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It all started about two years ago, when a patient of Jean-Pierre Routy with HIV wanted to undergo a sex change. The individual was planning to go to GRS (for ‘Gender Reassignment Surgery’) Montreal, a center that facilitates over 400 such surgeries a year. At the time, it was the only center in Canada to offer the procedure, also known as gender affirmation surgery. According to Routy, an infectious disease clinician and researcher at McGill University in Montreal, getting human testicular tissue for study is extremely difficult, so after he received consent from the individual to obtain samples of the man’s discarded testes for research once they were removed during surgery, Routy reached out to GRS Montreal....

How would you like to improve yourself? We’ve probably all paused to ask ourselves this question (perhaps around New Year’s). Maybe you aimed to start exercising or stop procrastinating. Or was it losing weight? Or working on a case of low self-esteem? These are the goals people often list in online forums about self-improvement, and they share a common thread. When considering what they’d like to improve about themselves, people jump straight to weaknesses....

RIVERSIDE, CALIF.—People love their hybrid automobiles because, above all, they sip rather than guzzle now pricey gasoline. But as the owner of a standard minivan, I also covet a less touted benefit of electric engines: they are delightfully quiet. So when I heard a graduate student say his group’s latest research suggests that hybrid gas-electric vehicles are too quiet, my ears perked up. He described his colleagues’ vision to equip these cars with sound-emitting devices to warn pedestrians....

Specific patterns of brain activity are thought to underlie specific processes or computations important for various mental faculties, such as memory. One such “brain signal” that has received a lot of attention recently is known as a “sharp wave ripple”—a short, wave-shaped burst of high-frequency oscillations. Researchers originally identified ripples in the hippocampus, a region crucially involved in memory and navigation, as central to diverting recollections to long-term memory during sleep....

U.S. EPA is publishing the final Clean Power Plan to slash carbon emissions from power plants in the Federal Register today, a much-anticipated milestone because it clears the way for objecting states to file lawsuits aimed at killing the regulation. Also published in the Federal Register today are the final rule regulating carbon dioxide for new, modified and reconstructed power plants and the proposed federal implementation plan, which would be imposed on states that don’t submit a compliance plan to EPA....

Scientists were less than thankful this year on Thanksgiving Day (November 28) when they watched the famous Comet c/2012 S1, aka ISON, expire during its fiery pass by the sun. Yet seeing ISON meet its fate taught researchers about the structure and composition of the comet and gave them a clearer picture of why it broke up near the sun. Comet ISON was a rare interloper in the inner solar system from the faraway Oort Cloud, a sphere of comets that surrounds the sun and planets about a light-year away....

Bats have to leave the safety of their roosts every night to find food. That takes energy: their insect prey must provide them with enough fuel to offset the cost of hunting in the first place. Because bats use the same chest and abdominal muscles for both flying and producing echolocation calls, many researchers thought vocalizing while airborne would not consume significantly more energy than flying alone. But a new study has thrown that idea into serious doubt....

As U.S. President Donald Trump takes aim at what he considers an excess of federal regulations, a new lawsuit accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of illegally rescinding a rule to reduce the discharge of mercury from dental offices, mere hours after Trump took office. In a complaint filed on Wednesday, the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council said the final rule was withdrawn on Jan. 20, the date of Trump’s inauguration, after White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus directed federal agencies to “immediately withdraw” final rules slated for publication....

From Quanta (Find original story here). In August, when a group of physicians writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association proposed that some precancerous conditions should no longer be labeled as cancer, the recommendation was supported by studies showing that advances in the detection of these conditions haven’t reduced the incidence of invasive cancers. Indeed, precancerous conditions such as ductal carcinoma in situ — abnormal cells in part of the breast that have not spread — can progress to cancer but often don’t, raising questions about how aggressively to treat them....

Mike started drinking at age 14. At his very first party, he recalls, “I probably had 10 beers.” He partied for seven years while playing high school and college football, and the consequences of his drinking resemble a “Just Say No” campaign: blackouts, arrests, academic problems, emergency room visits, driving suspensions and mandatory treatment programs. About 10 percent of eighth graders, 18 percent of 10th graders and 24 percent of high school seniors binge on alcohol....

Proof of vaccination against COVID-19 may soon be a requirement for airline or cruise ship passengers looking to embark on future voyages. Some companies—like Qantas Airlines and the American Queen Steamboat Company—have come forward saying they will require such proof, so called “immunity passports,” to use their services. And some employers may soon mandate vaccinations as well. Tech companies, too, are working on developing technology required for digital immunity passports, predicting that they will be widely used in the near future....

By Cassandra Willyard Potent chemotherapy drugs such as Taxol (paclitaxel) prompt cancer cells to self-destruct – but some tumours stubbornly survive the treatment. Two studies have now independently pinpointed a gene that lies behind at least part of this resistance. The discovery could help oncologists predict which patients are likely to respond to Taxol and drugs with similar actions, and which may not. It also flags up new targets for cancer therapy....

The mountains of genomic-sequencing data generated by the National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project and recent studies provide strong evidence that just as our human genes were transmitted vertically from our parents and from their parents, and ultimately from our distant primate ancestors, the same holds true for our microbial genes. This intergenerational transfer begins at the moment of birth, when the minimally colonized fetus is exposed to the microbes in its mother’s vagina as it transits out through the birth canal....

Jack Gallant perches on the edge of a swivel chair in his lab at the University of California, Berkeley, fixated on the screen of a computer that is trying to decode someone’s thoughts. On the left-hand side of the screen is a reel of film clips that Gallant showed to a study participant during a brain scan. And on the right side of the screen, the computer program uses only the details of that scan to guess what the participant was watching at the time....

Researchers have created a novel nanomaterial that combines the strength of spider silk with the rigidity of silica. The product could help pave the way for the fabrication of replacement bones. Regrowing bone requires a scaffold that is stiff, long-lasting and safe. With that in mind, David Kaplan of Tufts University and his colleagues decided to marry the protein that constitutes the drag lines of golden silk orb weaver spiders with the protein that helps diatoms–a subset of plankton–make silica, a glasslike compound....

Images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft suggest that Pluto has a polar cap made of some kind of ice. The pictures, taken over the past few weeks and released on April 29, show Pluto with its largest moon, Charon. The dwarf planet’s surface is mottled with light and dark patches, each measuring hundreds of kilometres across. But its pole remains bright no matter how Pluto rotates, suggesting that a highly reflective icy cap may exist there....

I applaud Christof Koch for looking with fresh eyes into the puzzle of free will in “Finding Free Will.” He is certainly correct that many of our overt actions are led by brain events we have no awareness of, and this can be a good thing. As William James once remarked, it’s a good idea to run from the bear before you have a fully conscious experience of “bear.” Drop a fragile object, and you react without getting tangled up in thought—the latter would be way too slow....

Researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine have discovered a novel mechanism by which viruses infect neighboring cells. Their discovery, appearing in this week’s Nature Cell Biology could lead to new antiviral therapies. Previous studies found that viruses are ferried from infected to healthy cells by dendritic cells, which are cells that can transport germs without becoming infected themselves. Cell-to-cell transfer of a virus (as opposed to a virus jumping from one infected cell to another) is believed to be as much as 1,000 times more effective at spreading pathogens....

Forget the notion of projecting winning charisma, sharp intelligence and an aura of absolute authority. Researchers who study leadership say those traits are not the ultimate keys to greatness. Good leadership isn’t something you can create by yourself—after all, the followers have their own ideas and needs. And although coercion through carrot (reward) or stick (punishment) may be sufficient to achieve short-term goals, neither will change minds and hearts. As social psychologists Stephen D....

Tune into tonight’s baseball All-Star game and you’ll see a familiar ritual: Batters standing in the on-deck circle will swing a weighted bat (or even a heavy, pipelike club) while they wait to hit. The exercise is intended to improve players’ bat speed, with the idea being that the regular bat feels lighter after taking cuts with the heavier one. But a new study suggests batters who add ounces to their practice swings may be making an error....