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For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The agency’s report, released on January 18, documents the United States’ increasing competition from China and other developing countries that are stepping up their investments in science and technology. Nonetheless, the report suggests that the United States remains a scientific powerhouse, pumping out high-profile research, attracting international students and translating science into valuable intellectual property....

By Philip Ball of Nature magazineChemists have succeeded in synthesizing a natural compound that shows promise as a painkiller–and might not cause the side effects that bedevil analgesics currently used to treat acute and chronic conditions.Conolidine is found in the bark of the tropical flowering shrub Tabernaemontana divaricata, commonly called the pinwheel flower. The plant is native to southeast Asia, where it has long been used in traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic and Thai medicines to treat fever and pain....

Shrink to Death Height loss occurs with age, but a drop of more than three centimeters correlates with an increase in illness and death, according to a 20-year survey of British men. The increase may result from mechanisms underlying bone loss, which reduces stature. Researchers have long known that osteoporosis affects mortality by compromising breathing and digestion, although the shrinkage in such cases tends to be at least six centimeters....

Recent heavy rains that have lashed Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina, causing 100-year record flooding that left more than 50 people dead, may be just a preview of the years to come. Storms will bring a lot more rain as global temperatures rise through the 21st century, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study finds that extreme precipitation events will be more intense in a warming world, with as much as 20 percent to 30 percent more rainfall in most parts of the United States....

By Shelby Sebens (Reuters) - Spring weather in downtown Los Angeles and other areas of Southern California flip-flopped this year as temperatures cooled from March to May, creating a so-called reverse meteorological spring for the first time in nearly a century, officials said on Tuesday. A reverse meteorological spring is rare and indicative of the abnormally warm and dry weather plaguing California, which has suffered severe drought conditions for the last four years, National Weather Service weather specialist Stuart Seto said....

The moon may be a chip off the old block after all. The most commonly invoked explanation for lunar formation holds that a giant protoplanet, sometimes called Theia, struck the newly formed Earth 4.5 billion years ago and created a cloud of debris that quickly coalesced into the moon. But that hypothesis has suffered from a nagging flaw. Simulations of moon-forming collisions have shown Theia would have been the primary donor of lunar material....

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazineBacteria that contain an internal compass face an unusual challenge when they come to divide: snapping their internal magnets in two. A report in the December issue of Molecular Microbiology explains how one species generates the force to separate magnetic nanoparticles and apportions them equally between daughter cells.Richard Blakemore first described magnetotactic bacteria–which can orient themselves in line with Earth’s magnetic field–in the 1970s. The magnets probably help oxygen-averse marine bacteria to navigate waters and sediments where the levels of chemicals such as oxygen and sulfur change quickly with depth, says Dirk Schüler, a microbiologist at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, who led the study....

Nine scientists are being investigated for a possible role in enabling an outbreak of a disease that is ravaging olive groves in Puglia, Italy. The public official in charge of containing the epidemic is also under investigation. Public prosecutors announced the formal investigation at a press conference in Lecce in southern Italy on December 18. At the same time, they ordered an immediate halt to measures put in place to contain the spread of the disease, which include chopping down and burning infected and vulnerable trees, and spraying insecticide....

Researchers sequencing Neandertal DNA have concluded that between 1 and 4 percent of the DNA of people today who live outside Africa came from Neandertals, the result of interbreeding between Neandertals and early modern humans. A team of scientists led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig pieced together the first draft of the sequence—which represents about 60 percent of the entire genome—using DNA obtained from three Neandertal bones that come from Vindija cave in Croatia and are more than 38,000 years old....

Our galaxy is littered with the corpses of dead stars. At the end of their useful lives, the vast majority of the stars in the Milky Way shed their outer layers and shrink to white dwarfs, dense spheres about the size of Earth. But very massive stars explode in supernovae and leave behind even denser relics, called neutron stars, which are only 20 to 40 kilometers across but weigh more than our sun....

At least seven people in New York City have died and 86 have been infected in an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease. The illness can cause high fevers and pneumonia. But despite the current outbreak, most people in the region aren’t at any increased risk of getting Legionnaires’. The disease is not communicable between people, and only those with weakened immune systems or other health impairments tend to fall ill. In addition, most people who do get Legionnaires’ can be treated with antibiotics....

Matthias Meyer has just published the results of what may be the world’s most wasteful genome-sequencing project. In decoding just 0.1% of the genome of the oldest DNA ever recovered from an ancient human, the molecular biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, threw out enough raw data to map the modern human genome dozens of times over. But the excess was necessary, because the DNA in the 430,000-year-old bones was degraded and contaminated....

Dennis van der Meijden isn’t aiming to see the face of God, feel one with the cosmos, grasp the hidden reality of time and space, or embark on a sacred journey. What the Dutch graphic designer, producer, and rapper (under the professional name Terilekst) wants—and gets—from his twice-weekly “microdoses” of psilocybin is more modest. “It sharpens all the senses, as if the frequencies of all of your atoms and energy field are raised a little bit and are being slightly more conscious,” said van der Meijden, 39, who told STAT he first microdosed psilocybin—the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”—three years ago....

WHAT IS ART? Probably as many definitions exist as do artists and art critics. Art is clearly an expression of our aesthetic response to beauty. But the word has so many connotations that it is best—from a scientific point of view—to confine ourselves to the neurology of aesthetics. Aesthetic response varies from culture to culture. The sharp bouquet of Marmite is avidly sought after by the English but repulsive to most Americans....

What do you want to be when you grow up? When pondering this question, most kids have given at least passing consideration to one fantastical if improbable calling: superhero. There is an understandable allure to the superhero position — wearing a special uniform (possibly with powerful accessories), saving the world from evil, and let’s not forget possessing a wickedly cool special power like x-ray vision or the ability to fly. But new research by Hillary Pennell and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz at the University of Missouri suggests that, at least for women, the influence of superheroes is not always positive....

The first offshore wind farm in the U.S. is scheduled to begin operations this month off the coast of Rhode Island—a small but notable step forward, given that other offshore projects have run into stiff headwinds this side of the Atlantic. The five turbines that make up the Block Island Wind Farm will generate 30 megawatts of electricity—enough to power 17,000 homes on average. It is a surprise (and frustration) to many that the facilities have not cropped up sooner, considering the potential that offshore wind has to reduce long-term dependence on fossil fuels—and to add new power options for coastal cities with limited real estate....

Americans have grown accustomed to bad news about student performance in math and science. On a 2009 study administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 15-year-olds in the U.S. placed 23rd in science and 31st in math out of 65 countries. On last year’s Nation’s Report Card assessments, only one third of eighth graders qualified as proficient in math or science. Those general statistics tell only a piece of the story, however....

When George Sugihara reads about credit crises and federal bailouts, he is inclined to think about sardines—California sardines, to be precise. A few decades after the Great Depression, the sardine fishery in California was suffering from a similarly devastating collapse. Fishers who had generally landed more than 500,000 tons of sardines annually during the 1930s caught fewer than 5,000 tons during the worst years of the 1950s and 1960s. Whereas a few Cassandras might have warned of trouble in each case, nobody could have predicted exactly when each collapse would come or how severe it would be....

Google has a small fleet of robotic cars that since autumn have driven themselves for thousands of miles on the streets of northern California without once striking a pedestrian, running a stoplight or having to ask directions. The cars’ ability to analyze enormous quantities of data—from cameras, radar sensors, laser-range finders—lies in the 18th-century math theorem known as Bayes’ rule. The formula has survived decades of controversy and marginalization to emerge as the cornerstone of some of the most sophisticated robotics projects now under way around the world....

The case, formally known as United States v. Jones, has its roots in the technologically distant past of 2005, when smart phones, tablets, mobile apps, social networking and license plate cameras had not yet become ubiquitous—when it was still possible to make a trip to the grocery store without leaving a megabits-long trail of digital footprints. The question before the Court turned in significant part on the physical trespass involved in placing a GPS tracker on a suspect’s car....