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An impaired sense of smell affects from about 30 to 75 percent of people infected with the novel coronavirus, according to a recent estimate, suggesting that millions of people worldwide have suffered this condition at some point in the past two years. Called anosmia, the olfactory system dysfunction is typically temporary, but it can take months or longer for a full recovery, making it difficult to enjoy meals and to detect odors such as spoiled food, smoke and others that can signal danger....

Over the course of nearly five years, a female gazelle in Mongolia completed a remarkable journey of at least 18,000 kilometers (11,185 miles). It crossed frozen rivers, encountered oil fields, negotiated fenced boundaries with China and Russia and trekked 900 kilometers just to survive two months of one particularly brutal winter, according to a new study. Extremely long journeys might not be unusual for Mongolian gazelles (Procapra gutturosa), but technology that enables finely detailed tracking of migrating mammals has only become available in the past two decades....

Genetically modified (GM) crops have spread faster in the past decade than any agricultural technology since the plow. Of the nearly 250 million acres of GM crops planted in 2006, about 173 million acres of corn, cotton and soybeans, among others, have been genetically altered to resist the herbicide glyphosate (brand name Roundup™). By splicing in a gene that allows crops to resist this plant-killer, farmers can apply it with abandon, cutting costs and reducing the need for tilling....

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made yesterday’s climate summit all about keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That’s a new goal for the United Nations. Only four years ago, 195 countries agreed to hold warming to well below 2 C under the Paris Agreement, with 1.5 C tacked on as an aspirational target at the insistence of small island states. That changed when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed in a landmark report last year that exceeding the 1....

Earlier this year Nicole Davis arrived at one of the San Antonio, Tex., offices of the audiology practice she co-owns ready to see the day’s patients. But upon entering her office, Davis says she quickly noticed a noxious odor that smelled like paint thinner. Her eyes started burning. By noon, she felt nauseated and dizzy, with the burning sensation spreading to her nose and throat. Her mouth went numb. Co-workers in the building told Davis that they felt ill, too....

The assassination of Iranian physicist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi on Tuesday prompted a number of questionable accusations from the Iranian government and media about who was behind the killing, claims that have been countered by sources who knew the victim. Iran’s state-controlled media blamed the U.S. and Israel. And President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his first public remarks about the incident Thursday, said the murder method was “Zionist,” according to Bloomberg News. U.S. officials dismissed these accusations, calling them “absurd....

Scientific American presents Nutrition Diva by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Crista posted a question on the Nutrition Diva Facebook page, wondering whether there are any alternatives to Tylenol or ibuprofen for headaches. “I get terrible sinus and sometimes migraine headaches," she writes, “and I take WAY too much Tylenol/ibuprofen.” There are several heavy-duty drugs that have been approved for the treatment of migraines and chronic headaches, as well as over-the-counter pain relievers, such as the ones Crista mentioned....

When ancient Roman seers conducted their magical rituals, they would face north. East–to the right–represented luck and positive omens. The west–to the left–was the dark realm of the dead. The Bible tells of the good sheep who, on Judgment Day, will find comfort at the Savior’s right hand, while the sinners at his left will be condemned to eternal damnation. The division between right and left, between good and evil, persists in today’s idiomatic expressions: a left-handed compliment is really no compliment at all; someone with two left feet is clumsy on the dance floor....

Science oft resembles the federal tax code: the rules are rigid, but they also keep changing. So it has been with the study of neurogenesis, or the creation of neurons in the human brain. Not long ago a hard-and-fast rule held that neurons could neither divide nor emerge from elsewhere. The neurons you were born with, in short, were the ones you took to your grave. That dogma began to change in the 1980s, however, when Fernando Nottebohm of the Rockefeller University discovered that neurons were dividing in the forebrains of canaries....

The Nicaragua Grand Canal will be a project of unprecedented magnitude. The canal’s route has already been determined, as is the number of ships that will be permitted to pass through it each day. Also decided is who will construct the canal and how many square kilometers of earth must be moved. What remains unknown is the environmental impact of this potential new slice through Central America. Nicaragua’s government proposed the project and put the construction of the canal into the hands of Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (HKND), all without soliciting any environmental studies....

In the mid-20th century the encyclopedic works of French mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki traced every mathematical concept back to the subject’s foundations in the theory of sets—the stuff of Venn diagrams—and changed the face of his field. Like many of his notions, Bourbaki existed only in the abstract: he was the pseudonym for a tight-knit group of young Parisian researchers. The Internet-age version could be D.H.J. Polymath, another collective pseudonym who could define a new style of mathematics....

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazineWhen John Cardy proposed a far-reaching principle to constrain all possible theories of quantum particles and fields, he expected it to be quickly rebutted. But for almost 25 years that hasn’t happened – and it now seems that his theorem may have been quietly proved earlier this year.If the solution holds, it is likely to guide future attempts to explain physics beyond the current standard model....

SACRAMENTO – California plans to spend nearly $300 million in federal stimulus cash on a wide range of energy projects, a key state official said yesterday. The California Energy Commission is prepared to invest in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, boost energy efficiency or renewable energy and create “green” jobs, said Panama Bartholomy, an adviser to commission Chairwoman Karen Douglas. As states rush to meet federal deadlines for applying for stimulus assistance – the deadline for preliminary applications to the U....

People have fastened sheets of paper together more or less permanently ever since the Chinese invented the stuff in the first or second century A.D. Yet according to the Early Office Museum, the first bent wire paper clip wasn’t patented until 1867, by one Samuel B. Fay. The iconic shape of the Gem paper clip (the namesake of Gem Office Products Company) that we know today did not appear until around 1892, and it was never patented....

From superstar athletes to self-help devotees, advocates of positive thinking—imagining yourself succeeding at something you want to happen—believe it is a surefire way to help you attain a goal. Past studies have backed that idea, too, but now researchers are refining the picture. Paint your fantasy in too rosy a hue, and you may be hurting your chances of success. One possible explanation is that idealized thinking can sap motivation, as outlined in a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology....

WASHINGTON — For the last six years, nearly all employers have had no choice but to include birth control coverage in the health insurance plans they offer their employees. On Friday, however, the Trump administration rescinded that regulation, allowing employers to exclude contraceptive care from insurance benefits for religious or moral reasons. The announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services strikes a substantial but narrow blow to the Affordable Care Act, rolling back the so-called contraception mandate in a move it cast as “providing relief to those who have been under the thumb of the federal government and had their religious expression and religious conscience violated....

All eyes are on Utah today as President Trump heads to the state Capitol to announce major cuts to two of the state’s largest and most controversial national monuments. Trump is expected to eliminate nearly 85 percent of Bear Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, cutting more than 1 million acres from its current boundaries. He’s also set to halve the nearly 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (E&E News PM, Nov....

GENEVA (Reuters) - Two people are suspected of having Ebola after coming into contact with a two-year-old girl who died of the disease in Mali last week, according to data from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. An epidemiological presentation by both agencies, given on Thursday and seen by Reuters on Friday, breaks down the girl’s journey from Guinea to Mali with her grandmother, five-year-old sister and her uncle, and shows she may have had contact with 141 people in all, 57 of them yet to be identified....

It is not quite incest. And though it will increase your chances of birthing a healthy baby, it is a bit unorthodox, to say the least. Still, scientists at Icelandic biotechnology company deCODE genetics say that when third and fourth cousins procreate, they generally have scads of kids and grandkids (relative to everyone else). It has long been wondered exactly how kinship influences reproductive success. Previous studies have uncovered positive correlations, but the biological data has been clouded by socioeconomic factors (such as average marrying age and family size) in those populations in which consanguineous marriage is commonplace, such as in India, Pakistan and the Middle East....

Are cats less domesticated than dogs? Are they becoming more domesticated over time? Cats are far more similar to their wild ancestors than dogs are to wolves, so dogs are in that sense the more domesticated of the two species. As they adapted to living alongside humans, cats became more sociable with one another and much more accepting of people, but there is no evidence that they have changed much more than that over the past few thousand years....