BEAR IN MIND
“A Grizzly Query,” by Benjamin Cassidy, studies on plans to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades and on issues individuals have raised about their communities’ security. The conditions offered within the article are widespread to many reintroduction actions. One a part of that is worry of change. One other is perhaps shortsighted self-concern. The response is comprehensible however questionable.
I’ve watched many individuals going into the Yellowstone backcountry, and the widespread theme has been trepidation. The surroundings creates an uncomfortable consciousness that one, as an individual, shouldn’t be prime canine. To have shut encounters with formidable creatures is a severe schooling in a single’s place within the wilderness—a lesson that most individuals can not abide. This was an element within the close to extinction of grizzlies within the decrease 48 states and is a consider human resistance to their presence.
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DIRK WINDOLF VIA E-MAIL
RNA WORLD
“The New Code of Life,” by Philip Ball, describes a few of the sorts and features of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) present in human cells and notes that “ncRNAS appear to level to a fuzzier, extra collective, logic to life.” One doable connection was not talked about, nevertheless: the “RNA world” speculation.
Underneath this idea, an early proto-life-form used RNA each for its enzymatic actions and as its genetic materials. Even after evolution changed this various use of RNAs with the specialist molecules of DNA and proteins, RNAs may nonetheless retain many features as a remnant of their earlier roles. So the various ncRNAs that perform various features might mirror some facet of an earlier RNA world.
SCOTT T. MEISSNER VIA E-MAIL
HISTORICAL ELEMENTS
“Superheavies,” Stephanie Pappas’s article about superheavy components, jogged my memory of a sequence of articles on “The Artificial Parts,” by Glenn T. Seaborg and his associates, that have been printed in Scientific American in April 1950, December 1956, April 1963 and April 1969. Within the first article, Seaborg and his co-author began with the synthesis of 4 components that had been “lacking” from the periodic desk after which continued with accounts of how 5 components past uranium have been produced within the laboratory. The sequence up to date each few years because the variety of synthesized components grew. Seaborg paid specific consideration to the issue in acquiring massive sufficient samples to evaluate their chemical properties. He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on artificial components, and factor 106 was named seaborgium in his honor throughout his lifetime.
“The surroundings creates an uncomfortable consciousness that one, as an individual, shouldn’t be prime canine.”
—Dirk Windolf Through E-Mail
I wasn’t round when the unique articles have been printed within the Fifties, however my highschool physics trainer had a file of outdated SciAm materials that he shared with me. It included articles by Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and different notables. My trainer mentioned I might take no matter I wished, so I took the entire file and nonetheless have it in my library.
BRUCE A. BOYD ST. LOUIS, MO.
COOL ALLUSION
“Alien Ice,” by Elise Cutts [Advances; April], studies on experiments carried out by bodily chemist Christina Tonauer and her colleagues that concerned ice XIV, a sort of “ordered ice” with ordered hydrogen atoms that may be created inside days. I’m curious: Did the researchers skip ice IX? I assume avoiding the title could be like skipping ground 13 in a resort, given the damaging energy of the fictional substance “ice-nine” in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 Cat’s Cradle. I’ve no want for all of the liquid in my physique to change into stable, as occurred to characters who obtained ice-nine of their mouth within the novel, so I hope these scientists are up on their literature.
COLIN MILDE MAHWAH, N.J.
TONAUER REPLIES: There’s a actual ordered ice known as ice IX that we didn’t embody in our research. We didn’t skip it for the worry of the results of the fictional ice-nine envisioned by Vonnegut. The truth is, there was a scientific purpose. The formation strategy of most ordered ices has a big kinetic barrier: although the ordered ice construction ought to be favored, in response to thermodynamics, the method may be very gradual in contrast with laboratory timescales. Our research reported new synthesis methods for overcoming that barrier and ordering ices sooner. Actual ice IX, alternatively, is an outlier of that rule as a result of it begins ordering on the comparatively excessive temperature of 208 kelvins. In Olympic phrases, it wins a gold medal within the “ordering race” of ice polymorphs, so we didn’t contemplate it in our research.
HELPING TEENS COPE
“Treating the Anxious Teen,” by BJ Casey and Heidi Meyer, shines a light-weight on advances within the fundamental scientific science work on addressing worry conditioning. Though this work is vital, as respectively present and retired professors of psychology, we want to word that such optimism shouldn’t be uniform within the area. In a 2023 overview within the journal Habits Analysis and Remedy, psychologist Ronald M. Rapee and his colleagues state that with regards to the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral remedy in kids and adolescents, “there stays substantial room for enchancment.”
One of many points is that kids’s wants are totally different from these of adults. When kids and adolescents are being handled, their developmental standing concerning emotional self-regulation and cognition should be taken under consideration. Therapeutic practices developed with adults can have contradictory results with kids. For instance, adults discover that worry interferes with their capability to comply with by means of with practical routines. Take away the worry, and adults can resume performance. Kids and teenagers are nonetheless studying what practical routines are, in order that they want alternatives to observe wholesome, practical conduct patterns tailor-made to the sorts of experiences they’ve outdoors of the remedy workplace. Novel interventions which can be fairly totally different from commonplace cognitive-behavioral remedy have proven promise.
ERICA KLEINKNECHT O’SHEA FOREST GROVE, ORE.
RONALD KLEINKNECHT BELLINGHAM, WASH.
ERRATA
“Homeschooling Wants Extra Uniform Oversight,” by the Editors [Science Agenda], incorrectly described the 11-year-old boy who was discovered lifeless in 2020 as situated in Michigan. His household had moved from that state to California a number of months prior.
“The Finish of the Lab Rat?,” by Rachel Nuwer [September], ought to have mentioned that outdoors researchers have used Emulate’s chips to create greater than 30 extra fashions with cells from their labs, not about 70 such fashions.
In “What If We By no means Discover Darkish Matter?,” by Tracy R. Slatyer and Tim M. P. Tait [September], the opening illustration ought to have been credited to Olena Shmahalo.
“Nobel Connections,” by Sarah Lewin Frasier and Jen Christiansen [Graphic Science; October], ought to have referred to Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi.
