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"Life, as we know it."

In recent years, some members of the scientific community have begun to realize that this oft-repeated phrase encapsulates a concept that appears to have been limiting modern efforts to recognize signs of extraterrestrial life, both intelligent and primitive: our search efforts tend to focus on what is familiar to us, as opposed to our keeping an eye out for something that might be truly alien. Toward that end, a recently-published study has proposed that our inherent bias towards seeking the familiar may have been blinding us to evidence that has been staring us in the face all along.
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The clinical definition of physical death occurs when an individual’s heart stops beating and brain stops functioning, but what about other biological functions that still carry on after these two admittedly important processes cease? Medical science has long assumed that neurons degrade quickly after their supply of oxygen and nutrients are cut off, but a recent study on post-mortem cellular processes has upended these traditional notions of how long the body’s cellular processes continue after death, showing that some types of cells can be not only alive for days afterward, but some are also more active than when the individual was still alive and kicking.
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The infamous hole in Earth’s ozone layer has shrunk down to 7.6 million square miles wide (12,200,000 square kilometers), the smallest the gap has been since 1988. This healing of Earth’s main shield against ultraviolet radiation is due largely to efforts initiated in the mid-1980s, when the use of ozone-harming CFCs was phased out. Not only is this positive news in regards to our atmosphere’s ability to filter out harmful UV radiation, it also stands as an example of how humanity can make a positive, large-scale impact when efforts to reduce ecological harm are required, such as in the case of our need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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There has been a great deal of concern over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as of late, with PDRK dictator Kim Jong-Un threatening, on numerous occasions, to launch a nuclear attack against the United States. These concerns have focused primarily on the possibility of a direct nuclear strike, but experts speaking at a House of Representatives hearing held on October 12 pointed out that, while a limited nuclear exchange with direct strikes would cause terrible destruction, North Korea could conceivably wipe out 90 percent of the population of U.S. within a year with the deployment of a single device: the detonation of a high-altitude EMP bomb.
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