Spellements: Friday, August 1, 2025
Click the timer at the top of the game page to pause and see a clue to the science-related word in this puzzle!
The objective of the game is to find words that can be made with the given letters such that all the words include the letter in the center. You can enter letters by clicking on them or typing them in. Press Enter to submit a word. Letters can be used multiple times in a single word, and words must contain four letters or more for this size layout. Select the Play Together icon in the navigation bar to invite a friend to work together on this puzzle. Pangrams, words which incorporate all the letters available, appear in bold and receive bonus points. One such word is always drawn from a recent Scientific American article—look out for a popup when you find it! You can view hints for words in the puzzle by hitting the life preserver icon in the game display.
The dictionary we use for this game misses a lot of science words, such as apatite and coati. Let us know at games@sciam.com any extra science terms you found, along with your name and place of residence,
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Scientific American
3 hours ago
- Scientific American
What Is the Legionnaires' Disease Outbreak That Has Killed Two People in New York City?
A little-known illness called Legionnaires' disease has infected at least 58 people in New York City's Central Harlem neighborhood in the past two weeks. Two people have died during the outbreak, which has been tied to cooling towers that tested positive for the disease-causing bacterium Legionella pneumophila, according to a statement from city health officials on August 4. The disease is a severe pneumonia and one of two infections caused by bacteria in the genus Legionella, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The bacteria can also cause a milder illness called Pontiac fever, which can manifest with fever, muscle aches and headaches.) When diagnosed early, Legionnaires' can be treated successfully with antibiotics. Health care providers report about 6,000 cases of Legionnaires' disease annually in the U.S., although some cases are likely mistaken as other types of pneumonia. In addition, the infection often does not cause symptoms in healthy people. Individuals who are aged 50 or older, as well as current or former smokers and people with underlying lung or immune issues, are most vulnerable to Legionnaires'. The disease became five times more prevalent between 2000 and 2018 for reasons experts have struggled to identify. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Legionnaires' does not typically spread between people directly; instead people catch the infection by inhaling mist that contains the pathogen. The bacterium particularly thrives in stagnant water between 77 and 113 degrees Fahrenheit (25 and 45 degrees Celsius). Water systems such as cooling towers, large air-conditioning systems, spas and hot tubs can then aerosolize the microbe, making bacterial control in these types of structures a vital prevention measure. When the current outbreak was first identified, New York City health officials directed an investigation into all cooling towers in the affected neighborhood. These towers evaporate water to dispel heat, and they are a common feature in large buildings in the city. But such structures have long been known to cause some of the largest Legionnaires' outbreaks on record. New York City laws require cooling towers to be registered, tested and disinfected regularly to reduce the presence of Legionella bacteria. Legionnaires' was first identified at a convention of the American Legion's Department of Pennsylvania (hence the name) that was held in late July 1976. Scientists who helped identified the Legionella bacterium that caused an outbreak among at least 221 people at the convention called the detective work 'one of the largest and most complex investigations of an epidemic ever undertaken' in an article published in the October 1979 issue of Scientific American. Scientists had to rule out potential causes, including foodborne pathogens and metal poisoning, among other challenges, before managing to identify the previously unknown bacterium. Simultaneously, investigators pored through reports of other then recent, mysterious outbreaks of pneumonialike diseases, piecing together an image of an infection that 'has turned out to be not very rare after all,' the researchers wrote in their 1979 article.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
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Why could Aug. 5 be shorter than 24 hours?
If you seem not to be able to get through the to-do list on Aug. 5, you'll at least have an excuse. Tuesday is predicted to be one of the shortest days in the year, marking the latest time the Earth could see a day shortened by more than a millisecond. Scientists predict that Aug. 5 will be 1.34 milliseconds shorter, according to the International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service and the U.S. Naval Observatory, published by TimeandDate. The millisecond mark has been broken a handful of times this year, with the most recent being July 11, according to the data published by TimeandDate. The predictions do not always come to pass, as July 22 had been predicted to be over a millisecond short, but the data revealed that only 0.87 milliseconds were shaved off, according to the Observatory's data. Earth takes 24 hours to complete a full rotation in a standard day, equal to exactly 86,400 seconds. Until 2020, the shortest day ever recorded by atomic clocks was 1.05 milliseconds short, meaning that Earth completed one daily rotation in 1.05 milliseconds less than the expected 86,400 seconds. "Since then, however, Earth has managed to shatter this old record every year by around half a millisecond," astrophysicist Graham Jones wrote for TimeAndDate. The shortest day recorded so far occurred July 5, 2024, when it came in 1.66 milliseconds short. The shortest day recorded this year was July 10, which came in 1.37 milliseconds short. Why is this happening? The Earth's rotation is influenced by the core and the atmosphere, according to Scientific American. The science magazine says that the core's spin has been slowing, though for unknown reasons, meaning that the rest of the planet must speed up to compensate. "The core is what changes how fast the Earth rotates on periods of 10 years to hundreds of years," Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told the magazine. "The core has been slowing down for the last 50 years, and as a result, the Earth has been speeding up." Atmospheric forces cause the rotation rate of the Earth to speed up in the summer of the Northern Hemisphere, according to Scientific American. Forces caused by the moon also affect the rate the Earth spins. The magazine notes that on the geologic timescale, the Earth has been slowing, with the rotation taking half an hour less 70 million years ago. Will the sped-up day be noticeable? Of course, you're unlikely to notice such a minuscule difference in your standard 24-hour day. But scientists who track and operate atomic clocks may be facing a bit of a predicament. First introduced in the 1950s, atomic clocks replaced how scientists previously measured the length of a day by tracking the Earth's rotation and the position of the sun. The clocks are also capable of measuring in billionths of a second, or nanoseconds, which are synchronized globally to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). If the clocks are thrown off even a tiny amount, it could also throw off computers, servers, GPS signals, and other networks that rely on accurate times, David Gozzard, an experimental physicist at the University of Western Australia, told the Guardian. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Aug. 5 might be a short day, see how much time could be trimmed off
Scientific American
16 hours ago
- Scientific American
Wordology: Tuesday, August 5, 2025
How to Play Our version of this game incorporates scientific jargon and interesting words from the Scientific American archives! Hit the dropdown button above for a clue to this puzzle's word. Guess the hidden word or phrase in as few attempts as possible. If the phrase has more than one word, switch between words at any time by pressing the tab key or by clicking on a box. Press enter to submit each attempt. You have up to 6 attempts per word. After each attempt, letters will be shown in three colors. Green indicates that a letter is present in the word and is in the right place. Yellow indicates that a letter is present in the word but not in the right place. Gray indicates that a letter is not present in the word.
