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Or so it would seem. But as the winds sweep the ancient lake bed, which has not been inundated in much of this area for several thousand years, they carry trillions of tiny particles skyward in vast, swirling white clouds. The dust then starts a mysterious journey—or a series of mysterious journeys—that scientists are trying to better understand. Joseph M. Prospero was one of the pioneers. A professor emeritus in marine and atmospheric chemistry at the University of Miami, he has been called the grandfather of dust studies in the U....

I find amazing that serious scientists like Robert Plomin and others quoted in Carl Zimmer’s review article keep looking for genes related to a nonentity such as intelligence. Haven’t we known for some time that the usual notion of intelligence is a pure psychometric fiction (g factor, etc.) ? What the cognitive neurosciences are demonstrating is the existence of a number of “intellectual” or better cognitive functions, largely dissociated as the pathologies show....

The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico discharges the most intense pulses of electrical current on Earth. Millions of amperes can be sent towards a metallic cylinder the size of a pencil eraser, inducing a magnetic field that creates a force — called a Z pinch — that crushes the cylinder in a fraction of a second. Since 2012, scientists have used the Z pinch to implode cylinders filled with hydrogen isotopes in the hope of achieving the extreme temperatures and pressures needed for energy-generating nuclear fusion....

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on February 27, 2009. We are re-posting it because of current concern about bedbugs. NEW YORK—Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite? If only. The creepy critters have become such a nuisance here that the city council is mulling legislation that would establish a bedbug task force, ban the sale of used mattresses, train exterminators, and regulate mattress disposal. Just how infested is Gotham?...

Scientific American presents Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Did you know that your calculator occasionally lies to you? Okay, perhaps it’s a bit melodramatic (in an anthropomorphic kind of way) to say it “lies” to you, but it certainly can mislead you. While I don’t want to shatter any relationships with trusty number-crunching companions, it’s a good idea to keep this in mind....

Three years ago, pathologist Ashley Hill flew to Minnesota to meet a family wracked by one of the world’s rarest cancers. Called pleuropulmonary blastoma, or PPB, this aggressive lung cancer affects just 25 to 30 children a year in the U.S., and most doctors have never heard of it. With such a small patient population, scientists told Hill that tracking down the genetic cause of the disorder—and getting the funding to study it—was a long shot....

The discovery of a fossilized brain in the preserved remains of an extinct “mega-clawed” creature has revealed an ancient nervous system that is remarkably similar to that of modern-day spiders and scorpions, according to a new study. The fossilized Alalcomenaeus is a type of arthropod known as a megacheiran (Greek for “large claws”) that lived approximately 520 million years ago, during a period known as the Lower Cambrian. The creature was unearthed in the fossil-rich Chengjiang formation in southwest China....

If William Shakespeare were working today on Broadway or in London’s West End, he would be spending a lot of time with lawyers. The Bard adapted Romeo and Juliet from Arthur Brooke’s poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, which Brooke, in his turn, had based on a French translation by Pierre Boaistuau of various Italian stories. The history of creative works, whether Romeo and Juliet or the Beastie Boys’ “Pass the Mic,” is a chronicle of “borrowing” from others....

A bacterium living inside an insect has the tiniest genome known, consisting of just 160,000 base pairs that make up at most 182 genes. It may reflect an organelle in the making. Science, October 13 The carnivorous dinosaur Coelophysis bauri was long thought to be a cannibal based on fossils showing its own species’ bones in its stomach. But a reanalysis suggests that the bones probably represent an intermingling after death....

~ “Look for an overripe, black banana moving through the grass.” Edson Endrigo, our nature guide extraordinaire, was explaining his technique for spotting giant anteaters in Serra da Canastra National Park, just one of the rarities in this area. Obediently looking up on the hillside, I spotted a two-meter-long mobile banana. We jumped out of the van and circled behind a female anteater with a baby clinging to her back. My two companions, David Wilcove and John Morrison, and I closely tracked her progress....

China will put in place a nationwide carbon emissions trading program in 2017 and agree to stringent transparency rules in a new global climate change accord as part of a sweeping announcement President Obama and President Xi Jinping will make today, White House officials said. The joint call to action on global warming will be the second time in less than a year that Obama and Xi have stood side by side to pledge joint cooperation between the world’s two largest economies and emitters of greenhouse gas pollution....

From Nature magazine Scorching temperatures and scarce rainfall has left large swathes of the United States in drought, with the ‘breadbasket states’, such as Iowa and Indiana, among the worst affected. The extreme weather conditions have wreaked havoc with the nation’s crop production, particularly maize (corn) and soya beans. Given that the country is the world’s top exporter of maize and one of the largest growers of soya beans, Nature explains how the drought could have ramifications for global food supplies, and what science is doing to help....

The mysteries of star formation in a distant galaxy have been revealed in unprecedented detail, thanks to the twisting and bending of light by gravity. By pairing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile with a natural phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, scientists have probed the details of a galaxy 11.4 light-years away with remarkable precision and, in the process, have learned details about its structure, contents, motion and other physical characteristics....

Edmonton is Canada’s chief oil city as well as the capital of Alberta, the province that hosts the bulk of the country’s tar sands. Given the expense of converting this mix of dirt and heavy oils to more usable petroleum products, the province is not keen on alternative fuels. Nevertheless, in 2012 Edmonton will host a chemical plant owned by Enerkem that will turn garbage into 36 million liters of ethanol and methanol per year....

Starting with skin cells rather than egg cells, Japanese researchers say they have generated eggs that led to healthy mouse pups capable of living normal lives and reproducing. Mammals, of course, have always reproduced via the sperm of one animal combining with the egg cell of another. But the new research started instead with a skin cell from a mouse’s tail and transformed it into egg cells, then matured those eggs in a laboratory dish and finally fertilized them and implanted them into a female mouse....

Editor’s Note: Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018, at age 76. This story, originally published on his 70th birthday on January 7, 2012, is being resurfaced to explain how he beat the odds and lived so long with the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, beating the odds of a daunting diagnosis by nearly half a century. The famous theoretical physicist has helped to bring his ideas about black holes and quantum gravity to a broad public audience....

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.—On a hot Tuesday morning in early September two women north of 65-years-old, clad in shorts and matching Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center Stranding Response Program team T-shirts, are readying a massive, white truck for about 90 kilograms of dead dolphin. They are part of a fleet of about 60 volunteers who spend their spare time retrieving the remains of ailing or dead creatures along the state’s coast....

Anticipation is mounting that soon the world will be treated to an incredible light show with a sunspot bubbling with activity. Spaceweather.com reports that the unusually large sunspot unleashed at least five M-class solar flares since Saturday and has a “delta-class magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class flares.” Solar flares are ranked by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) based on their x-ray energy output. M-class solar flares are the second strongest with X-class flares sitting at the top of the list....

(Reuters) - HCA Holdings Inc, the largest for-profit U.S. hospital operator, said a procedure for removing uterine fibroids that has been linked to the spread of cancer will no longer be performed at its facilities. The surgical technique involves use of a laparoscopic power morcellator device that pulverizes tissue before it is extracted from the uterus through a small opening. Morcellation is the mincing or pulverization of tissue to make it easier to remove....

Medical studies often reveal far more information about a participant than researchers seek. So, extraneous information is often ignored. But what happens when researchers notice an unexpected mass in a brain scan or threatening clots in a computed tomography (CT) image? The ethics are still fuzzy about how much responsibility—and freedom—medical researchers should have in informing subjects or their doctors if something unsought is revealed in the course of an imaging study....