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      <p>There were nights every August and November when I couldn’t sleep.</p><p>My dad would bundle me in my sleeping bag—a forest green junior rendition of his own—and carry me to a lawn chair outside. He’d put a cup of steaming hot chocolate in my hand. Together, we’d wait for the show to begin.</p><p>These nights were not<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/sleep-deprivation-anxiety/"> bouts of insomnia</a> fought off with fresh air. My six-year-old self and my dad <i>chose</i> to stay up until the early hours of the morning. In November, when the <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/meteors-and-meteorites/leonids/in-depth/">Leonid meteor showers</a> were in full bloom, I’d sleep from 3-6 a.m. and scramble off to school red-eyed. In August, after watching the Perseids perform for hours, I’d sleep in like a teenager.</p><p>I credit these spectacles, put on by the cosmos twice a year, for my unending passion for science and understanding the world around us.</p><p>I may not be alone. The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks overnight from 2 a.m. to dawn local time, is one of the most popular of the year, Rachel Treisman<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/11/901094691/perseid-meteor-shower-peaks-after-midnight-nasa-says-its-one-of-the-best"> reports for NPR</a>: Warmer summer temperatures and high rates of meteors are hard for astronomy aficionados to resist. If you’re able, find a spot away from city lights, lie on your back or sit in a camping chair, and gaze toward the night sky. Meteors will appear like faint streaks of light that gradually fade within moments.</p><p>Meteors form when meteoroids, objects in space that range in size from dust grains to about 80-foot asteroids, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cone-meteorites/">enter Earth’s atmosphere</a> at high speed and burn up.</p><p>Debris left behind by the ancient <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/comets/109p-swift-tuttle/in-depth/">comet Swift-Tuttle </a>creates the Perseid meteors. Every year in August, Earth ventures through trails of this debris. “NASA says it&#x27;s ‘one of the best’ meteor shows of the year. That&#x27;s because of the sheer number of meteors<b>—</b>50 to 100 meteors to catch per hour as well as their <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/meteors-and-meteorites/perseids/in-depth/">fireballs</a>—larger, brighter explosions of light and color that last longer than an average meteor streak,” Treisman writes.</p>
  

  
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      <p>Unfortunately, this year’s shower will be somewhat impeded by the Moon, which is currently in its last quarter phase. This will limit observers’ view of the shower peak, “reducing the visible meteors from over 60 per hour down to 15-20 per hour,” Emily Clay<a href="https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2020/08/06/perseids-peak-watch-best-meteor-shower-of-the-year/"> reports for NASA</a>. “But the Perseids are rich in bright meteors and fireballs, so it will still be worth going out in the early morning to catch some of nature’s fireworks.”</p><p>With<a href="https://www.space.com/comet-neowise-is-dimming.html"> Comet NEOWISE</a> now making a 6,800-year exit from our solar system and a global pandemic still very much underway, any meteor shower spectacle is better than none. I think my six-year-old self would agree.</p>
  

  
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A meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower on Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 in West Virginia. Image credit: Bill Ingalls, NASA

<p>Here’s how to watch and what you’ll see.</p>

The 2020 Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight





  
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      <p>A global pandemic. Forest fires in the West. And now a derecho.</p><p>On the evening of Monday, August 10, a weather complex known as a “derecho” sent intense winds and thunderstorms over a 700-mile stretch from Nebraska to Indiana. In Iowa, the hardest-hit state, <a href="https://apnews.com/d44fdc171bf64a11981cec69e39390a9">three deaths have been reported</a> so far and hundreds of thousands of people went without power for days. More than 40% of the state’s corn and soybean crop, the core of Iowa’s economy, was severely damaged by the storm, whose winds reached 110-140 mph, equivalent to those of a Category 3 or 4 hurricane. Patrick Marsh, science support chief at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma compared it to the devastating <a href="https://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/may82009page.htm">“Super Derecho” of 2009</a>, which extended from Kansas to Tennessee.</p><p>Destruction to Iowa’s homes, farms, businesses, livestock, and crops translates to a $4 billion hit, Donnelle Eller reports for the <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2020/08/17/derecho-damage-homes-farms-push-higher-than-iowas-4-billion-estimate/5598590002/">Des Moines Register</a>.</p><p>Cedar Rapids was one of the hardest hit cities in the state. More than 800 buildings suffered partial collapse of the roof, walls, ceiling, or floors, and more than 20 schools sustained damage, Cedar Rapids Fire Chief Greg Smith tells CNN.</p><p>“Nearly every home has damage. Most big trees in the city fell. Most local businesses are closed. Every business is damaged. Most roads are impassable,” <a href="https://medium.com/@bjkap/its-worse-in-cedar-rapids-than-you-know-33b4c9b9c7fe">writes Cedar Rapids resident</a> Ben Kaplan on Medium.</p><p>“Our city of Cedar Rapids has been destroyed by a Derecho, a term for a type of storm I’ve never heard of and never want to hear of again,” one <a href="https://twitter.com/WadeNJerry/status/1295434198485000196">Iowa resident tweeted</a>.</p><p>Though derechos are often referred to as “inland hurricanes” because of their extreme rainfall and winds that can exceed the hurricane threshold of 74 mph, “that is where the similarities end,” Marshall Shepherd, director of University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2020/08/18/a-derecho-is-not-an-inland-hurricane-but-does-it-matter-what-people-call-it/#36b40a10199a">writes for Forbes</a>.</p><p>The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association <a href="https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/wind/types/">defines a derecho</a> as a widespread, long-lived wind storm associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. Though the damage they can create can be similar to damage inflicted by tornadoes, there’s a key difference: Unlike the spiraling winds and winding paths of twisters, derechos tend to move in one direction along a relatively straight line. Thus their path of destruction is also relatively linear.</p><p>“Meteorologists like me will often refer to this hazard as ‘straight-line wind damage,’”<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2020/08/10/what-is-a-derecho/#32c400593b8e"> Shepherd writes</a>. Much like blizzards, he adds, derechos are defined by very specific criteria. For a storm to be considered one, it must have wind gusts at or greater than 58 mph, pockets of 75 mph or greater gusts, and cause a band of wind damage that is greater than 250 miles long.</p><p>In the Eastern half of the United States, one derecho is expected to occur between every .75 and 4 years, depending on the location. Researchers aren’t yet sure whether climate change is affecting derechos or the frequency at which they occur. Warming global temperatures may actually inhibit the cooler temperature gradients that derecho-producing thunderstorms need to grow. What’s more certain, NOAA states, is that climate change is causing the jetstream to move toward the pole. So it’s likely that derechos will shift poleward in a warming world, too.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Derechoclimo.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="334" width="500"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/Derechoclimo.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>Derecho frequency for the lower 48 United States. Derechos in North America form predominantly from April to August, peaking in frequency from May into July. Image credit: Wikimedia commons</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>The storms associated with derechos can be arranged in a line and be accompanied by squalls of high wind and heavy rain (a “squall line”) or like the curve of a boomerang (a “bow echo”), Shepherd writes. Collectively, squall lines, bow echoes, and other types of thunderstorms that act as a single system are called “<a href="https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/thunderstorms/types/">mesoscale convective systems</a>.”</p><p>On August 10 in Iowa, swaths of 90 to 100 mph winds may have been between 30 and 50 miles wide at times, radar signatures indicate. In Marshalltown, a community of 27,000 people northeast of Des Moines, a personal weather station measured a 106-mph gust of wind, Matthew Cappucci <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/12/iowa-derecho-corn-damage/">reports for the Washington Post</a>; in Midway, a town just north of Cedar Rapids, winds clocked in at an alarming 112 mph.</p><p></p>
  

  
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      <p>Thousands of Iowans remained without power and dozens were in shelters as of Thursday, August 20. And then there’s the damage to Iowa’s agriculture, which approximately 90% of the state’s land is dedicated to. Iowa has been the number-one corn producer in the United States for the past 26 years, and experts can’t yet tell the extent of the derecho’s destruction to this year’s crop. “A lot of the corn is in the later development stages,” Keely Coppess, communications director for the Iowa Agriculture Department, tells the Washington Post. “Some is at a 45-degree angle, but it may attempt to stand back up. But it’s really too soon to tell.”</p><p>Now, volunteers are now traveling from out of town to assist with cleanup efforts in Cedar Rapids. Among the volunteers are Dave and Diane Lobermeier from Amherst, Wisconsin, about 300 miles away.</p><p>“We’re retired so we decided we’ll take some time and pack up and come,” Diane tells Cedar Rapids’ local news station KCRG, adding that it’s “the right thing to do.” She and her husband Dave came armed with donations and a chainsaw.</p><p>“They found Pete Martin, from North Liberty, wanting to help, too,” Aaron Scheinblum<a href="https://www.kcrg.com/2020/08/17/volunteers-traveling-from-out-of-town-to-help-cleanup-efforts-in-cedar-rapids/"> reports for KCRG</a>. “‘I feel like we all have a part to make a difference and help recover from this, so this is what I’m going to do,’ Martin said.”</p>
  

  
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Members of the Iowa Air National Guard remove trees limbs near downed power lines in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on August 18, 2020, eight days after a powerful derecho hit the Midwest. Image credit: Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groo, U.S. Air National Guard

<p>On August 10, a weather complex known as a “derecho” sent intense winds and thunderstorms over a 700-mile stretch from Nebraska to Indiana. Now, Iowa works to recover from its damage.</p>

Inside the derecho that pummeled the Midwest





  
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      <p>On Friday, August 28, actor Chadwick Boseman died at age 43 of colon cancer.</p><p>Perhaps best known for his role as King T’Challa in “Black Panther,” the actor starred in numerous other Avengers movies, “21 Bridges,” “Da 5 Bloods,” and a not-yet-released adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” This “superstar run” of back-to-back productions “seems all the more miraculous in light of the knowledge that Boseman pulled it off while quietly undergoing many surgeries and rounds of chemotherapy,” David Sims<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/chadwick-boseman/615868/?utm_source=feed"> writes for The Atlantic</a>.</p><p>The cancer that killed Boseman is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States after lung cancer. And although the majority of colon cancer cases are found in older adults, rates are rising among young people.</p><p>In July 2019, University of Texas at Austin researchers reported that “the proportion of newly diagnosed colorectal patients under age 50 <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cncr.32347">rose from 10 percent in 2004 to 12.2 percent in 2015</a>. Younger patients were also likely to have advanced cases more often than older patients,” Knvul Sheikh <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/health/colon-cancer-young.html">writes for the New York Times</a>. (Colorectal cancer includes illness in which tumors are present in the rectum or the colon.) According to the <a href="https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/colorectal-cancer-rates-rise-in-younger-adults.html">American Cancer Society</a>, about 18,000 people under 50 will be diagnosed with colon cancer in 2020.</p><p>Data from Canadian national cancer registries illustrate a similar trend in colorectal cancer rates in younger adults. Colorectal cancer rates increased by 3.47% among Canadian men under age 50 between 2006 and 2015, and by 4.4% among Canadian women under age 50 from 2010 to 2015.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Sessile_Serrated_Polyps.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/Sessile_Serrated_Polyps.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Micrograph of a colorectal sessile serrated lesion, which is most commonly seen in the cecum and ascending colon, and has the potential to lead to colorectal cancer. Image credit: Nephron, Wikimedia Commons</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>While older patients undergo regular screenings like colonoscopies, which help flag the disease in its early stages so that doctors can remove polyps before cancer develops (colorectal cancer rates have been declining among people over 65, likely because of more regular screenings), neither younger adults nor their healthcare providers are actively on the hunt for colon cancer, Kat Eschner<a href="https://www.popsci.com/story/health/colon-cancer-young-people/"> reports for Popular Science</a>. Therefore, younger patients are often diagnosed at the later stages of the disease and are more likely to die from their illness, whether or not their cancer is more aggressive than an older patient’s.</p><p>Experts aren’t yet sure why colon cancer rates are increasing among younger Americans and Canadians, but lifestyle changes may be a contributor. “Obesity and sedentary lifestyles, for example, are linked to colorectal cancer, as are poor diets low in fiber,” Sheikh writes. But experts are not entirely convinced these are the only factors at work. Trends in obesity among people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds don’t always correspond to an increase in colorectal cancer, Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society Patients, told Sheikh.</p><p>Patients with <a href="https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(11)00170-3/fulltext?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2F">chronic inflammation</a> or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5392343/">Type 2 diabetes</a> have also been found to be at increased risk for colon cancer. According to the National Institutes of Health, because of genetic traits, insulin resistance, and the prevalence of obesity—explained at least in part by<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/racism-stress-covid-allostatic-load/"> systematic racism and allostatic load</a>—African Americans have a<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1743410/"> high risk for type 2 diabetes</a>.</p>
  

  
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      <p>As a Black man, Boseman belonged to the demographic of people who have the highest rates of colorectal cancer. In another major healthcare inequity, African Americans, particularly men, are more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age relative to other diagnoses, Eschner writes for Popular Science. And Black Americans are less likely to be screened early and are more likely to die of the disease, research <a href="https://www.asge.org/docs/default-source/education/practice_guidelines/piis0016510717318059.pdf?sfvrsn=0">shows</a>.</p><p>At the Center for Young Onset Colorectal Cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which was opened in 2018 to treat younger patients and study the reasons for their diagnoses, Co-Director Dr. Robin B. Mendelsohn and her colleagues “are exploring whether diet, medications like antibiotics, and the microbiome — which have all changed significantly for generations born in the 1960s and later — might be contributing to the cancer in younger people,” Pam Belluck<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/colon-cancer-chadwick-boseman.html"> writes for the New York Times</a>.</p><p>As experts attempt to elucidate why colon cancer rates are increasing among young people, physicians should monitor their younger patients for symptoms that might suggest colorectal cancer, Nilofer Azad, a professor of gastrointestinal oncology at Johns Hopkins University, tells Popular Science. In this population, Eschner writes, symptoms like bloody stool, unexpected weight loss, and prolonged cramping can be overlooked or misdiagnosed as conditions like hemorrhoids.</p><p>Moving forward, better understanding and detection of colon cancer are crucial. But Boseman’s story and his legacy—an incredible collection of films created in a mere 7 years—also illustrate something else: a continued need to address systemic inequities in health care and beyond.</p>
  

  
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Chadwick Boseman speaks at the 2017 San Diego Comic Con International for "Black Panther." Boseman died of colon cancer on August 28, 2020 at age 43. Image credit: Gage Skidmore

<p>Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Boseman’s case illustrates the importance of more screening—and addressing systemic inequities in health care.</p>

Chadwick Boseman and the rise of colon cancer in young adults





  
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      <h3>10. FDA approves first major new depression treatment in decades</h3><p>In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug called esketamine, the first major new depression treatment to hit the market in decades. The drug is designed specifically for people suffering from the most extreme forms of treatment-resistant depression and is administered only in certified treatment centers via a nasal spray (rather than an oral pill). Esketamine is specifically for patients who have tried two other antidepressants with no success. </p><p>Janssen Research &amp; Development, the developer of the drug, hopes that by targeting the neurotransmitter glutamate, esketamine can offer rapid antidepressant effects, much like its cousin ketamine does. Experts’ opinions on the new drug, however, are split.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/fda-approves-first-major-new-depression-treatment-in-decades/">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="warp-edge-on3.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/warp-edge-on3.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>The Milky Way&#x27;s population of Cepheid stars suggests that our galaxy is a twisted disk. Image Credit: J. Skowron / OGLE / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>9. A new 3D map of the Milky Way flaunts our galaxy’s warped shape</h3><p>If you ever thought the Milky Way was a flat, featureless pancake, think again. This summer, we learned that the Milky Way is bent out of shape. In fact, it seems to be warped into a wave much like a beach towel being shaken free of sand.</p><p>Finding definitive proof of the Milky Way’s warp was no simple task. While astronomers have gotten pretty good at snapshotting galaxies in more distant regions of the universe, here on Earth we don’t have the best vantage point to get a birds-eye view of the celestial structure that surrounds us: Just imagine trying to map a forest by being dropped down into its center.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/milky-way-3d-map-cepheids/?linkid=71919590">Read the full article.</a></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="192854.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/GrapePlamsa-1-3.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Microwaving grapes is a surefire way to get your hands on some plasma—and an elevated risk of burning down your apartment. Image Credit: Hamza K. Khattak, Trent University; PNAS</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>8. How does microwaving grapes create plumes of plasma?</h3><p>If you’ve been tempted ever to create some plasma—and potentially burn down your home in the process—we learned this year that grapes and a microwave are the ticket. </p><p>Or, alternatively, you can turn to YouTube and (safely) watch researchers as they puzzle out the physics behind DIY plasma. Spoiler: The result is a swarm of subatomic particles that clash and collide, often emitting roiling blobs of light and heat that can resemble molten fire.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-does-microwaving-grapes-create-plumes-plasma/">Read the full article</a>. </p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="33158147074_18622a1e57_o.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/33158147074_18622a1e57_o.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>European robins make harrowing, cross-continental migrations to escape harsh winters. To guide their way, these birds and others may use quantum entanglement to &quot;read&quot; Earth&#x27;s magnetic field. Image Credit: Frank Vassen, flickr</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>7. A bird’s eye view of quantum entanglement</h3><p>Every year, billions of birds make harrowing, cross-continental migrations. But how do they know where to go?</p><p>Scientists have known for a while that Earth’s magnetic field lends a helping hand. But this year, some researchers gleaned insight into how, suggesting that at some point in history, avian evolution tapped into quantum mechanics.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/birds-quantum-entanglement/?linkid=69249680">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="kaiser4HR 2.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/kaiser4HR_2.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>An artistic three-dimensional representation cyclo[18]carbon, a ring of 18 carbon molecules. Image Credit: IBM Research</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>6. A new form of carbon is born—on a bed of salt</h3><p>In August, a new molecule called cyclo[18]carbon officially joined the carbon club. The creation, imaging, and analysis of cyclo[18]carbon helped settle decades of debate on the structure and properties of the molecule, which some researchers doubted could even be stably made in a laboratory setting.</p><p>Historically, researchers’ attempts to generate cyclocarbons in the lab resulted in volatile gas, too ephemeral to rigorously study. But the recent breakthrough shows that cyclocarbons can be generated by pruning carbon and oxygen atoms off a more complex molecule at extremely cold temperatures. Starting with a molecule made up of 24 carbons linked to six oxygens, researchers at IBM Research and Oxford University were able to generate a final structure of 18 carbons—the smallest possible ring of carbons predicted to be stable by theoretical models. </p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cyclo18carbon/">Read the full article</a>.</p>
  

  
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      <p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="ncs015__ct015__2018-05-19__16-03-59(5)__Silver backed chevrotain.JPG" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/Camera-trap_photo_of_silver-backed_chevrotain_.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A wild silver-backed chevrotain appeared! Image Credit: SIE/GWC/Leibniz-IZW/NCNP Copyright holder: Andrew Tilker</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>5. Feast your eyes on the first-ever photos of a silver-backed chevrotain in the wild</h3><p>Once upon a time, there was a fanged, cat-sized deer-like creature with a glossy silver back. Then, like many legendary beasts, it was “lost to science.”</p><p>Until this November, that is. Though Western researchers have known about the skittish silver-backed chevrotain for more than a century, they’ve only managed to collect five specimens, all corpses obtained from hunters in Vietnam. The last of these appeared nearly three decades ago. But this year, with the help of local knowledge and a cluster of well-placed camera traps, Global Wildlife Conservation biologist Andrew Tilker and his team snapped the first-ever photos and videos of the silver-backed chevrotain in the wild.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/silver-backed-chevrotain-rediscovered-vietnam/?linkid=76835332">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="38730047881_fdb7d67e94_o.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/38730047881_fdb7d67e94_o.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>As Alzheimer&#x27;s disease progresses, communication between brain cells breaks down. New research suggests that one possible cause for this deterioration may be a brain infection by <i>Porphyromonas gingivalis, </i>a bacterium known for causing gum disease. Image Credit: National Institute on Aging/NIH, flickr</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>4. Could Alzheimer’s begin with bacteria that cause gum disease?</h3><p>In individuals affected by Alzheimer’s disease, communication between brain cells breaks down over time. Early this year, a study suggested one peculiar potential cause for this deterioration: a brain infection by a bacterium known for causing gum disease.</p><p>In January, researchers reported that the bacterium, <i>Porphyromonas gingivalis</i>, might be capable of traversing the path from mouth to brain, where it can trigger chemical changes that damage cognitive function. These findings suggest that some cases of Alzheimer’s might have an infectious cause—and a new drug that blocks this process is now in clinical trials.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/alzheimers-bacteria-gum-disease/?no-cache=&amp;linkid=62727014">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="iStock-500746894.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/iStock-500746894.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A complex tangle of social factors may encourage girls to prioritize verbal skills from a young age. But being excellent at reading doesn’t make a person bad at math—no matter their gender. Image Credit: Imgorthand, iStock</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>3. Girls’ superb verbal skills may contribute to the gender gap in math</h3><p>Being excellent at reading doesn’t make a person bad at math—no matter their gender.</p><p>According to previous studies, including <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0021276">a meta-analysis</a> that probed gender differences in recent studies of mathematics performance, girls are just as good at math as boys are. But a complex amalgam of social factors may encourage girls to prioritize verbal skills from a young age, a study published in July suggests.</p><p>Drawing on data from more than 300,000 high school students from 64 countries, the study found that because girls’ verbal skills outshine their already high marks in math, many who do every bit as well as their male peers in mathematics still choose more humanities-centric careers.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/gender-gap-math-comparative-advantage/">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><h3>2. Six stupendous reasons to appreciate the heck out of squirrels</h3><p>Beady eyes, bushy tails, can’t lose: We’re talking squirrels. And whether you love these nut-crazed rodents or not, there’s no denying that despite being zany, squirrels are also aerodynamic and brainy.</p><p>On January 21, for Squirrel Appreciation Day, <i>NOVA</i> published a roundup of six squirrel facts—and it quickly became a fan favorite. So if you’re still in the dark about squirrel-induced electrical power outages, squirrels eating spring rolls, the power of squirrel memory, and how squirrels can give investment bankers a run for their money, here’s your ticket out.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/six-snippets-squirrel-science/">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="iStock-878222138.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/iStock-878222138.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Now that&#x27;s a purrfect pair. Image Credit: AkilinaWinner, iStock</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>1. Study finds kittens bond with their human caregivers like babies do</h3><p>Sorry, dogs: You may not be humans’ only faithful companions. Though cats have their critics, it turns out that they can be extremely social with other felines and humans alike.</p><p>In September, researchers revealed that much like human infants, cats are “attached” to their caretakers (and like babies, felines have different ways of expressing their attachment). When analyzing humans, dogs, and cats, the research team found that roughly 60 percent of infants or pets are “secure,” meaning they appear to use their caregivers as a safe base from which to explore their surroundings. Of the felines that seemed, well, insecure, fewer acted aloof or avoidant than one might expect.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cats-secure-attachment/">Read the full article</a>.</p>
  

  
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Depending on how you feel about squirrels, you might delight or despair to hear that we've got a lot in common with these woodland wunderkinds. Image Credit: Dgwildlife, iStock

<p>We’ve counted down our ten most-read articles of 2019 and found that health and medicine, physics—and of course animals—were fan-favorite topics this year.</p>

The 10 most popular NOVA stories of 2019





  
      <p>In March 2020, at an assembly held at the Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia, Alex Mather’s classmates received big news from NASA.</p><p>Mather had submitted a possible name for the Administration’s newest Mars rover, and this submission—among 28,000 received by NASA from young space enthusiasts—was  “Perseverance.” The night before his school assembly, he learned his submission had been chosen.</p><p>It’s a NASA tradition to have kids choose the names of Mars rovers, Washington Post’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/the-next-mars-rover-has-a-new-name-it-was-named-by-a-kid/2020/03/06/e2f75776-5fc0-11ea-b29b-9db42f7803a7_story.html">KidsPost reported in March</a>. Kids have come up with the past four: Curiosity, which landed on the red planet in 2012; Spirit, which landed in 2004; Opportunity, which landed three weeks after Spirit; and Sojourner, which landed on the Fourth of July in 1997.</p>
  

  
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      <p>Now, at approximately 3:55 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Feb. 18, Perseverance will attempt the most challenging—and precise—Mars landing in NASA history. If all goes smoothly, the rover will study Mars’ habitability in an attempt to determine if life ever took root on Mars. Perseverance, nicknamed “Percy” (many a scientist and science journalist has mentioned <a href="https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/1235640799246708736">having trouble spelling “Perseverance”</a>) will also look for signs of past life and conduct experiments that investigate the possibility of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/want-to-live-in-a-treehouse-on-mars/">human exploration</a>.</p><p>“Perseverance is NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover mission yet,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-next-mars-rover-is-ready-for-the-most-precise-landing-yet">said in a Feb. 16 press release</a>. “...the landing team will have its hands full getting us to Jezero Crater – the most challenging Martian terrain ever targeted for a landing.”</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/2020-latest-mars-rover-will-land-jezero-crater/">Jezero Crater</a> is a 28-mile-wide hollow located on the western margin of the Isidis Planitia region in Mars’ northern hemisphere. About three billion years ago, Jezero hosted a nearly 820-foot-deep lake, fed by a nearby ancient river delta rich in mineral sediments. It’s the kind of place scientists think might have supported life. “I think that has to be the hands-down most exciting thing that this site has to offer,” Tim Goudge, a planetary scientist and postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas at Austin, told NOVA in 2018.</p><p>Mars orbiters have already spent years collecting information and images from 200 miles above Jezero. Pinpointing signs of ancient life will require a closer look, however. That’s where Perseverance, equipped with instruments that can <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/sherloc/">detect organic matter</a> and <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/pixl/">measure the composition</a> of rocks and soil, comes in. </p><p>But there’s a hitch: The rover and its companion, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/mars-2020-nasa-perseverance-rover-launch/">first-ever space helicopter</a>, named Ingenuity, were built by humans on Earth, and humans are notoriously contaminated. “Humans are the dirtiest thing in that clean room” where spacecraft assembly happens, Moogega Cooper, astronomer and lead of planetary protection for the Mars 2020 Mission, told NOVA producer Terri Randall. “We have all kinds of microorganisms in our body and on our skin. And so we have to make sure that, from head to toe, and including our eyes” the spacecraft is protected from human contamination, which could falsely signify life on Mars. </p>
  

  
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      <p>But Cooper had a greater concern, brought on by the challenges of building a rover and conducting a NASA mission during a pandemic. “What was most worrying,” she says, “was that off the clock, you might catch COVID. There is now a vector to wipe out an entire team that could completely derail the mission and throw us off of our scheduled goal.”</p><p>Fortunately, Perseverance successfully launched on Jul. 30, 2020 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Since then, it has flown more than 290 million miles, <a href="https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/sc_perseverance">zooming through space</a> at 49,290 mph relative to the sun.</p><p>Percy’s 17-minute-long entry, descent, and landing will be broadcast on <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive">NASA television</a>, beginning with the separation of Perseverance and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter from the spacecraft’s entry capsule. Next, while traveling at roughly 12,100 mph, the spacecraft will hit the top of the Martian atmosphere; friction from the atmosphere will heat the bottom of the spacecraft to temperatures as high as 2,370 F. Moments later, it will deploy its parachute at “supersonic speed,” NASA writes in its Feb. 16 press release. </p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Perseverance Aeroshell" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/Perseverance_Aeroshell.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>An aeroshell containing NASA’s Perseverance rover guides itself toward the Martian surface as it descends through the atmosphere in this illustration. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>The Perseverance rover will use radar to detect how far it is from the surface of the red planet and a safe landing site. Once the entry capsule fully separates from the rover and its “jetpack,” which is equipped with retrorockets (small auxiliary rockets fired in the direction of travel to slow a craft down), Perseverance will touch down on Mars at 3:55 p.m. EDT.</p><p>First, it’ll pop up its head, take pictures, and transmit them back to Earth. Engineers will also check on the rover’s health during its first few days on its new home planet, NASA writes in its press release. Then, the more difficult task of identifying signs of life and testing technology designed to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere (in hopes that the gas could be used for fuel—or for humans to breathe—on future missions) will begin.</p><p>If life has existed on Mars before, former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman tells NOVA, it may be a sign that extraterrestrial life is more plentiful throughout our universe than previously thought. But there’s also a chance that scientists don’t find any signatures of life on the red planet. “And that&#x27;ll just tell us that our one planet is so unique and miraculous,” geologist Tanja Bosak says. </p><p>“Perseverance is playing a very critical role in our understanding of our place in the universe,” Mars rover engineer Elio Morillo tells NOVA. “And I think that&#x27;s very noble.” </p><p></p><p><i>Tune in or stream &quot;</i><a href="/pages/videopages/looking-for-life-on-mars/"><i>Looking for Life on Mars</i></a><i>&quot; on Wednesday, Feb. 24 at 9/8c on PBS.</i></p>
  

  
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An illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land safely on Feb. 18, 2021. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

<p>Tuning in to the touchdown? Here’s what to expect.</p>

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover lands today





  
      <p>Sporting a bulbous body, deflated head, and eight tiny caterpillar legs, this creature looks like a toddler’s drawing of a Macy’s Day Parade balloon. But the humble, microscopic tardigrade just might hold the secret to saving countless human lives.</p><p>Also known as a “moss piglet” or “water bear” because of its striking appearance, the tardigrade is no stranger to experimentation. In the name of science, researchers have sent water bears to space, zapped them with X-rays, thrown them into a deep freeze, and heated them to extreme temperatures. And to everyone’s amazement, their <a href="https://www.livescience.com/62720-tardigrade-lifespan.html">tardigrade subjects almost always survived</a>, by resorting to their signature move: hibernation.</p>
  

  
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      <p>Experts suggest that these nearly indestructible animals, which are just as at home on a backyard tree as in a sewage treatment plant in Antarctica, might live to see the eventual death of the Sun.</p><p>Most organisms that thrive in extreme conditions do so by producing a special sugar called trehalose, which protects them from drying out. Strangely, most tardigrade species lack this sugar. But they do possess cytosolic-abundant heat soluble (CAHS) proteins, which have been found only in water bears and separate them from Planet Earth’s other extremophiles (organisms capable of surviving in extreme environments). University of North Carolina biologist <a href="https://endeavors.unc.edu/the-survivors/">Dr. Thomas Boothby</a> and his colleagues discovered that when tardigrades are deprived of water, their production of CAHS proteins is kicked into overdrive.</p><p>In extreme conditions, <a href="https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/record/uuid:77b143b8-ec74-49f6-8a3d-6cffe0f81725">CAHS proteins</a> create a 3D gel-like network, which protects tardigrades’ other proteins from unfolding and combining with each other—a process that can lead to cell death. Boothby wondered if CAHS proteins could be recruited to protect vulnerable proteins that humans rely on, such as vaccines and blood in blood banks, both of which are protein-based and need to keep cool to stay viable. Medical experts call the temperature-controlled supply chain of vaccines and other protein-based pharmaceuticals the “cold chain.”</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Water Bear 2.mov.01_04_58_05.Still001.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/Water_Bear_2.mov.01_04_58_05.Still001.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>A water bear, as seen through a microscope, munches on waste in a sewage treatment plant at McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. Image credit: Arlo Perez, WGBH</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>New methods that allow for the safe and stable preservation of cells and bioreagents (biological substances like enzymes) are needed, “particularly when delivering drugs and medicine to inaccessible areas, or to areas that lack an infrastructure to maintain the cold chain,” says <a href="https://spu.edu/academics/college-of-arts-sciences/biology/faculty-staff/tenlen-jenny">Dr. Jenny Tenlen</a>, a biologist at Seattle Pacific University who studies tardigrade development. “Because of tardigrades&#x27; extreme stress tolerance, they have the potential to provide biological solutions to this problem.” About 90 percent of the cost of vaccination programs in developing countries, Boothby adds, comes from the need to keep vaccines cold.</p><p>If tardigrade proteins could protect protein-based pharma, Boothby says, we wouldn’t have to rely on the cold chain to keep vaccines stable. “It might not seem like a big deal to us in a developed world,” he says. “But in other parts of the world, keeping things cold can be a logistical and economic burden.”</p>
  

  
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      <p>Now, Boothby and his team are partnering with Cellphire, a biotech company focused on cell stabilization technology, to apply tardigrade proteins to pharmaceuticals. If successful, this research could make it easier to maintain vaccine supplies in developing countries and military zones, both of which can lack reliable access to refrigeration.</p><p>To collect large amounts of CAHS proteins, the team inserts copies of tardigrade genes responsible for making CAHS proteins into bacteria, which are notoriously prolific. “We can grow billions or trillions of bacteria a day and engineer them to make the protein,” Boothby says.</p><p>Converting bacteria into human protein factories is nothing new. The pharmaceutical industry uses them to create everything from insulin to cancer-fighting interferon. Safely extracting a desired protein from its engineered bacterial creators is always vital, Boothby explains, as bacteria can produce a toxic substance called an endotoxin. (To ensure its endotoxin cleanup is thorough, Boothby’s team is conducting immune studies in which CAHS proteins derived from the bacteria are inserted into mice.)</p><p>Already, Boothby and his team have compared tardigrade proteins’ ability to preserve vaccines to that of FDA-approved protectants. CAHS proteins, they found, protect the proteins within pharmaceuticals about 10 times more efficiently than current methods.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="150323-F-IT851-011.JPG" class="richtext-image full-width" height="521" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/150323-F-IT851-011.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Vaccines and other protein-based pharmaceuticals currently rely on a temperature-controlled supply chain. In developing countries, it can be logistically challenging and immensely expensive to keep vaccines cold, and therefore viable. Image Credit: U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Areca T. Wilson</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>The team’s ultimate goal, Boothby says, is to use CAHS proteins to protect human blood in blood banks. It&#x27;s a challenge, because our blood is much more complex than the protein-based pharmaceuticals the team is currently working with. Blood is made up of many types of cells, each of which contain different types and ratios of proteins. So, the team will first attempt to use CAHS proteins to preserve each individual kind of cell found in our blood. If they can master this, the researchers hope, they can use CAHS proteins to preserve blood in its complete state.</p><p>“The FDA keeps a tap on refrigerated blood for 60 days,” Boothby explains. “After that, you have to throw it out. You can imagine if there are soldiers on patrol, they can’t carry a mini fridge on their back. But, if we can get whole blood at a dry state at ambient or even hot temperatures and soldiers can carry it and someone needs a transfusion, they can just add water and use it.”</p><p>Tenlen, who is not involved in the new research, believes Boothby’s preliminary work “provides encouraging evidence” that CAHS proteins can be used to stabilize biological substances under challenging conditions. But, she cautions, Boothby and his team will have to be careful that CAHS proteins don&#x27;t introduce side effects when used to preserve vaccines and human blood.</p><p>If the team does succeed in stabilizing vaccines and human cells, the societal impact—all originating from the blimp-like tardigrade—could be enormous.</p><p>“You see these animals do these weird things and produce these materials that no other organism has,” Boothby says. “As I was looking into how tardigrades survive desiccation I started to think about how useful these proteins could be for people… And that’s what we should do, as good citizens of the world: help people.”</p>
  

  
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Also known as "water bears" or "moss piglets," tardigrades are microscopic animals with extreme survival abilities. Image credit: iStock

<p>Special proteins that help tardigrades survive extreme conditions might be the key to extending the shelf life of life-saving pharmaceuticals.</p>

After Conquering Space, Water Bears Could Save the Global Vaccine and Blood Supply





  
      <h3>1. <i>New Horizons</i> nails the most distant flyby in history</h3><p>Just 33 minutes after ringing in the New Year, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory cheered and threw confetti a second time. The<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/new-horizons-ultima-thule-preview/"> <i>New Horizons</i></a> spacecraft had just conducted a flyby of a Kuiper Belt object 4 billion miles from Earth. And as the sun rose on January 1, <i>New Horizons</i> beamed back its first close-up images of the 19-mile-long peanut-shaped space rock, officially named 2014 MU69.</p>
  

  
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      <p>Images eventually revealed 2014 MU69 (initially nicknamed “Ultima Thule”), to be a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/so-long-snowman-ultima-thule-flatter-we-thought/">surprisingly flat</a> “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/ultima-thule-is-a-kiss-between-two-rocky-lobes/">contact binary</a>,” a body composed of two once-separated rocks that slowly gravitated toward each other until they lightly touched and fused. Scientists believe the flyby data could offer insight into how planets formed in our solar system billions of years ago.</p><p>In November, NASA changed the rock’s nickname from Ultima Thule, a term <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223176-distant-space-rock-known-as-ultima-thule-renamed-to-avoid-nazi-links/">with links to</a> the Nazi party, to “Arrokoth,” which means “sky” in the Powhatan/Algonquian language.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Ultima Thule Comes Into Focus as New Images Reveal Secrets Hero" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/ultima-thule-comes-into-focus-as-new-images-re.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>2014 MU69 is revealed to be a two-tiered snowman. According to the New Horizons team, this image supports the idea that planets in our system formed as bits of raw planetary matter coalesced over time. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>2.    A second HIV patient enters long-term remission</h3><p>Twelve years after a first patient was declared to be rid of HIV, another person achieved a similar milestone this year. In March, with the help of a stem cell transplant from a virus-resistant donor, the anonymous individual entered long-term<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/second-patient-has-entered-long-term-remission-hiv/"> remission from HIV</a>.</p><p>In both cases, remission followed a transplant of bone marrow from a person with a mutation in the gene that encodes the protein CCR5, which many HIV strains use to infiltrate cells. Neither treatment was originally intended to eliminate the infection itself, but to treat blood cancers that had spread in both individuals.</p><p>While the intervention is likely to be effective in only a small fraction of HIV-positive individuals, the 2019 case shows that its efficacy was more than a one-time event.</p><p></p><h3>3. Scientists reveal the first-ever black hole image</h3><p>In April, we were able to feast our eyes on the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/first-black-hole-image/">first-ever image</a> of a black hole. The black hole, whose image was generated from data captured by a network of eight radio observatories that make up the Event Horizon Telescope, dwells in the center of a galaxy some 55 million light-years away from Earth.</p><p>As popular as the black hole image was, another aspect of the story that quickly unfolded online: the contribution of 29-year-old MIT scientist Katie Bouman, who crafted an algorithm to help translate the telescope data into the black hole image. Bouman, captured in a photo with a laptop, beaming behind her folded hands,<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/katie-bouman-hardly-knew-what-a-black-hole-was-her-algorithm-helped-us-see-one"> quickly became a symbol</a> for women’s accomplishment in astronomy and computer science. But, Marina Koren writes for<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/katie-bouman-black-hole/587137/"> <i>The Atlantic</i></a>, “This one image tapped into a multitude of questions about the role of women in science, the myth of the lone genius, and the pressure scientists have to promote themselves and their work on social media.”</p><p>“No one algorithm or person made this image,” Bouman later wrote, referring to the black hole picture, in a Facebook post. “It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.” </p><p></p><h3>4. First CRISPR clinical trials in the U.S. take place</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="CRISPR-large.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/CRISPR-large.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>CRISPR-Cas9 is a tool that lets scientists cut and insert small pieces of DNA at precise areas along a DNA strand. | Image Credit: Ernesto del Aguila III, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>In April, researchers began the first CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing clinical trials in people in the United States. In the trials, scientists used<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/what-is-crispr-gene-editing/"> CRISPR</a>, a powerful gene-editing technique derived from an ancient bacterial immune system, to combat cancer and blood disorders. That month, two cancer patients—one with myeloma and one with sarcoma—were <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/16/712402435/first-u-s-patients-treated-with-crispr-as-gene-editing-human-trials-get-underway">treated using CRISPR</a>.</p><p>In the cancer and blood disorder trials, researchers remove some cells from a patient’s body, edit the cells’ DNA using CRISPR, and inject the cells back in, “now hopefully armed to fight disease,” Tina Hesman Saey writes for<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/crispr-gene-editor-first-human-clinical-trials"> <i>Science News</i></a>. But in another trial, conducted by Editas Medicine in Cambridge, Mass., researchers are using CRISPR to edit DNA directly in the human body by “snipping a small piece of DNA out of cells in the eyes of people with an inherited form of blindness,” Saey writes.</p><p>The trials come on the heels of Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s gene-editing on twin girls born in November 2018, which was widely criticized as premature and<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/crispr-gene-editing-live-births/"> highly unethical</a>. . </p><p></p><h3>5. New fossils capture the day the dinosaurs died—and the million years after</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Mammal Fossils Fill in Missing Piece of the Timeline of Life Hero" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/mammal-fossils-fill-in-missing-piece-of-the-ti.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Mammal fossils like this one, discovered by a team of paleontologists and paleobotanists led by Tyler Lyson in Corral Bluffs, Colorado, fill in a missing piece of the timeline of life. Image Credit: HHMI Tangled Bank Studios </p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>This year, scientists gleaned new insight into the day the dinosaur-killing asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, and the first million years after the impact.</p><p>In April, paleontologist and graduate student Robert DePalma claimed to unveil an<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/new-fossils-mass-extinction-wiped-out-dinosaurs/"> unprecedented time capsule</a> of the asteroid-induced catastrophe. He reported finding scorched tree trunks and hundreds of well-preserved fossil fish beneath sediment at a site in North Dakota, forming a snapshot of the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/fossil-discovery-could-offer-glimpse-into-day-the-dinos-died/">first minutes and hours</a> after impact. (Some experts remain cautious about the finding, due in part to the fact that DePalma’s discovery was first announced in a <i>New Yorker</i> article before publication of the peer-reviewed paper.)</p><p>Then, in October,<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/fossils-million-years-after-dinosaurs-died/"> new fossils</a> that capture the million-year timeline of life after the dinosaurs died were revealed. Discovered in Colorado’s Corral Bluffs by paleontologist Tyler Lyson and his team, the fossils showcase the extraordinary resilience of life in the wake of disaster and help reveal the evolutionary journey of<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/rise-of-the-mammals/"> the mammals</a> that survived the asteroid.</p>
  

  
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      <h3>6. Racism persists in medicine and science</h3><p>With the use of artificial intelligence on the rise, one serious flaw continued to make headlines in 2019: <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzwgx/racial-bias-in-ai-isnt-getting-better-and-neither-are-researchers-excuses">racial bias</a>. In October, researchers announced that a particular algorithm, which predicts who might benefit from follow-up care and affects 100 million Americans, underestimates black patients’ need for additional treatment. The algorithm <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/racial-bias-medical-algorithm-black-patients/">underestimates the health needs</a> of black patients even when they’re sicker than their white counterparts.</p><p>Additionally, the U.S. remains one of the most dangerous developed nations in which to be pregnant and give birth, particularly for minorities. “Pregnancy-related deaths are rising in the United States and the main risk factor is being black,” Mike Stobbe and Marilynn Marchione write for <a href="https://apnews.com/4907da5c58c84a708a548c4ea18fc5c7"><i>AP News</i></a>. A CDC report concludes “black women, along with Native Americans and Alaska natives, are three times more likely to die before, during or after having a baby, and more than half of these deaths are preventable,” Stobbe and Marchione write.</p><p>Also this year, researchers further investigated why black scientists are less likely to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) than their white counterparts. A study published in October illustrated that topic choice contributes to the lower rates of NIH awards going to black scientists. “Specifically,” Jeffrey Mervis writes for <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/study-identifies-key-reason-black-scientists-are-less-likely-receive-nih-funding"><i>Science Magazine</i></a>, “black applicants are more likely to propose approaches, such as community interventions, and topics, such as health disparities, adolescent health, and fertility, that receive less competitive scores from reviewers.” </p><p></p><h3>7. A new link is drawn between humans and Denisovans</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Denisova_Phalanx_distalis.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/Denisova_Phalanx_distalis_9gGhHID.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A replica of a fragment of a Denisovan finger found in Denisova Cave, Siberia, in 2008. Image Credit: Thilo Parg, Wikimedia Commons</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            <p>New findings in 2019 added to anthropologists’ understanding of Denisovans, a species of early human that likely shared the planet with <i>Homo sapiens</i> as recently as 50,000 years ago.</p><p>This fall, scientists learned that although Denisovans’ DNA ties them more closely to Neanderthals, their fingers may have looked<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/denisovan-finger/"> more like ours</a>, suggesting Neanderthals’ broader digits evolved after their lineage split off from the Denisovans around 410,000 years ago. “A few more fossils,” Bruce Bower writes for<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mysterious-denisovan-hominid-fossils-dna-top-science-stories-2019-yir"> <i>Science News</i></a>, “plus genetic analyses indicated Denisovans were close relatives and occasional mating partners of Neanderthals and <i>Homo sapiens</i> tens of thousands of years ago. But there was too little evidence to say what Denisovans looked like or how they behaved.”</p><p></p><h3>8. Google claims quantum supremacy</h3><p>Physicists reached a milestone in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/six-ways-quantum-computers-could-change-the-world/">quantum computing</a> this year, a method of computing that uses quantum physics to solve complex problems quickly. </p><p>In October, Google said it had achieved “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/google-quantum-supremacy/">quantum supremacy</a>.” Its AI Quantum Team presented evidence that it had built a quantum computer that needs only 200 seconds to solve a problem that would have taken IBM’s Summit, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, 10,000 years to crack. Though IBM disputed the claim, others in the computing community are tentatively optimistic about the breakthrough’s promise. If validated, it may bring us closer to a future of ultra-efficient computing.</p><p></p><h3>9. Saturn now has the most moons in the solar system</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="saturns-rings" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/saturns-rings.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  Saturn, as viewed from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its 2009 equinox.
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            <p>Just when you thought Saturn couldn’t get <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/saturn-facts-ringed-gas-giant-planet/">any more awesome</a>, it secured yet another claim to fame: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/saturn-20-new-moons/">the most known moons</a> of any planet in our solar system (sorry, Jupiter). </p><p>On October 7, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced that researchers discovered an additional 20 moons orbiting Saturn, bringing its grand total to a whopping 82. Jupiter, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/jupiter-facts-biggest-planet-solar-system/">largest and oldest planet</a> in our solar system, has 79.</p><p>The latest discoveries were made possible by Hawaii’s Subaru telescope. A team led by Carnegie Science’s Scott S. Sheppard <a href="https://sites.google.com/carnegiescience.edu/sheppard/home/newjupitermoons2018?authuser=0">first eyed them</a> in the spring of 2017, but because faraway moons are dim and tough to spot, researchers used Subaru to scan the skies periodically throughout the following years to confirm their finding. Then, they used a computer algorithm to link the data through time and confirm that the moons were indeed reliably orbiting Saturn.</p><p></p><h3>10. Climate change intensifies, and youth fight back </h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="glacier_2048x1152" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/glacier_2048x1152.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  Retreating glaciers are slowly raising Earth's sea levels.
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            <p>Less than a week after the U.N. climate talks came to a close in Madrid this month, Australia recorded its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/19/419c-australia-records-hottest-ever-day-one-day-after-previous-record?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=facebook">hottest day ever</a>, one day after its previous record. Just a few months ago, wildfires raged across not only the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/12/how-will-california-prevent-more-mega-wildfire-disasters/">American West</a> and Australian Outback but also <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/12/how-to-live-with-mega-fires-portugal-forests-may-hold-secret/">Europe</a> and the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/18/amazon-rainforest-still-burning-more-fires-future/4011238002/">Amazon</a>, an occurrence that many climatologists believe may have been exacerbated by <a href="https://grist.org/justice/wildfires-are-getting-worse-and-so-is-the-deadly-smoke-they-bring-with-them/">climate change</a>-induced drought and high temperatures. And in May, a United Nations report claimed that one million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction—more than in any other period in human history—with alarming implications for human survival. The warming climate, which heightens the effects of overfishing, pesticide use, pollution, and urban expansion is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/05/06/one-million-species-face-extinction-un-panel-says-humans-will-suffer-result/">a major driver</a>, the report concludes. </p><p>Three weeks ago, a “bleak” climate report, also from the U.N., predicted that global carbon emissions will climb “despite promises from almost 200 nations to address climate change, propelling temperatures upward and threatening to shatter the threshold of 2°C that scientists say would invite dramatic changes to ecology and the economy,” Nathaniel Gronewald writes for <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/new-un-climate-report-offers-bleak-emissions-forecast"><i>Science Magazine</i></a>. And many declared this month’s COP25 climate talks to be <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/how-to-fix-the-biggest-issue-plaguing-un-climate-talks-1840480211">a massive failure</a>.</p><p>But climate activists, particularly teens, have seized the spotlight this year. Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, was just named <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/business/media/time-person-of-the-year-greta-thunberg.html"><i>TIME’s</i> Person of the Year</a>. And at COP25, official youth constituency representatives expressed their disappointment to leaders and officials, Kartik Chandramouli writes for <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2019/12/youth-rising-at-cop25-they-came-they-protested-they-negotiated/"><i>Mongabay</i></a>. “Do you want to be remembered as the ones who had the chance to act but decided not to as betrayers of our generation, of indigenous people and communities desperately fighting on the ground?” Youth representatives said. “We are rising, we are fighting and we will win.”</p>
  

  
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The black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87), a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo constellation. The object is about 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. Image Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration

<p>Black holes, gene editing, and quantum computing wowed us—while new climate findings and racial bias in medicine brought renewed urgency.</p>

Sukee Bennett

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