For many of us, birds have always been an important source of happiness Scientific american And, I hope, for many of you. We have been working from home during the pandemic and paid more attention to the wildlife in our community, and now we walk in the morning and evening instead of commuting to and from get off work during the best bird watching time of the day. Seth Fletcher, who is in charge of our functional department, was recently amused by Carolina Wren screaming like a dinosaur ancestor. The artistic director Mike Mrak saw wild turkeys swaggering in his yard. Christine Kaelin, who is in charge of customer service, noticed that the variety of songs released by Northern Cardinals was ridiculous. I sucked a feeder on the window of my office, and often let a white-breasted nuthatch fly in during a video conference, make an unpleasant phone call, and then leave with peanuts.
Kate Wong, an editor who specializes in evolution, was bitten by bird insects last year and has been sharing gorgeous photos of ospreys, Baltimore oriole, many warblers, and even her stray rose spoonbill bagging in Connecticut. This spring, she met some extreme birdwatchers and participated in the wildest side of bird watching activities-a big day, on this day, the team competed on a fixed territory to identify as much as possible for 24 hours. Many birds. Her story intertwined ornithological observations with passionate characters and many low-stakes but high-tension dramas.
When the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012, physicists finally found all the particles predicted by the Standard Model of Physics. Boom, done. But some experiments have shown that particles called muons seem to oscillate in strange ways, suggesting that they may interact with particles other than those we know. In our cover story this month, Marcela Carena, a particle physicist at Fermi Lab in Batavia, Illinois, said that this strange discovery may mean the existence of a fifth natural force.
Knowledge is based on knowledge in various fields, but in different ways. Mathematician Emily Riehl explained that due to category theory, great progress has been made in mathematics recently, which shows how to treat different mathematical concepts as the same in a basic way. It allows current mathematicians to manipulate ideas that brought Isaac Newton and Carl Friedrich Gauss back to their time.
Sometimes progress comes in surprising ways. Author Anil Ananthaswamy reports that artificial intelligence systems have proposed quantum physics experiments that humans have never thought of.
This is another devastating year for wildfires. Although we hear more about wildfires that damage property or cause casualties, the fires raging in the Arctic may have the greatest impact on climate change. Zombie fires have been smoldering throughout the winter, the permafrost is melting, the insulation of the duff is drying, and it is easy to be ignited by lightning. This situation is also increasing due to climatic emergencies. Fire researchers Randi Jandt and Alison York described the profound changes they saw in Alaska.
As the global population grows, more and more people are at risk of hunger. Reducing food waste is necessary to feed the world, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and protect wild spaces. In a graphic-centric story, Chad Frischmann and Mamta Mehra of the research team Project Drawdown shared their predictions for possible food futures.
Social scientists have found a high degree of resilience in many black communities in the United States. Author Nancy Averett shared the latest research on how mutual aid networks have flourished, some of which started before the Civil War, and how social capital helps people resist systemic oppression.