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Welcome to Soundhenge. Better known as Stonehenge, this ancient monument in southern England created an acoustic space that amplified voices and improved the sound of any music being played for people standing within the massive circle of stones, a new study suggests. Because of how stones were placed, that speech or music would not have projected beyond Stonehenge into the surrounding countryside, or even to people standing near the stone circle, scientists report in the October Journal of Archaeological Science . To explore Stonehenge’s sound dynamics, acoustical engineer Trevor Cox and colleagues used laser scans of the site and archaeological evidence to construct a physical model one-twelfth the size of the actual monument . That was the largest possible scale replica that could fit inside an acoustic chamber at the University of Salford in England, where Cox works. This room simulated the acoustic effects of the open landscape surrounding Stonehenge and compacted ground inside

In the United States, the average wait time for COVID-19 test results is about four days. Even worse, 10 percent of individuals don’t receive lab results for 10 days or more. Quick reporting of test results helps identify infected individuals so they and anyone they potentially spread the coronavirus to can be isolated, preventing further spread of the virus. “If you have a 14-day lag to knowing if someone is actually sick and contagious, then they’ll interact with many, many more people in that period than if you have a one-day or a six-hour or one-hour turnaround,” says Omar Abudayyeh, a bioengineer at MIT. Abudayyeh is among the many researchers and companies racing to develop new and speedier types of diagnostic tests that circumvent clinical labs altogether. Some of these tests complete their analyses in all-in-one machines that are portable enough to be set up in schools, nursing homes and offices. Several companies are developing tests like these that can diagnose COVID-19 i

As the coronavirus hit communities across the United States over the summer, four overnight camps in Maine successfully kept the virus at bay. Of 1,022 people who attended the summer camps, which included campers and staff members, only three people tested positive for COVID-19, researchers report August 26 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report . That’s because the people who came to Maine from 41 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Bermuda and five other countries diligently followed public health measures put in place to stop transmission, the team says. The camps’ success, as well as others including child care programs in Rhode Island that limited coronavirus transmission, could point to a path forward for places like schools that are reopening with in-person classes in the face of the ongoing pandemic, though challenges remain. At the camps, a combination of testing, social bubbles, social distancing, masks, quarantine and isolation prevented outbreaks. Before arriving at camp,

Mars dust up Predicting dust storms on Mars will help keep rovers and future astronauts safe on the planet’s surface, Lisa Grossman reported in “ How upcoming missions to Mars will help predict its wild dust storms ” ( SN: 7/4/20 & 7/18/20, p. 24 ). The story reported that scientists struggle to understand how dust gets lifted into the air. “Have they considered static electricity? A static charge on the dust particles would create repulsion between separate particles and between particles and the ground, levitating them enough to be moved by the winds,” reader Bruce M­erchant wrote. Yes, electric fields formed by colliding dust grains can help increase the amount of dust in the atmosphere. Though electric forces alone are not enough to explain dust lift on Mars, the forces “are critical in the dust-­lifting process and should be taken into account,” says Germán Martínez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Electric forces also loft dust into Earth’s atmosphere

Back-to-school time is usually greeted with delight by children and parents. This year, school has become a hellscape of uncertainty due to the United States’ failure to subdue the coronavirus. We all want children to be back at school, learning and playing with their peers. How to get them there with at least a modicum of safety is the latest challenge in a year of extraordinary challenges. On the face of it, making schools safe enough in a pandemic seems like a straightforward public health question. But though scientists have learned a great deal in the last seven months about how the coronavirus is transmitted and how to reduce risk, there’s still so much we don’t know, especially when it comes to kids. And as with too many other issues involving this pandemic, misinformation is rampant. To find out what the science really says about children and COVID-19, five of our reporters set to work evaluating current research and interviewing a wide range of scientists across disciplines.

A researcher slips stickers under some colored cups on a lazy Susan, then gives the tray a whirl. When the spinning stops, a preschooler must find the hidden stickers. Most children remember where the stickers are, but a few have to check every single cup. The game tests working memory, which is among the set of mental skills known as executive function that can be impaired in children who faced trauma early in life. Adversity wreaks havoc, and from there, “you have a system that responds differently,” says Megan Gunnar, a developmental psychobiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who has spent two decades studying the impact of early-life adversity in adopted children. The focus of this work is extreme adversity, such as being orphaned, rather than everyday challenges, which might teach beneficial resilience. A childhood characterized by hardship, negligence or abuse can also alter the neuroendocrine system that regulates how the body responds to stress. Problems i

August 2020 has been a devastating month across large swaths of the United States: As powerful Hurricane Laura barreled into the U.S. Gulf Coast on August 27, fires continued to blaze in California. Meanwhile, farmers are still assessing widespread damage to crops in the Midwest following an Aug. 10 “derecho,” a sudden, hurricane-force windstorm. Each of these extreme weather events was the result of a particular set of atmospheric — and in the case of Laura, oceanic — conditions. In part, it’s just bad luck that the United States is being slammed with these events back-to-back-to-back. But for some of these events, such as intense hurricanes and more frequent wildfires, scientists have long warned that climate change has been setting the stage for disaster. Science News takes a closer look at what causes these kinds of extreme weather events, and the extent to which human-caused climate change may be playing a role in each of them. On August 25, NASA’s GOES-West satellite watched

Earth’s deep stores of water may have been locally sourced rather than trucked in from far-flung regions of the solar system. A new analysis of meteorites from the inner solar system — home to the four rocky planets — suggests that Earth’s building blocks delivered enough water to account for all the H 2 O buried within the planet . What’s more, the water produced by the local primordial building material likely shares a close chemical kinship with Earth’s deep-water reserves, thus strengthening the connection, researchers report in the Aug. 28 Science . Earth is thought to have been born in an interplanetary desert, too close to the sun for water ice to survive. Many researchers suspect that ocean water got delivered toward the end of Earth’s formation by ice-laden asteroids that wandered in from cooler, more distant regions of the solar system ( SN: 5/6/15 ). But the ocean isn’t the planet’s largest water reservoir. Researchers estimate that Earth’s interior holds several times as

Weather forecasters in the Philippines got the tip-off in the second week of November 2019. A precipitation forecast that peered further into the future than usual warned that the islands faced torrential rains more than three weeks away. The meteorologists alerted local and national governments, which sprang into action. Mobile phone and broadcast alerts advised people to prepare to evacuate. By the time the Category 4 Typhoon Kammuri lashed the Philippines with heavy rains in early December, the damage was much less than it could have been. Having so much time to prepare was key, says Andrew Robertson, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society in Palisades, N.Y. “It’s a great example of how far we’ve come” in weather forecasting, he says. “But we still need to go further.” Such efforts, known as “subseasonal forecasting,” aim to fill a crucial gap in weather prediction. The approach fits between short-term forecasts that a