Mystery over Universe's Expansion Deepens with Fresh Data

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July 21, 2020

Dear Reader, Here's a glimpse of today's top stories: A new map of the early universe has reinforced a long-running conundrum in astronomy over how fast the cosmos is expanding. By using a blood test, researchers were able to diagnose cancer long before symptoms appeared in nearly all the people it tested who went on to develop cancer. Meteorologists are making increasingly accurate weather forecasts up to four weeks out, in part because of more powerful supercomputers.

Sunya Bhutta, Senior Editor, Audience Engagement @sunyaaa

Space Mystery over Universe's Expansion Deepens with Fresh Data A long-awaited map of the big bang's afterglow fails to settle a debate over how fast the universe is expanding By Davide Castelvecchi,Nature magazine

Medical & Biotech Experimental Blood Test Detects Cancer up to Four Years before Symptoms Appear The assay looks for stomach, esophageal, colorectal, lung and liver malignancies By Rachel Nuwer

Climate How a Biden Administration Could Reverse Trump's Climate Legacy The Clean Air Act would be a key avenue for pursuing more stringent emissions reductions By Jean Chemnick,E&E News

Public Health Contact Tracing, a Key Way to Slow COVID-19, Is Badly Underused by the U.S. Despite tracing's success in other countries, the U.S. government has failed to adequately fund or apply the tool By Christie Aschwanden

Weather Accurate Weather Forecasts 28 Days Out Meteorologists are using supercomputers and the latest data about climate phenomena to predict temperature and precipitation four weeks in the future By Kathy Pegion

Public Health Genes May Influence COVID-19 Risk, New Studies Hint DNA changes tied to immune reactions, a viral doorway and blood type could affect disease severity By Emily Willingham

Behavior & Society The Psychological Toll of Rude E-mails Research reveals the subtle ways that impolite electronic communication at work brings you down By Zhenyu Yuan,YoungAh Park

Public Health Trump Administration's Sudden Shift on COVID-19 Data Leaves States in the Lurch The White House told hospitals to report data through a private company system instead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention By Alex Smith,Kaiser Health News

Conservation Hawaii's Invasive Predator Catastrophe Feral cats and pigs and black rats are putting many species on the fast track toward extinction By John R. Platt

Policy & Ethics Who Wants to Be a Cyborg? Philosopher Susan Schneider weighs the pros and cons of radical technological enhancement By John Horgan

Policy & Ethics And the Winner of the First Ever Nobel Prize Is ... Originally published in February 1900

FROM THE STORE The Rise of Humans Of all the species on Earth, why did ours rise to dominance? Previously, scientists thought many uniquely human traits resulted from sudden or brilliant adaptations, but new discoveries point to gradual processes that involve biological and social factors. In this eBook, we examine recent research on the origins of human cognitive abilities, ingenuity, language and culture as well as the advances opening doors to new hypotheses.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE How a Dispute over a Single Number Became a Cosmological Crisis Two divergent measurements of how fast the universe is expanding cannot both be right. Something must give—but what? By Richard Panek | March 2020

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