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From Nature magazine Heralding a future in which a child’s genetic blueprint can be safely scanned for traits and defects long before birth, researchers have announced that they have reconstructed the genome of a fetus using a blood sample from its mother and a saliva sample from its father. The work is published in Science Translational Medicine. The feat is possible because when a woman is pregnant, her blood contains fragments of DNA both from her genome and from that of her unborn child....

For a limited time, the full text of this article is being made available for fans of Scientific American’s page on Facebook. Read it now or become a fan. For the past two decades new yorkers have been the beneficiaries of the largest and longest sustained drop in street crime ever experienced by a big city in the developed world. In less than a generation, rates of several common crimes that inspire public fear—homicide, robbery and burglary—dropped by more than 80 percent....

UKRAINE A 360-foot-tall steel and concrete hangar now covers Chernobyl’s reactor 4, site of the 1986 nuclear meltdown. The structure replaced a leaking shield that was installed immediately after the disaster—and should prevent more radioactive debris from escaping. MEXICO Archaeologists discovered that the famed Kukulcán pyramid at Chichén Itzá is made up of three pyramids nested within one another. They theorize the structure was built in three phases: the innermost pyramid during the years A....

Not long ago New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C., were poster children for urban decay. But these cities came roaring back: they tapped deep wells of experience in finance, communications and technology to flourish in a globalized world. They illustrate perfectly the power and resilience of the city as brain trust. Although they have their problems, urban areas continue to lure new residents because of the economic, health and educational benefits that accrue from face-to-face social networking....

Share Your PhotosUpload If there was ever a year to commemorate Pi Day in a big way, this is it. The date of this Saturday—3/14/15—gives us not just the first three digits (as in most years) but the first five digits of pi, the famous irrational number 3.14159265359… that expresses the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. For an extra thrill, be sure to observe Pi Day on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 (A....

We often hear that 60 is the new 50 and 70 the new 60. It is a bromide borne out by old photos. Just check out images of your grandparents or great-grandparents (depending on your age) and notice their stooped and soft bodies, their lined faces and how they seem anchored in their chairs when they were barely pushing 60. What a contrast with vigorous, gym-going sexagenarians of today! Recent studies comparing populations born in different decades have looked beyond these surface impressions to nail down actual physical and mental differences in the ways we are aging....

Physicists using the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, have discovered a new kind of heavy particle, they announced this week at a conference in Venice. The particle, known as Xi-cc++ (pronounced “Ks-CC plus-plus”), is composed of three smaller elementary particles called quarks—specifically, one lighter-weight “up” quark like those found in protons and neutrons as well as two “charm” quarks, which are a heavier and more exotic variety....

Dear EarthTalk: What are the new nutrition standards for school lunches that have some students boycotting their cafeterias and discarding the food?—Melissa Makowsky, Trenton, N.J. Indeed, some 31 million American kids participating in the federally supported National School Lunch Program have been getting more whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables in their diets—whether they like it or not. The change is due to new school meal standards unveiled by the U....

A massive mud flow that has buried villages, a highway and other structures near the city of Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia, (aka Lusi, for Lumpur Sidoarjo) spewed oil for more than a week in late March, according to geologists there. The threat of oil in the mix added to the health and environmental risks from the mud eruption that was most likely caused by oil drilling gone awry. The mud volcano has displaced 30,000 people and caused roughly $1 billion in damage since erupting on May 29, 2006, according to geologists at the Durham University in England....

By Lizzie BuchenThe mysterious Peruvian culture that preceded the Incas had a significant hand in its own catastrophic collapse, new research suggests.The Nazca people are thought to be responsible for the enormous drawing or geoglyphs etched into the deserts of southern Peru, known as the Nazca lines. Around 500 AD, archaeological evidence indicates that the then-flourishing society came to a sudden and bloody demise.A leading hypothesis for this precipitous collapse proposes that massive floods destroyed the society’s agricultural system, causing the society to fragment and feud over abruptly scant resources....

By William James and Andy Bruce LONDON (Reuters) - A health worker who has become the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in Britain was being treated at a London hospital on Tuesday after contracting the disease in West Africa. The woman arrived from Scotland at the Royal Free hospital, Britain’s designated Ebola treatment center, in an ambulance accompanied by police vehicles, a Reuters witness said. “The latest update we have on the condition of the patient is that she is doing as well as can be expected in the circumstances,” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said....

Peabody Energy Corp. describes its statement that it would more fully disclose the financial risks it faces from climate change as a penalty-free modification of its financial reporting process. “There is no other action associated with this settlement, no admission or denial of wrongdoing and no financial penalty,” the company said of the culmination of a two-year investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Office in which it was accused of violating state laws prohibiting “false and misleading conduct” in statements to the public and investors....

Among natural disasters, tornadoes are notoriously difficult to predict. They require a complex set of conditions in order to form, some of which scientists still don’t fully understand, and forecasting is rarely accurate more than a week or two in advance. That makes it even harder to parse out the potential influence of global warming on tornado season. But scientists have begun to uncover some intriguing links between tornado outbreaks in the United States and large-scale climate patterns in other parts of the world....

ROCKVILLE, Md.—A new experiment aimed at achieving actor Christopher Reeve’s dream of finding an effective treatment for spinal paralysis was announced this week at an international meeting of scientists and people with spinal cord injury sponsored by the United 2 Fight Paralysis Foundation. The approach, which already is shown to be promising in animals and avoids the need for patients to take immunosuppressive drugs, has not yet been proved effective in humans....

How do you make mirror-concentrated sunlight cheaper than burning natural gas? Put it in a greenhouse, argues new solar start-up GlassPoint, which unveiled its first such solar hot water greenhouse on February 24—in a dusty, old oil field in California’s Central Valley. Why? Because cheap steam means more oil. Ensconced amidst the derricks of Berry Petroleum Company’s oil field in McKittrick, Calif., the 650-square-meter demonstration of a greenhouse-based solar thermal steam plant will help pre-heat water to 88 degrees Celsius....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. President Donald Trump has the environmental community understandably concerned. He and members of his Cabinet have questioned the established science of climate change, and his choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has sued the EPA many times and regularly sided with the fossil fuel industry. Even if the Trump administration withdraws from all international climate negotiations and reduces the EPA to bare bones, the effects of climate change are happening and will continue to build....

The hubbub around mutations in the virus that causes COVID-19—and how they might make it more infectious—has been around since the early phase of the pandemic. A preprint study about a particular mutation involving the “spikes” studding the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen had previously drawn attention, and that investigation has now been peer-reviewed and published in Cell. The paper details a change in one amino acid in the virus that may have made it more infectious....

A windless dawn rises over Isla Guadalupe, 150 miles west of the Baja California coast. Rolling slightly in a gentle Pacific swell, our 80-foot trawler Horizon motors toward the island’s north end. The skipper, Greg Grivetto, is standing the final watch of a 20-hour passage from San Diego. He glances down through the bridge windows at the dozen or so passengers gathered on Horizon’s foredeck. We’re shaking off sleep, gabbing, sipping coffee, eager to catch sight of our first landfall on this remote volcanic rock....

THE GREAT German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz not only discovered the first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy) but also invented the ophthalmoscope and was first to measure nerve impulse velocity. He is, in addition, widely regarded as the founding father of the science of human visual perception—and is, to both of us, an inspiration. We have often emphasized in our column that even the simplest act of perception involves active interpretation, or “intelligent” guesswork, by the brain about events in the world; it involves more than merely reading out the sensory inputs sent from receptors....

Highland Park’s streetlights were torn out in 2011 because the predominantly Black Detroit suburb couldn’t pay its electricity bill after the 2008 economic recession. Today a growing number of street lamps once again cast reassuring pools of light—and this time they are cheaper because they harvest the energy of the sun. Highland Park offers an example of what environmental justice advocates hope to do more of to bring affordable, clean energy to communities of color....