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By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazineIn December 2010, the US Congress passed the National Alzheimer’s Project Act. The law instructs the US government to develop its first-ever strategic plan for battling Alzheimer’s disease, the dementia-inducing brain disorder that is expected to afflict at least 11 million US citizens by 2050.Earlier this month, an advisory committee to Kathleen Sebelius, US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), issued a draft framework for the strategic plan....

Every day, in dozens of synchrotrons around the globe, electrons are whip­ped around in circular storage rings to provoke them into emitting X-rays, useful for imaging materials, identifying chemical-reaction products and determining crystal structures. But photon scientists do not want just any old storage ring. For more than a decade, they have dreamt of ‘ultimate’ storage rings — ones that use specialized magnets to produce X-ray beams that are as tightly focused as theory allows....

By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - A warming world could pose a risk of more frequent catastrophic flooding but also be a long-term boon for Vermont farmers and a shorter-lived thrill for its skiers, according to a state report released on Tuesday. The Vermont Climate Assessment found that higher rates of precipitation expected to come with climate change could bring heavier winter snows over the next 25 years, good news for ski resorts until the state becomes too warm to sustain significant amounts of snow....

By Reuters Staff GENEVA, April (Reuters) - Thirty confirmed cases of Ebola were reported in West Africa in the past week, the smallest number in nearly a year of the worst ever outbreak of the deadly fever, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. “This is the lowest weekly total since the third week of May 2014,” the WHO said in its latest update. The virus is receding in Liberia, which reported no cases in the week to April 5, and in Sierra Leone, which reported nine, its fifth consecutive weekly decrease, it said....

Add “therapist” to Beethoven’s list of talents. After listening to the master’s third and fifth sonatas, depressed patients in a recent study felt happier. The research, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, found that classical music benefited both genders and that the music gave the biggest boost to educated and younger people. This study supports previous findings that music therapy can be an effective and economical way to treat patients....

Since Charles Darwin’s day, biologists have depicted how new organisms evolve from old ones by adding branches to numerous trees that represent portions of the animal, plant and microbial kingdoms. Researchers from a dozen institutions recently completed a three-year effort to combine tens of thousands of trees into one diagram, most readable as a circle (below). The lines inside the circle represent all 2.3 million species that have been named. Biologists have genetic sequences for only about 5 percent of them, however; as more are finished, the relationships within and across groups of species may change....

The devastating neurodegenerative condition Alzheimer’s disease is incurable, but with early detection, patients can seek treatments to slow the disease’s progression, before some major symptoms appear. Now, by applying artificial intelligence algorithms to MRI brain scans, researchers have developed a way to automatically distinguish between patients with Alzheimer’s and two early forms of dementia that can be precursors to the memory-robbing disease. The researchers, from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, suggest the approach could eventually allow automated screening and assisted diagnosis of various forms of dementia, particularly in centers that lack experienced neuroradiologists....

A little more than 100 years ago most people–and most scientists–thought of matter as continuous. Although since ancient times some philosophers and scientists had speculated that if matter were broken up into small enough bits, it might turn out to be made up of very tiny atoms, few thought the existence of atoms could ever be proved. Today we have imaged individual atoms and have studied the particles that compose them....

Lesions in the lungs and shrunken adrenal glands distinguish dolphins that washed up dead in the Gulf of Mexico between June 2010 and December 2012 compared with those found in beachings elsewhere. As a result, researchers have linked the mass deaths to BP’s oil spill. “The dolphins have adrenal disease and lung disease consistent with exposure to petroleum products,” explains Stephanie Venn-Watson, lead author of the study published in PLoS One and veterinarian at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego....

With more than 161,000 members, the American Chemical Society is the world’s largest organization of scientists, almost all of them chemists or involved in chemistry-related businesses. The society is also a leading publisher, with about 45 scientific journals in its portfolio. The person running the society, then, has a lot of influence over a big slice of science. Last week the society announced that person would be Thomas M. Connelly, Jr....

In a rented 15-passenger van barreling south on Interstate 55 out of Chicago in April, a group of environmental activists, a legendary scientist and a camera crew embarked on a quixotic rescue effort. Their goal: saving Illinois nukes. “We shouldn’t be taking them off the table, in my opinion,” said James Hansen, a former scientist at NASA famous for raising the alarm about climate change before Congress in 1988, speaking from the van....

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a life-threatening muscle-wasting illness. Occurring mostly in males, it is the most common type of muscular dystrophy, striking about one in 3,500 boys and causing their muscles to start breaking down in early childhood. It often confines patients to wheelchairs by the time they are teenagers and usually leads to an early death from heart or respiratory failure. There is no cure—but a genetic fix tested in dogs may offer new hope....

Do blind people ever suffer from seasonal affective disorder? If so, can sunshine or tanning beds help? —Kirstin Steele, Charleston, S.C. Circadian and vision neu­ro­scientist Russell G. Foster of the University of Oxford answers: BECAUSE BLIND PEOPLE retain a newly discovered system of light-detecting cells, they, too, can suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Patients who have SAD struggle with serious mood changes in the fall and winter seasons. Symptoms include excessive sleepiness, low energy, and a tendency to crave sweets and starchy foods....

By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity—defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal—is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes....

(Updates with separate accident at Fukushima Daini) By Antoni Slodkowski TOKYO, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A worker at Japan’s destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Tuesday after falling inside a water storage tank, the latest in a spate of industrial accidents at the site of the March 2011 nuclear disaster, the world’s worst since Chernobyl. The death is the second in Fukushima in less than a year. Last week, labor inspectors warned the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co....

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are urging companies to broaden their carbon footprint calculations. They report that many U.S. companies in a variety of industries do not account for the entire supply chain that results in final goods and services—overlooking up to 75 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions involved. Most factories, it seems, assess only carbon dioxide released directly and not from materials processing or production of parts done by suppliers, which contributes significantly to the ultimate footprints....

This story was co-published with The New York Times. On Tuesday, the federal government is expected to release details of payments to doctors by every pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer in the country. The information is being made public under a provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The law mandates disclosure of payments to doctors, dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists and optometrists for things like promotional speaking, consulting, meals, educational items and research....

On April 22, 1970, millions of Americans took part in demonstrations, cleanups and other activities to make the first Earth Day. The event was the brainchild of then Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, and it was a watershed moment for the growing U.S. environmental movement: Americans had become increasingly aware that the same industrialization that had made the country wealthy was having an impact on the environment and their own health....

When Mick Jagger first sang “What a drag it is getting old,” he was 23 years old. Now at 69, he is still a veritable Jumpin’ Jack Flash on stage. Jagger seems to have found the secret to staying physically fit in his advancing years, but getting old can be a drag on the psyche. Many older adults fear memory loss and worry they are headed down the road to dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease....

The heart of our galaxy is oddly bright. Since 2009 astronomers have suggested that too much gamma-ray light is shining from the Milky Way’s core—more than all the known sources of light can account for. From the beginning scientists have suspected that they were seeing the long-sought signal of dark matter, the invisible form of mass thought to pervade the universe. But two recent studies offer more support for an alternate explanation: The gamma rays come from a group of spinning stars called pulsars that are just slightly too dim to see with current telescopes....