through, the monument will cover about 782,000 square miles and will be the largest reserve on Earth.

2030s: the time when Japan may first fly homegrown stealth fighters.

Over the Top

Luc Perrot, The World At Night

It's amazing what you can see from Earth. Just take a look at these images from the 5th International Earth and Sky Photo Contest, a competition for so-called "landscape astrophotography." The photos all show a bit of our home planet, along with views of sky and astronomy phenomena. All photos were taken in the past year. You get the sense that as fantastic as these pictures are, they're all showing things that are accessible to (at least some) humans right here on Earth. That's not always true of gorgeous space photos we feature.

The International Earth and Sky Photo Contest is meant to bring attention to the problem of light pollution. It seeks photos from two extremes, either showing some of the few dark places left on Earth, or showing the effect of light pollution on lovely landscapes. This year's top winner fits in the latter category, showing beams of electric light obliterating an otherwise clear night sky.

"Both contest categories provide a visual awareness of the disappearing starry night sky," contest co-founder Connie Walker said in a statement.

Astronomers Without Borders and the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, where Walker works, run the contest together. Itching to enter your own work? Organizers will announce details about the 6th International Earth and Sky Photo Contest in February 2015. The contest is open for submissions from March through April 22, Earth Day.

Click below to see the pretty, pretty pictures.

Paul Warren, left, and Andy Vu, right, capture ultrasound images of the mannequin's heart

Ankle straps keep Warren and Vu from floating away from the experiment

NASA/ Microgravity University

In microgravity, Newton's law of equal and opposite reactions is especially salient.

Clockwise from left to right: Lisa Lee, David Gerson, And Diniana Piekutowski

NASA/ Microgravity University

A Boeing 727 during a parabolic flight

NASA

Clockwise from left to right: Paul Warren, Andy Vu, and Sam Beder

I'm upside down near the pole on the right.

NASA/ Microgravity University

Older elephants with larger tusks are becoming rarer due to their ivory.

Muhammad Mahdi Karim, CC BY-SA

The shocking news that Satao, the much-loved African Elephant who lived in Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, has been killed and butchered for his tusks highlights once again the terrible and unsustainable toll of poaching elephants for their ivory.

Increasingly authorities are using forensic methods to track and trace the origins of seized ivory, providing the means to tackle enforcement problems in the country where the animal was killed, rather than just the point where the attempt was made to smuggle it out of the continent.

Satao’s death is just one among the many thousands of elephants killed each year. The Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants programme, part of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) set up as part of the worldwide ban in 1989, reported that 22,000 African elephants were illegally killed by poachers in 2012, based on data from 27 countries across Africa. The figures for 2013 reported this month show a toll of over 20,000 African elephants, the vast majority of seizures by customs or border officials being made in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

The CITES report reveals that while the numbers of elephants poached appears to have stabilised, among large seizures of more than 500kg the number of tusks found in each seizure is rising. This suggests two things: that there are fewer elephants to poach, and that the trade is well-organised and not the work of individual poachers or small groups. This level of slaughter far exceeds the reproductive potential of the remaining elephants and will, by any account, lead to the extinction of the African elephant in many parts of the continent.

The international community is only now responding to this crisis for the African elephant with action. Knowing which populations the poachers are targeting can play an important part. Work pioneered by Professor Sam Wasser at the University of Washington uses DNA profiling from seized ivory to trace it back to the geographical location within Africa from which the ivory was taken once roamed.

Using DNA as a tool

There are two species of elephant in Africa, the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). Within these two species are many sub-populations, such as extended family groups, where there is a greater sharing of DNA types due to inheritance from common ancestors. So some DNA types become much more common than others in defined geographical ranges, which means that using similar DNA profiling techniques to those used in human forensic science, the DNA from ivory provides a map leading back to the geographic area where those sub-populations with similar DNA profiles are found.

Under CITES there is a total ban on the trade in elephant ivory, although not from all other species that have ivory, nor from tusks removed from mammoths – being extinct, they cannot be provided any legal protection. The cost of mammoth ivory is approximately US$350 per kilogramme – significantly cheaper than elephant ivory – but often looks very similar. Again, DNA typing can distinguish between African and Asian elephants and mammoths.

This aspect of wildlife forensic science is supported by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, and has already proved highly successful in tracking seizures and locating their source. For example, when a 6.5 tonne shipment was seized in Singapore, DNA testing revealed it had come from elephant populations in Zambia. With that knowledge, pressure applied saw Zambia’s director of wildlife replaced and its courts start to impose harsher sentences for ivory smugglers in order to tackle the problem at source.

Unfortunately such tests do not come cheap and are rarely conducted for free. The illegal trade in wildlife is highly profitable and well-organised. If nations wish to save the African elephant, then action to provide – and fund – the tools necessary is required. A CITES meeting last year agreed that all authorities making seizures over 500kg would submit samples for DNA analysis to boost the details mapping seizures to populations.

Tackling demand

The reason there is a trade at all is to provide ivory for markets in China and the Far East. Based on intelligence from seized shipments, ivory is exported from Africa to countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam where the ivory is processed before being sold on. It’s difficult to devise a cost per kilogramme of ivory (a tusker such as Satao would carry around 45kg of ivory) but the latest estimates are that a carved ornament of 10kg will sell ultimately for US$60,000. With booming economies in many countries of Southeast Asia, and China in particular, the amount of disposable income has rapidly increased alongside a desire for ivory as a status symbol. And as ivory becomes rare due to the alarming decrease in elephant numbers, the concurrent increase in value will put ever more pressure on the dwindling elephant populations.

Adrian Linacre does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Shrinking cavity

3D images showing how the Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralization technique can shrink a cavity, in red.

Nigel Pitts / Kings College London

Researchers at King's College London have developed a technique called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralzation, in which a device they've dubbed a "healing hand piece" is placed over the site of a cavity. The tool emits a small electrical current that promotes the remineralization of the tooth, driving calcium, phosphate, and other substances back into the enamel, the scientists told the Washington Post (cavities happen when bacteria break down, or demineralize, the enamel with acid). The technique would take about as much time and cost about the same or less than a traditional filling, and publications describing the technique should be published "in coming months," they said.

The technique could put an end the cycle of filling and re-filling, said King's professor Nigel Pitts. "When we repair a tooth by putting in a filling, that tooth enters a cycle of drilling and re-filling as, ultimately, each 'repair' fails," he told The Telegraph. But this remineralization procedure only needs to be done once, he added. 

A Scottish company called Reminova Ltd is trying to commercialize the technology and said it could be available in three years if enough funding is found. It could take slightly longer in the U.S., though, due to the different regulatory environment, the scientists said.

Detail Of Small Arms Of WWI Collaborative Project

Detail from the larger image. At the center is the Colt/Browning Model 1895 machine gun, used by the Dominion of Canada and the Kingdom of Belgium in World War I.

C&Rsenal

A century ago this week, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately become World War I. Fought primarily between a German, Austro-Hungarian, and Turkish alliance known as the Central Powers and an alliance of the British, French, Russians, and later Americans known as the Allies, the war ended with a revolution in Russia, a regime change in Germany, and millions upon millions of soldiers dead. The Small Arms of WWI is a crowdsourced effort to identify all the various pistols, rifles, bayonets and other human-sized weapons of war used in that conflict. 

Part of what made World War I especially deadly was the proliferation of machine guns, which made defending territory easy and taking it very, very hard. Several are already identified in the project, from Britain's Lewis light machine gun to France's Hotchkiss M1909 to the German Maschinengewehr 08. In contrast with the machine guns, plenty of pistols and bayonets are featured, which were used by the shock troops that survived crossing no-man's-land into enemy trenches and then fought the defenders in hand-to-hand combat. The display is also dominated by rifles, many of them bolt-action, which could hit targets farther away than most machine guns but lacked the rapid-fire lethality presented by automatic weapons.

While the project is still a work in progress, in many ways the general contours of the war are visible through the weapons already documented. Japan was one of the participants in World War I, having joined the war on the side of the Allies in 1914. Japan mostly kept its involvement limited to taking over German colonies in Asia, but the arsenal available is indicative of Japan's growing world-class military strength, which would only increase over the next decades. Other countries have limited arsenals matching their limited role. Greece, which entered the war late and fought minimally, only has two rifle types listed. There's a qualifier to this: Austria-Hungary, one of the major powers of the war, mobilized 7,800,000 troops but is only represented by three rifle designs and two kinds of pistol. Hopefully that will improve as the project continues.

There's also a tragic modernity to this list. Among the British weapons is the Lee-Enfield MkIII rifle. Mass-produced for the war, the rifle is accurate and durable enough that American Marines, fighting in Afghanistan in 2010, captured a working Lee-Enfield from the Taliban. It was stamped with the year of manufacture: 1915.

DIY pressure suit

11.9 miles is the so-called Armstrong limit, or the altitude at which atmospheric pressure is equal to that of water vapor pressure—a scenario that can boil bodily fluids.

Courtesy Jev Olsen/Copenhagen Suborbitals

In 2008, Cameron Smith, an anthropology professor at Portland State University in Oregon, decided to build a space suit. He designed the Mark I to protect himself on a high-altitude balloon ride, and so far it’s passed tests in a hypobaric chamber and underwater. Last year, independent space program Copenhagen Suborbitals offered him a potential path to the stratosphere (between about 30,000 and 165,000 feet above Earth). Smith will make a suit for the Danish group this summer, and they’ll help him build a helium balloon craft. Traditional pressure garments can cost upwards of $30,000. Smith’s materials set him back about $2,000, thanks to creative use of junk parts and spare kitchenware. “We’re trying to make it easier for people to get into space,” he says.

Helmet Lock

Smith needed a metal ring to affix the helmet to the suit. Rather than have one machined, he cut the bottom out of a 9-inch stainless-steel pie tin.

Air Exchange

Valves in the side of the helmet blow oxygen over the visor to defog it and prevent carbon dioxide from building up. Another valve scrubs away the CO₂.

Safety layers

Smith’s suit is actually four suits: a set of polypropylene long johns (for comfort), an old diving suit (to help pressurize air around the body), a nylon-mesh jumpsuit retrieved from a trash bin (to prevent the suit from swelling like a balloon), and an orange fireproof coverall.

Pressurization

Air pressure at 65,000 feet is about 90 percent lower than at sea level, which can render a person unconscious and boil saliva and tears. The suit protects its wearer by maintaining air pressure of about 25 percent that at sea level.

Temperature control

Without a cooling system, temperatures in the suit climbed to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. So Smith lined the garment with 40 feet of PVC tubing to create a water-cooling system that would maintain a comfortable 70 degrees.

This article originally appeared in the July 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Dyson Cool AM06

Photograph by Jonathon Kambouris

For all their breezy comfort, desk fans make quite a racket, but not the Dyson Cool AMO6. The newest in the company’s line of bladeless fans, the AMO6 is scarcely louder than a quiet chat. Designers cut the noise in three ways. First, they balanced the motor so that it won’t wobble when it spins, eliminating vibration. Then they added a cavity outside the motor that traps any whistling from the impeller fan. Finally, they widened the bottom of the loop to let air flow more easily, minimizing noisy turbulence. Perhaps now you can hear yourself think.

Dyson Cool AM06

Decibel range: 40dB–56dB

Weight: 4.0 pounds

Diameter: 10 inches

Price:$249

This article originally appeared in the July 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Bee Hive

Andrew McMillan/Wikimedia Commons

The task force will have to come up with a strategy within six months to reverse this decline. In the announcement, President Obama said he will also set aside $8 million for new honeybee habitats. The initiative doesn't only focus on bees, but also addresses other pollinators, like butterflies. "The Federal Government will also work to restore the Monarch butterfly migration using research and habitat improvements that will benefit Monarchs as well as other native pollinators and honey bees," the statement said.

What's going on with bees? As the White House noted, the decline is blamed on various factors, from a lack of good habitat, to exposure to certain pesticides, to mite infestations and viruses. Part of the total $50 million is slated to "enhance research" as to a cause for the bee deaths.

Some environmental groups said that Obama didn't go far enough, and should have specifically done some about neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been linked to bee deaths. "The administration should prevent the release and use of these toxic pesticides until determined safe," Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica told the AP.

A Pile Of Cocaine

via STV Glasgow

Bacteria that live in the soil near coca plants make an enzyme called cocaine esterase, which rapidly breaks down the drug. The enzyme could theoretically be useful to  destroy cocaine ingested by people before it takes effect, but the half-life of the enzyme--which was isolated years ago--is only about 12 minutes at human body temperature, according to Chemical & Engineering News. "It would be hard to use this enzyme for therapeutic purposes," University of Kentucky researcher Chang-Guo Zhan says.

So scientists decided to tinker with it. What if the enzyme could be made sturdy at high temperatures? In a 2008 study, Zhan and colleagues first figured out how to extend the half-life to six hours, possibly enough to treat an overdose. But that wasn't good enough. So the team kept at it, as Chemical & Engineering News explained:

Now the researchers think that the altered enzyme, described in a study published in Chemical Biology, could be used to treat cocaine overdoses, for which there is really no drug treatment (besides benzodiazepines to calm patients). It may also eventually be used for tackling addiction, although Zhan was quick to mention that additional work will need to be done to see if it could chew up cocaine more quickly than the drug exerts its effects on the brain.

Pathways to Gout

From Jensen et al., "Temporal disease trajectories condensed from population-wide registry data covering 6.2 million patients," Nature Communications, 2014

Doctors have long suspected that those who have heart disease also tend to get gout. Knowing correlations like this is important for predicting and preparing for what will happen to patients in the future. The correlations are also important for understanding how diseases work. Is there a mechanism behind gout that's related to heart disease? Could medicines for gout help with heart disease, too?

Okay, so we know one disease sometimes leads to another, even if they're seemingly unrelated. (Gout is a kind of arthritis; it's not immediately clear it has anything to do with the heart.) But one new study has examined these correlations at an unprecedented scale. Researchers from Denmark and the University of New Mexico recently mined the Danish National Patient Registry for diseases that often follow one another. And what exactly is the Danish National Patient Registry? It's a list of every single time a Danish person visited a Danish hospital. The researchers examined data from 1996 to 2010, encompassing 6.2 million people and 65 million hospital visits.

The scientists found some distinctive patterns. Some were obvious. Many patients were diagnosed with an enlarged prostate, then prostate cancer, then obstructed urine flow, and finally, anemia related to cancer. That doesn't mean all people who have an enlarged prostate—who find themselves at the starting line—will go through this progression. The study didn't specify people's risk of going through the progression, either. But the results do mean that this is an established medical journey, one that happens to a statistically significant number of people among 6.2 million Danes. To think of it another way: Not many people find themselves diagnosed with obstructed urine flow before being diagnosed with prostate cancer. The progression happens one way.

Trajectories for an Enlarged Prostate

From Jensen et al., "Temporal disease trajectories condensed from population-wide registry data covering 6.2 million patients," Nature Communications, 2014

The more interesting patterns were the less straightforward ones. The researchers found there's a pathway where people get chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after being diagnosed with hardened arteries. After that, people tend to progress rapidly to one of several more serious diagnoses. Many in the study died within five years of their COPD diagnosis. These data are a signal that COPD is a dangerous milestone in a cardiovascular disease patient's health timeline.

As for the example we started with, many people with heart disease and heart failure ended up getting gout afterward. Different studies have found mixed results on whether gout is associated with heart disease, so this study adds a chip to the "it is associated" side.    

Mining a big dataset for timelines helps clarify relationships between diseases, the researchers wrote in a paper they published in the journal Nature Communications. In the future, progression patterns could help personalize people's prognoses. Your prognosis might be different if you get gout after heart disease, than if you didn't. "In the future, we will be able to predict many diseases using simple tests in combination with known disease progression patterns," the study's lead scientist, Søren Brunak of the Technical University of Denmark, said in a statement.

May 2014 Temperature Anomalies

Globally, May 2014 was the hottest May since record-keeping began. Above-average temperatures beset much of the Western U.S. (as well as Australia, eastern Eurasia, and much of Canada), while some parts of the upper Midwest saw cooler-than-average temperatures.

NOAA

Last month was the warmest-ever May in the history of temperature records, leaving atmospheric scientists to wonder: Will 2014 go down as the hottest year ever?

“For 351 months in a row, or more than 29 years, global temperatures have been warmer than average,” writes Andrea Thompson at Climate Central.“May 2014 was the 351st month in that uninterrupted series.”

The potential spoiler is the cyclical El Nino event: a band of unusually warm ocean water that periodically forms along the equatorial Pacific Ocean and drives up global temperatures. We're definitely in an El Nino year, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but the phenomenon may not peak until the Northern winter, which would push most of its effects into 2015, and likely put next year into contention for the hottest ever since record-keeping began in 1880.

According to data from NOAA:

• The average temperature over land and ocean combined in May 2014 was 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit (0.74 degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average of 58.6°F (14.8°C)
• Taken separately, temperatures over land were the fourth highest on record.
• Temperatures over ocean in May were the highest on record, and tied with three other records (all set within the past two decades) for “the highest departure from average for any month on record.”
• Alaska had its sixth warmest May since record-keeping for that region began in 1918: 3.56°F (1.98°C) above the 1971–2000 average.

Another indicator of intensifying global warming: The area of Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice, a major influencer of weather for the Northern Hemisphere, continued its multi-year shrinking trend.

Arctic Sea Ice Downward Trend

While peaking and falling during various years, the overall amount of Arctic Ocean sea ice has been going downwards for many years.

NSIDC

“Arctic sea ice extent for May averaged 12.78 million square kilometers (4.93 million square miles),” the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported June 3. “This is 610,000 square kilometers (235,500 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average for the month. May 2014 is now the third lowest May extent in the satellite record.”

As we recently reported, the multi-year warming trends in the far north, collectively called the “Great Arctic Melt," are already transforming the region. Scientists are trying to figure out what those changes mean for both the Arctic and the entire planet--climatically, ecologically, and politically.

Teasing apart the impacts of human-propelled climate changes from those caused by natural cycles can still be difficult. Researchers are still hunting for plausible reasons why the area of Antarctic sea ice for May was an above-average 4.64 million square miles (12.03 million square kilometers), according to the NSIDC, despite the multi-year overall increase in global surface temperatures. "This is 1.24 million square kilometers (478,800 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average for the month," the agency reports, and the highest May ice extent in satellite record-keeping.

T-Bone Steak

Wikimedia Commons

As journalist Paul John Scott (not to be confused with John Paul Scott, the only Alcatraz inmate to conclusively reached San Francisco during an escape attempt) writes in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota bears the blame for the wrong-headed low-fat diet that has been promoted by the FDA: 

Okay, so Minnesota isn't really to blame, but rather Keys and his ilk. Scott goes on to further describe how Keys's well-meaning--but misguided--efforts to get people to eat less animal and especially saturated fat hurt rather than helped us. Many of these points come from the book "The Big Fat Surprise," by investigative reporter Nina Teicholz. She argues that the data to support a low-fat diet doesn't exist, as CNN reported: 

Not everybody agrees, however. Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, told CNN that replacing saturated fats with healthy fats improves blood lipids, and in turn reduces heart disease.

But both sides would probably agree that a shift from a diet high in animal fats to a diet high in simple carbohydrates like sugar--a pattern seen in the United States--isn't healthy. To make up your own mind, check out the book yourself here, and read reviews of Teicholz's tome at the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times, and on Amazon.com. 

CombatGuard Goes Downhill

Israel Military Industries

Half the battle is getting everybody to the battle. Shown off Friday at the Eurosatory defense conference and exhibition in Paris, the CombatGuard is a new military troop carrier that wants to bring more troops to battle over rougher, harder ground. It's developed by Israel Military Industries in conjunction with Ido Off-Road Center, with the goal of a fast and armored vehicle that can get troops where they need to be over difficult terrain, and get them their safely.

In testing, the CombatGuard can go 95 mph on open roads, and 75 mph on rough terrain. Depending on how the vehicle is set up, it can carry either six or eight troops inside. The large tires, high clearance, and suspension allow it to drive on hills with up to a 70 percent gradient. It can operate as far as 300-500 miles away from base, getting troops where they need to be, in places they won't be expected.

The body is protected against normal bullets at a reasonable range, and according to a brochure of the CombatGuard that protection includes armor-piercing bullets fired from rifles. Besides armor, the CombatGuard on display at Eurosatory came equipped with a Bright Arrow defense system. Sensors and camera detect incoming projectiles, and it will either jam laser targeting systems or shoot bullets at incoming rockets and tank rounds to protect the vehicle and the crew inside. Because the CombatGuard can go where most vehicles can't, protection against the kinds of guns and rocket launchers people can carry makes it stronger than its go-kart-meets-monster-truck appearance suggests. 

Lighting Strikes in the Continental U.S.

Screenshot taken at about 2:39 pm Pacific Daylight Time on June 24, 2014. The current strikes are shown as white circles. Recent past strikes are shown in white, yellow, orange and red dots.

Blitzortung.org

If you visit Blitzortung.org, you'll hear an irregular succession of snaps or pops. Each little zap represents a lightning strike occurring somewhere in the land you see on the map. The strikes are captured by a network of citizen detectors, then sent, with just a few seconds' delay, to the site.

Here's what's even cooler. If you want to contribute measurements to the map, you can. You'll need to buy parts from Blitzortung.org and assemble your own detector. The project has detailed instructions here. The project managers, who seem to be three guys in Germany, estimate the overall cost to make a detector is less than 200 euro (about $270).

The Blitzortung instructions will have you make a detector that picks up long-length, low-frequency radio waves that lightning generates. The lightning-radio frequencies are much lower than the frequencies used for the radio you listen to in your car; they range from 3 kHz to 30 kHz, when AM radio broadcasts at frequencies between 540 kHz to 1.6 MHz. These low-frequency waves are able to propagate for quite a distance, bouncing between the surface of the Earth and the Earth's ionosphere. So even if you don't live in an area with frequent lightning storms, your detector may still provide useable data to the project. A large antenna used in a location with little electromagnetic activity may detect lightning strikes as far as 3,000 kilometers (about 1,900 miles) away, according to the project instructions.

Lightning in Victoria, Australia

Photo by Thomas Bresson, November 2008

Once your detector is up and running, it will send its data to the Blitzortung.org servers. The servers calculate how far away a lightning strike is from a detector, based on the data the detector picks up. A lightning strike needs to trigger at least four detectors for Blitzortung to be able to calculate its position. The more detectors there are in an area, the more accurate lighting-strike captures for that area will be.

Exactly how accurate is this volunteer network of lightning detectors? The project doesn't have a lot of direct data measuring this, but the data it does present are promising. The locations it calculates for lighting strikes in Germany, where the project started, are comparable to calculations made by this commercial system. Project managers have also found that around buildings that are frequently struck by lightning, they tend to get data points within a kilometer of the building. Accuracies may be lower in areas where the project is less popular and there are fewer volunteer detectors.

The United States Supreme Court

Philosophical Swag, via Twitter

This morning the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a unanimous 9-0 decision on Riley v. California that police cannot, with few exceptions, search a cell phone without a warrant to do so. The whole opinion is structured as a critique of warrantless data collection, based on norms that precede cell phones, and much of the case delves into just how different 16 gigabytes of information on a phone is from pictures in a wallet or a handwritten book of phone numbers.

The major exception is in case of exigency, where immediate need to save lives justifies warrantless entry. Exigency itself is subject to a lot of legal debate, and the court addresses it again here, noting that "unlike the search incident to arrest exception, the exigent circumstances exception requires a court to examine whether an emergency justified a warrantless search in each particular case." This is in keeping with Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.

In addition, the case echoes another cell phone privacy case decided just weeks ago by a lower court in Florida, which asserted that the private details of life as recorded on a phone are still protected from warrantless search, even if the person uses their phone in public. It's an acknowledgement of modern information storage and data collection both. Key to the ruling is the technological sophistication of cell phones. The Court writes:

There's also an understanding that the large amount of interconnected information stored on a phone is qualitatively different than the individual pieces of data it's made of:

The case concludes:

Is the Internet a key to public health?

Jisc

Playing videogames, hanging out in chat rooms, and surfing the web may sound like procrastination for most. However, medical professionals have been embracing the web as a way to prevent and treat some diseases, from depression to diabetes. A recent study found that these types of online interactions could help decrease the transmission of HIV by targeting one of the populations most at risk: men seeking men online.

Although efforts over the past 20 years have slowed the rate of infection for HIV, it is still highest among men who have sex with men (MSM). According to the study, MSM make up less than 10 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for almost 80 percent of the new HIV infections among males—and the rate increased between 2008 and 2010. Online interventions are especially effective with MSM because a high number of them are using the Internet--and in 2006, 40 percent of gay men reported that they used the Internet to seek out sexual partners. What's more, studies have found that men who seek partners on the Internet are much more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, including unprotected sex.

The advent of apps like Grindr and Tinder as well as the popularity of online dating could mean an increased frequency of high-risk behaviors. But certain elements of the Internet make it the perfect remedy: it’s immediate, it’s personal, and it has the power to transform people’s behavior for the better. 

The study, released in the May issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, considered the efficacy of 13 different initiatives published in studies over the past 14 years. Using tactics ranging from text messages to interactive web sites, researchers have taught men to reduce high-risk behaviors, to get tested more frequently, and to reduce the shame and stigma surrounding the virus. Interestingly, the digital medium that was most effective was a web-based media intervention. Different iterations of this method combined videos and interactive components that the user completed over the course of several days, weeks or months. And these media interventions were best at getting the men to reduce their at-risk behaviors and make them more likely to disclose their HIV status to a partner.

As digital interactions become increasingly prevalent, enterprising health professionals can find new and effective ways to reach patients, especially those that may be at risk for stigmatized conditions like HIV.