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In August, a dry lightning storm over California sparked an intense wildfire that raged through communities in the Santa Cruz mountains. After the CZU Lightning Complex Fire was contained, local officials advised some residents returning to their homes to not use the drinking water. Benzene, a known carcinogen, had been detected in the water supply. The chemical probably was released by plastic pipes that melted during the fire. Scientists call events like this “natech,” or natural hazard-induced technological disasters. Coined in 1994, the term originally applied to industrial incidents such as chemical or fuel spills that occur after hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural hazards. But natech’s definition has recently expanded, says resilience scientist David Yu of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. It now covers any disaster arising from damage caused by a natural hazard to infrastructure that relies on technology, he says. That includes disasters involving electricity an

Indigenous Bolivian Amazon dwellers are helping to bolster recent findings that normal body temperature, around 37° Celsius, or 98.6° Fahrenheit, might not be so normal anymore. The horticulturist-forager Tsimane people in the South American nation have experienced a half-degree drop, on average, in body temperatures over a decade and a half, anthropologist Michael Gurven and colleagues report October 28 in Science Advances . The new finding echoes the half-degree drop in average body temperature reported earlier this year in a Stanford University study of three U.S. population cohorts over 157 years. In that research, normal body temperature fell by 0.03° C per decade. Body temperature serves as a sort of surrogate for basal metabolic rate, or the number of calories required to keep the body working while at rest. Higher rates have been linked to shorter life spans and lower body mass. Body temperature — which also reflects circadian rhythms , immune function, the presence or abse

Clouds may be ecosystems —   Science News , November 14, 1970 Clouds in the sky may contain living microbial ecosystems…. [Research] determined that metabolic activity, in the form of CO 2 uptake into organic material, occurred in [airborne] dust over a 24-hour period, whereas it did not occur in sterilized control dust. Update The atmosphere is rich in microbial life. One census documented some 28,000 bacterial species in samples of water from clouds above a mountain in France, scientists reported in 2017. Research building over the last decade or so has supported the claim that some bacteria may indeed be metabolically active within their hazy abodes. One species of B­acillus , for example, eats sugar floating in the atmosphere to build a coating — perhaps to shield itself from ultraviolet radiation and low temperatures ( SN: 2/7/15, p. 5 ). Some scientists suspect cloud bacteria contribute to Earth’s carbon and nitrogen cycles, and even influence weather ( SN: 6/18/11, p.

Mars’ water is being skimmed off the top. NASA’S MAVEN spacecraft found water lofted into Mars’ upper atmosphere, where its hydrogen and oxygen atoms are ripped apart , scientists report in the Nov. 13 Science . “This completely changes how we thought hydrogen, in particular, was being lost to space,” says planetary chemist Shane Stone of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Mars’ surface was shaped by flowing water , but today the planet is an arid desert ( SN: 12/8/14 ). Previously, scientists thought that Mars’ water was lost in a “slow and steady trickle,” as sunlight split water in the lower atmosphere and hydrogen gradually diffused upward, Stone says. But MAVEN, which has been orbiting Mars since 2014, scooped up water molecules in Mars’ ionosphere, at altitudes of about 150 kilometers. That was surprising — previously the highest water had been seen was about 80 kilometers ( SN: 1/22/18 ). That high-up water varied in concentration as the seasons changed on Mars, with the

When one of Hye-Sook Park’s experiments goes well, everyone nearby knows. “We can hear Hye-Sook screaming,” she’s heard colleagues say. It’s no surprise that she can’t contain her excitement. She’s getting a closeup look at the physics of exploding stars, or supernovas, a phenomenon so immense that its power is difficult to put into words. Rather than studying these explosions from a distance through telescopes, Park, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, creates something akin to these paroxysmal blasts using the world’s highest-energy lasers. About 10 years ago, Park and colleagues embarked on a quest to understand a fascinating and poorly understood feature of supernovas: Shock waves that form in the wake of the explosions can boost particles, such as protons and electrons, to extreme energies. “Supernova shocks are considered to be some of the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe,” says plasma physicist Frederico Fiuza of SLAC Natio

Dance of the doomed particles Scientists are puzzled by an unexpectedly large gap in the energy levels of an exotic “atom” called positronium, which consists of an electron and a positron, Emily Conover reported in “ Positronium result baffles physicists ” ( SN: 9/12/20, p. 14 ). Reader Lee Skinner asked why the electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, don’t just annihilate each other when they collide. Eventually, the electron and positron do annihilate one another, Conover says. As a result, positronium doesn’t stick around forever. “The two particles do a little orbital dance with each other for a period of time before they meet up and annihilate,” she says. “That’s actually part of how the researchers made the measurement, though I didn’t have the space to include those details in the story.” The team measured how long it took electrons and positrons to annihilate, which depends on the atoms’ energy level. “Timing that annihilation revealed whether the positr

Two fields of science seem to stand as far apart as possible — botany and astrophysics. In one field, scientists may amble through bosky glens seeking elusive, rare vegetation. In the other, teams may use massive, multimillion-dollar machines to blast targets into smithereens and study some of the most dramatic events in the known universe, including how stars are born and die. Yet both species of scientist are driven by a desire to discover, and a refusal to quit despite the difficulty of a quest that can take decades and promises no sure rewards. In this issue, we delve into the world of botanists trying to save the last plants of their kind from extinction . This is native soil for life sciences writer Susan Milius . In thinking about what makes the plant partisans  tick, “what struck me was that a practice of observation, or maybe a passion for observation, favors serendipity,” Milius told me. She notes that Norma Etta Pfeiffer, who discovered the rare Thismia americana in 1912,