A lot of cool work in science flies under the radar, lost in the weekly outpouring of research or hidden in texts with obscure names. This Friday, we encourage you to dip your toes in five different journals that you may not have heard of before. But the science in their pages affects everything from Google maps to alleviating pain in your daily life. Check them out and hopefully you'll want to make them a regular stop.
When a plane lands on a runway instead of on the dry grass fifty feet to the right, it’s because geodesy has got your back. When you road trip across the United States and you take a selfie with every twine ball in America, geodesy was right there with you. It’s the study of the size and shape of the Earth and the orientation of points in space. See, every point on this planet has an address or code given to it by geodesists. And as the Earth’s tectonic plates shift around and moon and sun gravity cause its surface to rise and fall, geodesists follow that movement and update locations of specific landmarks and points on your maps. You might start with a recent paper, “Why the Greenwich meridian moved.” Yup, now when you go to the Greenwich meridian, which is the all-important original reference line for both longitude and time, you actually have to walk 335 feet east to get to zero degrees longitude as determined today by GPS. For more on the secrets beneath your very feet, find geophysics headlines curated by geophysicists at @GeophysicsRR and the American Geophysical Union, @theAGU.
If Icarus had flown as close to the sun as the story claims, he would have been flapping his wings of feather and wax in space. And that’s what a lot of scientists who publish in this journal might like to do. As they explore (from Earth) our solar system and any others nearby, they regularly get to geek out about the most epically awesome space phenomena. One recent special issue focused on research about Saturn and its enormous posse of moons, based on photos and data gathered by the Cassini satellite. Cassini has been flying around Saturn since 1997, and during the mission’s next couple of years, the satellite will make about two dozen passes of some of Saturn’s smaller, weirder moons: Daphnis, Telesto, Epimetheus and Aegaeon. So much drama happening in their neck of the rings. God, it’s just like get your own orbit, you know? Keep up with Cassini’s journey @CassiniSaturn. And if you feel like you want to be real up on the rest of the solar system gossip, it does have a Twitter account, @The_SolarSystem.
Swarm and Evolutionary Computation
Nature has solved a lot of issues already. Like how to pollinate and make honey. Together, the bee and the flower have evolved to solve the issues of makin’ babies and makin’ food. Computer scientists want to capitalize on those solutions, but replicating nature with 0s and 1s is … not so easy. And that’s what this journal is for, a forum for scientists who want to capture evolution onto a circuit board. It has the best list of topic interests, including Artificial Immune Systems, Particle Swarms, Bacterial Foraging, Artificial Bees, Harmony Search, and Artificial Life. Follow Elsevier @comp_science for Swarm news—new issue and paper announcements—and to learn about other approaches to making more intelligent artificial machines.
This is the science you want to have around for the harder conversations in your life. Maybe your roommate has left her laundry in the dryer for two days (that would be me) or your partner declined your invitation to meet your family. That’s just like “Nipping Them in the Bud: The Onset of Mediation in Low-Intensity Civil Conflicts” and “Investor-State Disputes: When Can Governments Break Contracts?” Some pro tips: Choose your turf, make it seem like a win-win, and assume that everything has a double meaning. @SAGECQPolitics keeps tabs on this journal and others, highlighting other cool articles, education events and employment opportunities in the study of politics.
Reading the articles in this journal will make you reach for the Advil. Whether you have chronic back pain, headaches, muscle soreness, or gout, these are the researchers trying to ease your fits and spasms. Within the pages of this journal, scientists explore the origin, mechanisms, and treatment of pain as well as the presence of pain in Americans. A study in the August 2015 issue found that 25.3 million adults suffer from daily, chronic pain. That’s about 1 in 10 adults. Though scientists are mapping the pain pathways going in your nervous system and your brain, it’s slow-going. You could feel more or less pain based on genetics, personal fears, and how much you sleep. To keep up with developments in pain, follow them on Twitter. This journal has a pretty good feed, highlighting Editor’s choice articles from current and archived issues.
