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“We’re back!” With that triumphant Thursday morning tweet, the NASA Climate Twitter feed announced its return, the end of the government shutdown and the restoration of climate science activities at the agency. NASA, which is very active on social media, had been missed by its 5 million followers during the shutdown. To fill the gap, online space and science enthusiasts created the hashtag #ThingsNASAMightTweet, as well as the @NASAShutdown Twitter account....

Some 279,000 years ago, on a ridge overlooking a vast lake in central Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, hunters painstakingly shaped chunks of greenish black volcanic glass into small, sharp points. After chipping the brittle material to create cutting edges, they attached each point to a shaft of wood, producing a sort of javelin. It might sound like a modest feat of engineering by today’s standards. But the technology was nothing less than revolutionary....

Plague has largely been forgotten in the Western world, but it remains endemic in several regions of Africa, as well as parts of Asia and South America. The disease is transmitted by bites from fleas infected with the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is most prevalent in wild rodents, but humans can also get infected from flea bites. According to the World Health Organization, between 1,000 and 2,000 cases are reported worldwide, though the actual infection rates are likely much higher....

Scientists trying to determine how the Earth might change as temperatures rise often look back in time to a period around 3.6 million years ago called the middle Pliocene, when concentrations of carbon dioxide ranged from about 380 to 450 parts per million. (Today they are nearing 400.) A study published yesterday in the journal Science analyzed the longest land-based sediment core ever taken in the Arctic and found that during this period, from 3....

NASA has long wanted to send a mission to Mars to grab some of its surface and sling it back to Earth. But it looks like the agency will snag a sample from a measly asteroid before returning pieces of the Red Planet home. A U.S. mission to return an asteroid sample is approved, funded and set to launch on an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida in September 2016—similar missions to Mars are stuck in pdf loops....

Transistors, the tiny switches that flip on and off inside computer chips, have long been the domain of electricity. But scientists are beginning to develop chip components that run on light. Last week, in a remarkable achievement, a team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge reported building a transistor that is switched by a single photon. Conventionally, photons are used only to deliver information, racing along fiber-optic cables with unparalleled speed....

Sitting in a dimly lit bar in Japan, then graduate student Michael Lee was scribbling on a beer coaster as night fell, jotting down a list of chemical ingredients before he forgot them. Earlier that day scientists at Toin University of Yokohama had generously shared their groundbreaking recipe for making solar cells from a new material called perovskite rather than the usual silicon. The cells were only 3.8 percent efficient in converting sunlight to electricity, so the world had not taken notice....

Key concepts Memory Neuroscience Psychology Graphing Introduction Have you ever tried to remember an entire list of groceries—without looking at the written list while you’re shopping? Even a master of memory skills may fail to recall an item or two. But why does this happen? In this activity you will learn a little more about memory— how it works and what factors make some details more memorable than others. You will also re-create a psychology experiment that helped scientists identify two effects that can distinctly shape what we remember....

Isaiah Austin’s decision to enter and then withdraw from Thursday’s National Basketball Association Draft could end up saving his life. Medical testing conducted as part of May’s NBA Combine, a series of workouts that gives teams an opportunity to evaluate draft prospects, revealed that Austin suffers from Marfan’s syndrome. The connective tissue disorder likely contributed to the seven-foot, one-inch frame that helped Austin excel at basketball. The condition also puts him at high risk for a thoracic aortic aneurysm—swelling in the upper part of the large artery that carries blood from the heart, down through the chest and into the abdomen that can strike without warning and is often fatal if not monitored closely....

By many measures, the US leads the world in biomedical discoveries, technologies and therapies. Recombinant DNA technologies for genetic manipulation were born in America and have produced a multitude of drugs and diagnostic devices by means of a new commercial entity, the biotech startup. At a critical stage in US history, federal and local governments nearly banned recombinant DNA technology. But instead new regulations required academic and commercial research entities to submit their plans for approval to national and local advisory committees–and research prospered....

By Bill Chameides A look at this week’s science on the environment. At the end of each week, TheGreenGrok staff scours the major science journals to get the latest research on the environment, and then chooses which ones we’ll feature in our posts for the coming week. But that leaves a lot out. What’s a blogger to do? How about this: Here’s a word cloud from all of the papers and releases we read from last week....

UNITED NATIONS – Out of a crowded field of dire predictions regarding humanity having reached 7 billion in population came a U.N. report this week that called the moment an opportunity to stress sustainability and improve lives in less-developed nations. The U.N. Population Fund published a study yesterday on the 7 billion mark that calls for better global planning and investments early in the century. That would prepare the way for what many expect will be 10 billion humans on the planet by midcentury, the report says....

The largest, most-consistent money fueling the climate denial movement are a number of well-funded conservative foundations built with so-called “dark money,” or concealed donations, according to an analysis released Friday afternoon. The study, by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, is the first academic effort to probe the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the climate denial movement. It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, whose funding cannot be traced, has risen dramatically over the past five years....

Imagine shrinking the beakers, eyedroppers, chemicals and heaters of a chemistry lab onto a little microchip that could dangle from a key chain. A growing number of companies and universities are claiming to have devised such marvels, ready to perform vital analyses from detecting biological warfare agents in a soldier’s bloodstream to identifying toxins in a tainted package of hamburger meat. Almost all the new devices are surprisingly far from portable, however....

In quantum mechanics, there is a pervasive theory known as the “observer effect,” which states that the act of observing a phenomenon (usually by making some kind of measurement) necessarily changes that phenomenon. In other words, just by being there and having an interest in the outcome, we affect that outcome. While the explanations behind the observer’s influence in quantum mechanics come down to the measuring instrument and not the observer’s conscious mind, we also see strong evidence for the placebo effect in medicine: a patient’s condition can improve if they just believe they are receiving an effective treatment....

Defeat is never fun, but losing a game of poker is less painful when it’s due to the luck of the draw rather than an opponent who’s cheating. Unfairness fires people up, whereas bad luck just disappoints. But interestingly, this isn’t true for everyone. In a series of studies, we found that people who have higher levels of psychological entitlement—who believe they deserve good things—actually felt victimized and angered when they experienced, remembered or imagined bad luck befalling them....

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled on Friday in China’s commercial hub of Shanghai as record levels of air pollution shrouded the city in smog, prompting authorities to issue the highest level of health warning.The incident is especially embarrassing at a time when China seeks to build Shanghai into a global business hub on par with the likes of London, New York and Hong Kong by 2020....

From Nature magazine Some of the largest stones used to construct Beijing’s Forbidden City beginning in 1406 were hauled from distant quarries on wooden sledges along ice roads, ancient Chinese documents have revealed. Calculations now reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that, on uneven, winding roads, this method is safer, more reliable and much easier than using wooden rollers or dragging the sledges over bare ground....

A single bottle of dirty water transformed into the power source for a home—such was the promise of a technology package that became known as the “artificial leaf.” And such was the vision introduced by its inventor, Daniel Nocera, at the inaugural summit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy in 2010. The artificial leaf pledged to store 30 kilowatt-hours of electricity after a mere four hours of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, or enough to power an average American “McMansion” for a day....

Ask Edith Smith, a proud 103-year-old, about her friends, and she’ll give you an earful. There’s Johnetta, 101, whom she’s known for 70 years and who has Alzheimer’s disease. “I call her every day and just say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ She never knows, but she says hi back, and I tease her,” Smith said. There’s Katie, 93, whom Smith met during a long teaching career with the Chicago Public Schools....