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A new era in physics will open up when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) extends the reach of subatomic particle investigations to unprecedented energy scales. But even before researchers initiate the first high-energy collisions in the LHC’s giant storage ring, located under the French-Swiss border, they are already contemplating and working toward the next great particle accelerator. And the consensus choice of the particle physics community is a proposed facility called the International Linear Collider (ILC), a machine more than 30 kilometers long that would smash electrons and positrons together at velocities very close to the speed of light....

Thirteen killed in Midwest flooding, at least 11 in Texas Emergencies declared in Missouri and New Mexico Almost 1,500 flights canceled nationwide (Adds detail on Texas homes damaged, snow totals in New Mexico, flight cancellations, paragraphs 9, 17-19) By Lisa Maria Garza DALLAS (Reuters) - Storms hit the U.S. South, Southwest and Midwest over the Christmas holiday weekend, unleashing floods and tornadoes that killed at least 43 people, flattened buildings and snarled transportation for millions during a busy travel time....

The eminent British scientist James Lovelock, back in the 1970s, formulated his theory of Gaia, which held that the Earth was a kind of super organism. It had a self-regulating quality that would keep everything within that narrow band that made life possible. If things got too warm or too cold—if sunlight varied, or volcanoes caused a fall in temperatures, and so forth—Gaia would eventually compensate. This was a comforting notion....

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. Katelyn Jetelina updated her COVID-19 vaccine comparisons table on 5/20/21 at her site Your Local Epidemiologist. Highlights include the latest data on how well various vaccines protect against SARS-CoV-2 variants. The post also includes a helpful discussion of two ways that researchers measure how well a vaccine works – efficacy (analyzing the extent of disease protection in experiments) and immunogenicity (analyzing levels of a type of antibodies made in response to a pathogen over time)....

Another ancient genome, another mystery. DNA gleaned from a 400,000-year-old femur from Spain has revealed an unexpected link between Europe’s hominin inhabitants of the time and a cryptic population, the Denisovans, who are known to have lived much more recently in southwestern Siberia. The DNA, which represents the oldest hominin sequence yet published, has left researchers baffled because most of them believed that the bones would be more closely linked to Neanderthals than to Denisovans....

Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium,” is one of the world’s toughest microbes, capable of surviving in radiation strong enough to kill any other known life-form. Experiments have now shown that if Conan the Bacterium or a similar microbe existed on Mars, it could survive 33 feet (10 meters) beneath the surface, frozen and dried out, for 280 million years. In a study led by Michael Daly, who is a professor of pathology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland and a member of the National Academies’ Committee on Planetary Protection, scientists tested half a dozen microbes and fungi—all “extremophiles” able to live in environments where other organisms die—to see how long they could survive in an environment that simulated the mid-latitudes of Mars....

Researchers have turned up numerous surprising health benefits of friendship—from fending off colds to coping with chronic disease. Yet not all friendships are created equal. The nature of our social ties determines whether they help—or hurt. The Findings Several large studies have found that friends contribute to a healthy life. For example, a famous longitudinal study of 15,000 septuagenarian Australians, published in 2005, found that the size and strength of a person’s circle of friends, but not necessarily his or her family, predicted survival a decade later....

By Mo Costandi of Nature magazineEuropean researchers have identified a gene that is linked to improved memory, but also to increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Dominique de Quervain of the University of Basel in Switzerland and his colleagues recruited around 700 healthy young volunteers, obtaining DNA samples from them to analyze the sequence of their PRKCA gene. This gene is one of many known to be involved in the formation of emotional memories, and encodes an enzyme called protein kinase C-....

The recent documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? roundly criticized General Motors Corporation for prematurely quashing production and further development of the EV-1 electric car, a battery-powered, two-seat commuter vehicle that managed to gain a small but enthusiastic fan following before the program’s termination in 2003. The EV-1’s main drawbacks, according to GM, were insufficient driving range (less than 150 miles) and overly slow battery recharging times (eight hours). “EV-1 owners hated having to plan their lives around recharging the car’s battery pack,” recalls Tony Posawatz, a vehicle line director for GM....

Oceans are highly dynamic habitats: nutrients flood in from a river only to dwindle away over intervening days or weeks; currents shift the mix of waters; an oil spill suddenly makes hundreds of millions of liters of hydrocarbons available to eat. Without sex—and many bacteria don’t have sex thank you very much—it’s harder for marine microbes to mix it up and achieve the genetic diversity that’s key to population success. So how to adapt quickly rather than wait for the long, slow process of mutation in a species?...

A hypersonic “SpaceLiner” would whisk up to 50 passengers from Europe to Australia in 90 minutes. The futuristic vehicle would do so by riding a rocket into Earth’s upper atmosphere, reaching 24 times the speed of sound before gliding in for a landing. Many challenges still remain, including finding the right shape for the vehicle, said Martin Sippel, project coordinator for SpaceLiner at the German Aerospace Center. But he suggested the project could make enough progress to begin attracting private funding in another 10 years and aim for full operations by 2050....

Mere months after making headlines for proposing a technologically feasible way of rendering objects invisible, a research team has demonstrated a rudimentary example of an invisibility cloak. Concentric rings of so-called metamaterial caused microwaves to partially bend around an enclosed object like a water flows around a stone, the group reports. A metamaterial is a composite structure, built of metal rings and wires embedded in fiberglass, that makes light behave in weird ways....

By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK (Reuters) - A doctor’s expected hospital discharge on Tuesday after weeks of isolation treatment for Ebola was cheered by New Yorkers - from City Hall to the Harlem apartment building where he lives. The release of Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, who worked with Ebola patients in Guinea and had been held at Bellevue Hospital Center since he was diagnosed with the virus on Oct. 23, will mean no one in the United States is being treated for the disease, according to media reports....

For 200 years, Randy Mumme’s family has raised cattle on the same plot of southeast Texas land. Then, about 10 years ago, something began to change. His steers were losing weight. Cows were miscarrying; one gave birth to a calf with three legs. Many calves were stillborn. The family’s ranching practices had not changed over the centuries, but the environment had. His ranch is four miles downwind of large industrial plants that spew tons of carcinogens and other toxic substances into the air....

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazineCells taken from the tips of mouse tails and genetically reprogrammed to mimic mature liver cells can repair damaged livers.The ultimate goal of such studies is to use the same technique to reprogram human cells, reducing the need for liver transplants in patients with end-stage liver disease. Although the study in mice, published online today in Nature, is still far removed from the clinic, it does provide an important proof of concept: it is thought to be the first time that cells reprogrammed using a process called transdifferentiation - produced without passing through a stem-cell stage - have been shown to fix a damaged organ....

By Ben Hirschler Switzerland’s Roche has moved into pole position in the race to launch the world’s first treatment for progressive multiple sclerosis but smaller players are working hard on rival approaches. While there are a number of treatments for relapsing remitting MS, the most common form of the disease, there are no approved drugs for progressive MS, which is marked by steadily worsening symptoms. That makes the success of Roche’s antibody drug ocrelizumab in a 732-patient global clinical trial big news....

What is an itch? Scientists have speculated that it is a mild manifestation of pain or perhaps a malfunction of overly sensitive nerve endings stuck in a feedback loop. They have even wondered whether itching is mostly psychological (just think about bed bugs for a minute). Now a study rules out these possibilities by succeeding where past attempts have failed: a group of neuroscientists have finally isolated a unique type of nerve cell that makes us itch and only itch....

The murky brown smoke that hangs over Beijing and other industrial cities has long presented a health challenge to China. Unwilling to shut the factories and coal-burning plants that cause pollution, authorities instead are seeking novel solutions. Proposals have included seeding clouds to make rain to wash particulates out of the sky and equipping bicycles with pedal-powered generators that pump fresh air into riders’ helmets. The latest idea comes from Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, who hopes to create bubbles of clean air in various pockets around the Beijing....

Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Adapted from The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion, by Wendy Williams. Copyright © 2015 by Wendy Williams. Some time around 35,000 years ago, when much of Europe was locked up in sheets of ice, an artist acquired a bit of mammoth ivory and began carving. A masterpiece emerged in the form of a two-inch-long horse. Its magnificently arched stallion’s neck combines muscular potency and natural grace....

Scientists have long been interested in the relation between a nose’s form and its function. New research is showing that climate may have played an important role in how the nose’s internal structure evolved. Researchers in Germany recently showed that individuals from cold, dry climates, such as Greenland or Siberia, had higher and narrower nasal cavities than those from hot, humid climates, such as Papua New Guinea or Gabon. The German team, led by Marlijn Noback of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, took computer-aided measurements of the nasal cavities of 100 skulls representing 10 human groups living in five different climates....