Abuse of opiates such as heroin, methadone and morphine destroy brain cells, reducing attention span and memory. But new research shows there may be a way to regain some lost patience and recall. Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that brain cells targeted for early death by continued opiate use may be salvaged by injections of synthetic human growth hormone (HGH)....
In 2012, on the flat, grassy grounds of John F. Kennedy International Airport, wildlife-control agents killed 10,123 birds. The species “depredated” at JFK, which lies just northeast of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife refuge in the New York City borough of Queens, included thousands of gulls, hundreds of starlings and mourning doves, and a smattering of more majestic species such as ospreys and the American kestrel. The long-running JFK depredation program is just one of many efforts around the globe to prevent dangerous, expensive collisions between birds and aircraft....
In the brand-new fossil vault at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa, shelf space is already running out. The glass-doored cabinets lining the room brim with bones of early human relatives found over the past 92 years in the many caves of the famed Cradle of Humankind region, just 40 kilometers northwest of here. The country’s store of extinct humans has long ranked among the most extensive collections in the world....
The old advice to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, may have roots in more than simply how others perceive you—many studies show that the clothes you wear can affect your mental and physical performance. Although such findings about so-called enclothed cognition are mostly from small studies in the laboratory that have not yet been replicated or investigated in the real world, a growing body of research suggests that there is something biological happening when we put on a snazzy outfit and feel like a new person....
Earthquakes are shaking the ground around Iceland’s explosive Bardarbunga volcano, but experts say there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this: The volcano is likely refilling its tank with magma and preparing, albeit slowly, for its next eruption. “Bardarbunga is a healthy volcano,” said Sara Barsotti, coordinator for volcanic hazards at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. “It is doing what it should be doing.” Bardarbunga is one of Iceland’s most active volcano systems....
Did scientists and public officials encourage residents of L’Aquila to let their guard down prior to a tragic April 2009 earthquake that killed 309 people in that central Italian city? That is what an Italian court will consider Saturday as it resumes an unprecedented manslaughter trial of six Italian geophysicists and one former government official. The defendants were part of Italy’s National Commission for Forecasting and Predicting Great Risks that held a special meeting in L’Aquila the week before the earthquake to address concerns over recent seismic activity but, according to prosecutors, provided “incomplete, imprecise and contradictory information....
What does it take to get ahead at the office? It’s well-known that personality influences professional prowess, as high earners tend to be extraverted, ambitious, conscientious and self-confident. Whether you measure success in wages or personal satisfaction, superstars in the workplace tend to be energetic and proactive, with a high need for achievement. A surprising new study suggests that personality plays an even bigger role in workplace outcomes than previously thought — but in an unexpected way....
Researchers may have identified a master switch that activates the liver’s ability to heal itself, suggesting a route to better treatments for liver diseases such as hepatitis and cirrhosis. Mice that lacked the gene showed a marked deterioration in their livers and lived shorter lives than normal mice. Damage to the liver activates a group of specialized wound-healers called hepatic stellate cells (HSCs), which churn out scaffoldlike collagen fibers that support the growth of new liver cells....
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will not regulate a mushroom genetically modified withthe gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9. The long-awaited decision means that the mushroom can be cultivated and sold without passing through the agency’s regulatory process—making it the first CRISPR-edited organism to receive a green light from the US government. “The research community will be very happy with the news,” says Caixia Gao, a plant biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing, who was not involved in developing the mushroom....
Up to one million plant and animal species face extinction, many within decades, because of human activities, says the most comprehensive report yet on the state of global ecosystems. Without drastic action to conserve habitats, the rate of species extinctions—already tens to hundreds of times higher than the average across the last ten million years—will only increase, says the analysis by a United Nations-backed panel, the International Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)....
A severe respiratory illness is knocking the wind out of Midwesterners, sending hundreds of children coughing and wheezing to the hospital. The primary suspect in the outbreak is the seldom seen Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), kin to the common cold’s viral culprit. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified EV-D68 in 19 of 22 intensive care patients from Missouri and 11 of 14 in Illinois. EV-D68 targets the upper respiratory tract and causes breathing difficulties....
Some children’s crayons—marketed with colorful characters such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers and Mickey Mouse—and play crime lab kits contain cancer-causing, lung damaging asbestos fibers, according to a report released today. The report, commissioned by the environmental nonprofit Environmental Working Group Action Fund, found that four brands of children’s crayons out of 28 boxes tested and two of 21 children fingerprint kits contained asbestos. All of the products that tested positive for asbestos were made in China and imported to the United States....
The first step to treating or preventing a disease is often finding out what drives it. In the case of neurodegenerative disorders, the discovery two decades ago of what drives them changed the field: all of them—including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease)—involve the accumulation of misfolded proteins in brain cells. Typically when a protein misfolds, the cell destroys it, but as a person ages, this quality-control mechanism starts to fail and the rogue proteins build up....
By usan Moran of Nature magazineNitrate levels in the waters off China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula are soaring, according to a 30-year study published in Science today. Researchers attribute the nitrate spike to rises in nitrogen pollution, and warn that it could severely affect marine ecology, leading to algal blooms and ‘dead zones’ with low oxygen levels.Researchers from South Korea and the United States have analysed measurements, taken from the 1980s to the 2000s, of the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous at various depths in the seas bordering China’s east coast – namely the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan....
By David Cyranoski of Nature magazineAfter the Fukushima nuclear disaster spewed radiation across northern Japan in March, some feared that farming there would be shut down for years. But early studies of how the radiation has accumulated in plants and the soil now suggest that farmers in much of the region can go back to work.Soon after the meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, the government evacuated people living within 30 kilometers of the plant, and later imposed restrictions on agricultural products....
A good cephalopod fossil is hard to find. Although ammonite shells, belemnite guards and other indicators of hard body parts are abundant in the fossil record, paleontologists seldom get to see the characteristic soft-tissue anatomy of these many-armed swimmers. Finds are so rare that one from 1982 still stands out: a 165-million-year-old fossilized octopus uncovered in France. J. C. Fischer and B. Riou named the eight-armed invertebrate Proteroctopus ribeti and described its suckers to the delight of other paleontologists....
To become a world bathed in oceans of water and habitable, Earth first had to take a beating. A popular hypothesis holds that icy comets and asteroids pummeling early Earth delivered the planet’s water from the icy outer reaches of the solar system. Rocky, terrestrial worlds in other planetary systems might become watery by the same process, but assessing just how much ice is available to distant, newborn planets has been challenging....
By Marian Turner of Nature magazineThe unique physiology of the human liver means that the toxicity of some candidate drugs is not picked up during preclinical tests in animals. But mice implanted with miniature human livers can mimic the ways in which the human body breaks down chemical compounds, to help spot potential problems before drugs are tested in humans.A team led by Sangeeta Bhatia, a biomedical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, made 20-millimetre-long artificial human livers and implanted them into otherwise normal mice....
The Karuk people define themselves by the Klamath River, just as the Romans did the Tiber or the Egyptians did the Nile. The word “Karuk” means “upstream,” a reference to the waterway, which runs from Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, across the mountains of northern California — where the Karuk live — before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Every year, at the end of summer, the Karuk celebrate the river, the mountains and the forest in their “making the world right” ceremonies....
In my Scientific American column this month, I pointed out three tech trends that are worth celebrating: the end of the megapixel race in digital cameras, the adoption of micro USB as a universal cellphone charging cord across all brands, and the rise of design simplicity as a marketing point (see: iPod, Wii, Flip). But life isn’t all sunshine and bunnies. For every positive trend, you’ll have no problem finding a negative one....
