Best Citation Awards

  Over 30 years ago, I coauthored a book,  Neural Smithing,  on training artificial neural networks. In 2021 it was cited 112 times — more than in any previous year. Why? I wish the only reason was that my book is a classic and has stood the test of time. But the book was on training neural networks and a lot has happened in that field over the last 30 years. Another, more substantial reason, I’m afraid, is  citation inflation.  Stated simply, there are many more citations today than a few years ago and my book is catching its fair share. Monetary inflation can be corrected to tell us the value of a year 2000 dollar in 2022. Likewise, citation inflation can be adjusted. A citation in 2000 was worth a lot more than it is today. The bean counters in academia don’t consider this. If they are committed to counting beans more accurately, they should. Why has the number of citations grown so much? When a book is printed or a paper is published in a journal or conferen...

As tiny glass frogs fall asleep for the day, they take almost 90 percent of their red blood cells out of circulation. The colorful cells cram into hideaway pockets inside the frog liver, which disguises the cells behind a mirrorlike surface, a new study finds. Biologists have known that glass frogs have translucent skin, but temporarily hiding bold red blood brings a new twist to vertebrate camouflage ( SN: 6/23/17 ). “The heart stopped pumping red, which is the normal color of blood, and only pumped a bluish liquid,” says evolutionary biochemist Carlos Taboada of Duke University, one of the discoverers of the hidden blood. What may be even more amazing to humans — prone to circulatory sludge and clogs — is that the frogs hold almost all their red blood cells packed together for hours with no blood clots, says co-discoverer Jesse Delia, now at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Wake the frog up, and cells just unpack themselves and get circulating again. ...

It was another shattering year. Climate change amped up weather extremes around the globe, smashing temperature records, sinking river levels to historic lows and raising rainfall to devastating highs. Droughts set the stage for wildfires and worsened food insecurity. Researchers found themselves pondering the limits of humans’ ability to tolerate extreme heat ( SN: 7/27/22 ). The extreme events from 2022 pinpointed on the map below are just a sample of this year’s climate disasters. Each was exacerbated by human-caused climate change or is in line with projections of regional impacts. In its Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021 and 2022, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, warned that humans are dramatically overhauling Earth’s climate ( SN: 8/9/21 ). Earth’s average surface temperature has already risen by at least 1.1 degree Celsius  since preindustrial times, thanks to human inputs of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, particular...

CHICAGO — An entire ocean of liquid magma, or maybe a hot heart of solid metal, may lurk in Io’s underworld. The surface of Jupiter’s innermost moon is covered in scorching lava lakes and gored by hundreds of active volcanoes , some spitting molten rock dozens of kilometers high ( SN: 8/6/14 ). Over the years, the moon’s restless, mesmerizing hellscape has attracted the attention of many planetary scientists ( SN: 5/3/22 ). Now, researchers are digging into the nature of Io’s infernal interior to explain what is driving the spectacular volcanism on the moon’s fiery surface. “It’s the most volcanically active place in the solar system,” says planetary scientist Samuel Howell of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “But it’s not really clear where that energy comes from.” Researchers generally agree that Io gets most of its energy from a gravitational tug-of-war between its parent planet Jupiter and its sibling moon Europa. Those grand forces pull on Io’s rocky body,...

Science News drew over 13 million visitors to our website this year. Here’s a recap of the most-read news stories and long reads of 2022. Top news stories 1. A special brew may have calmed Inca children headed for sacrifice The mummified remains of two Inca children ritually sacrificed more than 500 years ago contain chemical clues to their final days and weeks. On the journey to the Peruvian mountain where they were sacrificed, the children may have chewed coca leaves and drunk a beverage with antidepressant-like ingredients to soothe their nerves ( SN: 6/4/22, p. 10 ). 2. A ‘mystery monkey’ in Borneo may be a rare hybrid. That has scientists worried An unusual monkey first spotted six years ago appears to be a cross between a female silvered leaf monkey ( Trachypithecus cristatus ) and a male proboscis monkey ( Nasalis larvatus ). The possible cross-genera pairing has scientists worried because such matings are usually a sign that species are facing ecological pressures ( SN:...

COVID-19 may continue to dominate headlines, but this year’s biomedical advances weren’t all about “the Rona.” 2022 saw fruitful and seemingly fantastical research that could one day mean good news for patients. Growing synthetic embryos Two reports this year revealed how to fabricate the early stages of mammalian life . With a bit of laboratory wizardry, scientists mingled mouse stem cells, which self-assembled to spawn what appears to be a kind of fledgling embryo — no egg or sperm required. As they grow, these stem cell–derived synthetic embryos can form proto hearts, brains and guts. But the similarity to natural mouse embryos fades quickly. The synthetic and natural versions match up for only about eight days of development. Still, studying similar clusters of human stem cells might one day offer a way to probe the development of human embryos without relying on the real thing. Next-level organ transplants Organ transplants have started mirroring science fiction. In January, ...

A perfect ending for the final Apollo — Science News , December 23, 1972 Project Apollo ended this week. The last moon men … returned to Earth … and splashed down on a target in the Pacific Dec. 19.… All of the surface and orbital instruments appear to be working with the exception of the surface gravimeter.… The geology investigation team summed it up this way: “Apollo 17 will be remembered as the most scientifically sophisticated, not as the last, manned lunar landing.” Update The Apollo missions continue adding to our knowledge of the moon and Earth. Scientists have used lunar soil samples collected by Apollo astronauts to show that growing plants on the moon, while challenging, may be possible ( SN: 7/2/22, p. 4 ). In May, NASA researchers began scrutinizing untouched lunar rock and soil samples from the Apollo 17 mission for hints of past moon conditions and the chemicals crucial for life. Then in November, a new era of moon missions dawned with the launch of NASA’s Artem...

New scientific records are set every year, and 2022 was no exception. A bacterial behemoth, a shockingly speedy supercomputer and a close-by black hole are among the most notable superlatives of the year. Earliest surgery The first known surgical operation was a leg amputation ( SN: 10/8/22 & 10/22/22, p. 5 ). That’s the conclusion researchers came to after investigating the skeleton of a person who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo about 31,000 years ago. Healed bone where the lower left leg had been removed suggests the individual survived for several years after the procedure. The discovery pushes surgery’s origin back by some 20,000 years. Biggest single-celled bacterium Bacteria normally dwell in the microscopic world. Not Thiomargarita magnifica . Averaging about a centimeter long, this newfound bacterium is visible to the naked eye ( SN: 7/16/22 & 7/30/22, p. 17 ). T. magnifica , which lives in the mangrove forests of the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles, is abou...

WASHINGTON — Squid don’t have thermostats to control ocean temperatures. Instead, the cephalopods tweak RNA to adjust to frigid waters, a study suggests. Usually, genetic instructions encoded in DNA are faithfully copied into messenger RNA, or mRNA, and then into proteins. But squid and other soft-bodied cephalopods edit many of their mRNAs so that the resulting proteins contain some different building blocks than are inscribed in DNA ( SN: 3/25/20; SN: 4/6/17 ).  “In these animals, 60 percent or more of their proteins are actually recoded. This is astonishing in comparison to how [rarely RNA] editing is used in mammals,” molecular biologist Kavita Rangan said December 5 at Cell Bio 2022, the annual joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology and the European Molecular Biology Organization. Rangan, of the University of California, San Diego, examined the consequences that editing has on proteins called kinesins. Those molecular motors ferry cargo throughout cells a...

While the stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope captured space fans’ attention this year, other telescopes and spacecraft were busy on Earth and around the solar system ( SN Online: 12/7/22 ). Here are some of the coolest space highlights that had nothing to do with JWST. Back to the moon After several aborted attempts, NASA launched the Artemis I mission on November 16. That was a big step toward the goal of landing people on the moon as early as 2025 ( SN: 12/3/22, p. 14 ). No human has set foot there since 1972. Artemis I included a new rocket, the Space Launch System, which had previously suffered a series of hydrogen fuel leaks, and the new Orion spacecraft. No astronauts were aboard the test flight, but Orion carried a manikin in the commander’s seat and two manikin torsos to test radiation protection and life-support systems, plus a cargo hold full of small satellites that went off on their own missions. On December 11, the Orion capsule successfully returned t...

From spiders that catapult their way to safety to sea sponges that sneeze themselves clean, here are the creature features that most impressed us in 2022. Fishing fox Pics or it didn’t happen. In the first recorded instance of a fox fishing , a team from Spain filmed a red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ) catching 10 carp over a couple hours ( SN: 11/5/22, p. 4 ). This makes foxes only the second type of canid — wolves can do it too — that are known to fish for a feast. In March 2016, a male red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ) in Spain was spotted grabbing carp during spring spawning season.  Skydiving salamander Flying squirrels, yes, but a skydiving salamander? This bold amphibian, native to northwestern California, can jump and glide among the tops of towering redwood trees. By extending its front and hind legs like a skydiver, the wandering salamander ( Aneides vagrans ) can control and adjust its speed and direction while in the air ( SN: 6/18/22, p. 12 ). Scientists put salamanders in...

“We were all hard-working men … and citizens of the United States.” Herman Shaw, 1997 Born in Alabama in 1902, Herman Shaw was a farmer and a cotton mill worker. He and his wife, Fannie Mae, were married for 62 years and had two children and six grandchildren. Shaw was also a survivor of a 40-year medical experiment. From 1932 until the Associated Press broke the story in 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study of more than 600 Black men in Macon County, Ala., without their informed consent. The men were told they were being tested and receiving free therapies for “bad blood,” a local term for several ailments. Instead, it was a study of untreated syphilis. Roughly two-thirds of the men had the transmissible disease. The Public Health Service did not disclose to the men their diagnoses and withheld available treatments. The experiment tracked the damage the disease inflicted on the men. The endpoint was death. In the 50 years since its end, the U.S. Public Health ...