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By Reuters Staff WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday it will redirect $589 million in funds to prepare for and respond to the Zika virus because lawmakers have not approved its emergency funding request. But White House budget director Shaun Donovan said the move was only a temporary fix for Zika funding, adding that some measures would have to be delayed, curtailed or stopped unless the U.S. Congress approves an emergency funding request for more than $1....

Getting spacecraft to Mars is quite a hassle. Transportation costs can soar into the hundreds of millions of dollars, even when blasting off during “launch windows”—the optimal orbital alignments of Earth and Mars that roll around only every 26 months. A huge contributor to that bottom line? The hair-raising arrivals at the Red Planet. Spacecraft screaming along at many thousands of kilometers per hour have to hit the brakes hard, firing retrorockets to swing into orbit....

The United States is on the verge of losing its ability to monitor phytoplankton activity in the world’s oceans from space, the National Academy of Sciences said yesterday. The loss of satellite-based “ocean color” measurements would be a blow to climate science, because phytoplankton – tiny ocean plants – help regulate the global carbon cycle. Like plants on land, phytoplankton produce energy by photosynthesis, pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to fuel the process....

Of the super powers one might like to have, mind reading would likely land near the top of the list for many people. Now two papers published this week by Nature Neuroscience show how scientists are inching toward this goal. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of people’s brains, researchers report, can reveal what types of images they have recently seen. Yukiyasu Kamitani of ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, and Frank Tong of Princeton University showed subjects one of eight visual stimuli–images with stripes aligned in various orientations....

An ancient Greek “computer,” the Antikythera, could predict eclipses, count lunar cycles and probably represent the motions of the planets, among other celestial tracking tasks, according to new imaging of the corroded interior. Nature, November 30, 2006 A gene from a wild cousin could boost domesticated wheat’s protein, zinc and iron content by 10 to 15 percent. The gene accelerates the plant’s maturity, speeding the transfer of nutrients from leaves to grain....

In 1972 a young professor at the California Institute of Technology was asked to work part-time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as chief scientist for a new space mission, one that would probe the limits of the solar system and eventually enter interstellar space. Edward Stone accepted the assignment, and now, 33 years after the launch of the two Voyager spacecraft, he says the goal is in sight. He looks almost giddy as he talks about the implications of recent data received from Voyager 1....

As Breast Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close, researchers still struggle against a disease that claims more than 40,000 U.S. lives annually (pdf). Whereas ideas about prevention and treatment may vary from doctor to doctor, early detection is the key to successful treatment—when detected early enough, any cancer has a 90 percent cure rate. Catching cancer in its early stages is not easy though. Mammographies and other types of imaging tests are hardly foolproof, and neither are painful biopsy procedures, particularly when tumors are small and difficult to find....

Feeling Terror Fear of terrorism has made many Americans willing to curtail rights and sacrifice basic freedoms, according to a national survey of 715 respondents prepared by Erik C. Nisbet and James Shanahan of Cornell University for a December 2004 report. Percent of respondents who think the federal government should: Have more power to monitor Internet activities: 47 Indefinitely detain suspected terrorists: 63 Outlaw some activities even if constitutionally protected: 36 Percent who say the media should not: Cover protests: 33 Report criticisms of the government: 31 ATTITUDES TOWARD ISLAM: “Islam promotes violence....

As scientists look at crops to find ways to help them deal with climate change stress and growing populations, a tool has emerged to give them a new perspective: the view from underground. Plants are a lot like icebergs: A bulk of their mass is invisible to the naked eye, buried in their roots. Roots allow plants to compensate for their stationary role in life, hunting for nutrients and diving to mine for water in times of drought....

On 17 March, astronomer John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics presented long-awaited evidence of gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space — that originated from the Big Bang during a period of dramatic expansion known as inflation. By the time the Sun set that day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first paper detailing some of the discovery’s consequences had already been posted online, by cosmologist David Marsh of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, and his colleagues....

Editor’s Note: “Climate at Your Doorstep” is an effort by The Daily Climate to highlight stories about climate change impacts happening now. Find more stories like this at www.dailyclimate.org/doorstep. Much of the West is in drought, but a good portion of North America’s grain belt could do with a little less rain. Widespread flooding and record rains have swamped Canada’s wheat crop; Bloomberg News reported last week that farmers in the Canadian prairies have planted 10 percent less acreage than they did a year ago as a result of wet weather....

The sci-fi dream (or utter fantasy) of getting from one place to another instantaneously continued this February 14, with the opening of Doug Liman’s film Jumper, based on the novel by Steven Gould. We asked quantum physicist H. Jeff Kimble of the California Institute of Technology to explain how physicists understand quantum teleportation, which turns out to be more relevant to computing than to commuting. What’s the biggest misconception about teleportation in physics?...

James Hansen has been publicly speaking about climate change since 1988. The NASA climatologist testified to Congress that year and he’s been testifying ever since to crowds large and small, most recently to a small gathering of religious leaders outside the White House last week. The grandfatherly scientist has the long face of a man used to seeing bad news in the numbers and speaks with the thick, even cadence of the northern Midwest, where he grew up, a trait that also helps ensure that his sometimes convoluted science gets across....

Few things are more subject to change and passing fancies than dietary advice. And that can be true even when the advice comes from trusted health authorities. A dozen years ago the standard recommendation to new parents worried about their child developing an allergy to peanuts, eggs or other common dietary allergens was to avoid those items like the plague until the child was two or three years old. But in 2008 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) dropped that guidance, after studies showed it did not help....

Cigarettes contain hundreds of different strains of bacteria, including many human pathogens that may play a role in lung diseases and respiratory infections, new research shows. Most health research has focused on the impact of chemicals in cigarettes and the particulates that are produced when tobacco is burned. But a new study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, paints the most complete picture to date of the bacteria in tobacco, suggesting that the germs could be another potential source of infection and disease....

(Reuters) - Nearly 6.5 million people either selected or were enrolled in a new individual insurance plan for 2015 on the HealthCare.gov website through Dec. 26, the U.S. government health agency said on Tuesday. HealthCare.gov sells plans for 37 states while the remaining states sell individual insurance on their own online exchanges. In 2014, the 37 states represented 68 percent of the total nationwide enrollment of around 7 million people, the agency said....

Most people don’t spend much time pondering the diameter of their pupils. The fact is that we don’t have much control over our pupils, the openings in the center of the irises that allow light into the eyes. Short of chemical interventions—such as the eyedrops ophthalmologists use to widen their patients’ pupils for eye exams—the only way to dilate or shrink the pupils is by changing the amount of available light....

The pain and frustration of chronic insomnia affects one in 10 American adults, most of whom find no relief from current therapies. Now a new study finds that simply cooling the brain area just behind the forehead can help. In a study presented this summer at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s SLEEP 2011 conference, researchers fit 12 insomniacs with caps that use circulating water to cool the prefrontal cortex. The cap helps the insomniacs fall asleep about as fast—and stay asleep about as long—as adults without insomnia....

Much has been written on the wonders of human memory: its astounding feats of recall, the way memories shape our identities and are shaped by them, memory as a literary theme and a historical one. But what of forgetting? This is the topic of a new book by Douwe Draaisma, author of The Nostalgia Factory: Memory, Time and Ageing (Yale University Press, 2013; 176 pages) and a professor of the history of psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands....

Twelve million Americans seek medical relief from the perpetual whooshing, ringing or roaring noise of tinnitus, but there is currently no cure. Treatments such as electrical shocks, pills and sound therapy have had only limited success. But as researchers learn more about the causes of tinnitus—and its devastating emotional toll—they are discovering better options. Researchers at Neuromonics in Bethlehem, Pa., have developed a new iPod-like device called Neuromonics Oasis, which tackles each tinnitus sufferer’s unique combination of emotional and auditory symptoms....