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The late 1990s was the most productive period in the history of biological research. The birth of Dolly, the first cloned mammal, was quickly followed by the first successful derivation of human embryonic stem cells and then, as the new millennium dawned, the completion of the Human Genome Project. Since then the media have amplified these achievements, with the enthusiastic encouragement of many of the researchers involved, to create intense public excitement about a new era of regenerative medicine....

Nepalese porters carry seemingly crushing loads with what appears to be little difficulty. Their approach, which uses a head strap known as a namlo to support a basket, contributes to their being the most energy efficient human transporters in the world, a new report indicates. Guillaume J. Bastien and his colleagues at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium studied porters traveling to a weekly bazaar in the town of Namche near Mount Everest....

Dear EarthTalk: What’s going to happen to the U.S. solar industry when the federal solar investment tax credit expires next year? – Victoria Chase, Washington, DC In the U.S., a new solar project was installed every three minutes in 2014, and jobs in the solar industry rose from 15,000 employees in 2005 to nearly 174,000 today. This substantial growth is in large part thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005’s 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for commercial and residential solar energy systems....

From Nature magazine Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science. A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx....

Trauma is insidious. It not only increases a person’s risk for psychiatric disorders, but can also spill over into the next generation. People who were traumatized during the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia tended to have children with depression and anxiety, for example, and children of Australian veterans of the Vietnam War have higher rates of suicide than the general population. Trauma’s impact comes partly from social factors, such as its influence on how parents interact with their children....

String theory used to get everyone all tied up in knots. Even its practitioners fretted about how complicated it was, while other physicists mocked its lack of experimental predictions. The rest of the world was largely oblivious. Scientists could scarcely communicate just why string theory was so exciting why it could fulfill Albert Einstein’s dream of the ultimate unified theory, how it could give insight into such deep questions as why the universe exists at all....

Amanda Singer was 17 the first time someone snaked a tube up her nose, down the back of her throat and into her stomach—funneling a nutritional supplement into her body. Singer needed the feeding tube because of anorexia bulimia. That first time, she was nervous and extremely uncomfortable but eventually she learned a few strategies to make the process easier. For example, she learned that if she drank water through a straw while the tube was being put in, the swallowing would help ease the tube down her throat....

By Patrick Rucker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department announced on Friday it is extending the government comment period on the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that likely postpones a final decision on the controversial project until after the November 4 mid-term elections. President Barack Obama has said he will make a final decision on whether to allow the pipeline connecting Canada’s oil sands region to Texas refiners and several government agencies had been given until the end of May to weigh in....

Recent exploration of rare volcanic rocks in the rugged, dangerous desert of southern Afghanistan has identified world-class concentrations of rare earth elements, the prized group of raw materials that are essential in the manufacture of many modern technologies, from electric cars to solar panels. So far, geologists say, they have mapped one million metric tons of these critical elements, which include lanthanum, cerium and neodymium. That’s enough to supply the world’s rare earth needs for 10 years based on current consumption, points out Robert Tucker, the U....

For iPhone and Android (free; Android version pending) First, let’s get something straight: concussions are miserable. Despite having edited countless stories on traumatic brain injury, I never fully grasped how painful, frustrating and debilitating the recovery from a concussion can be. One rollerblading accident later, I’m singing a new tune: for nearly six weeks, I have been plagued by persistent headaches, fatigue, dizziness and difficulty concentrating. Lucky for me, just before my accident, the U....

By Rory Carroll SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California fracking opponents aiming to stop development of massive state oil reserves are focusing their drive this year around the state’s record-breaking drought, arguing oil production would suck sorely needed water from farms and homes. California assemblyman Marc Levine told Reuters last week that he will co-author an upcoming bill that would place a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the state, and said he will use the drought, which could be the state’s worst ever, to bolster his position....

A digital replica of Earth could help scientists better model the future of our planet and find solutions to problems wrought by climate change. The advanced model, dubbed Digital Twin Earth, is being developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its partners based on data and images from Earth-observation satellites and sensors on the ground. To run reliably, the project will require new advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and powerful supercomputers, which are currently being developed....

As the world’s aging population grows rapidly, so has its appetite for health tips, tricks and products that could help guard against the ravages of time. Among countless dietary supplements—vitamins, minerals and other products—some people have pinned their hopes on a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a key player in the cellular production of energy. Often written as NAD+, the name of its oxidized form, the molecule participates in a host of metabolic pathways and is involved in other important processes, such as DNA repair....

As SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has spread throughout the world, many observers have failed to take note of the millions of illnesses and deaths caused by HIV—another virus that has approached pandemic status during its history. Now an HIV variant that is more virulent and transmissible has been discovered in the Netherlands, where it apparently has been circulating for decades, according to new research. Luckily, none of the variant’s new mutations make it resistant to widely used therapies....

People say they don’t like negative political ads, but do they work? —Matthew Robison, Contoocook, N.H. Donald Green, professor of political science at Columbia University, answers: For 20 years political scientists have investigated whether negative campaign ads, those that criticize the opponent, are more effective than positive ads, which extol the sponsoring candidate. Yet the jury is out on whether “going negative” pays off. A comprehensive literature analysis published in 2007 in the Journal of Politics examined the effects of political ads....

Paediatricians and families in the United States are eagerly waiting to see whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will authorize a COVID-19 vaccine for the nation’s roughly 28 million 5- to 11-year-olds. Yesterday, an FDA advisory committee reviewed data from a clinical trial testing a low-dose version of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech on children in that age group—and voted nearly unanimously to recommend that the FDA grant the shot emergency approval....

Building-size chunks of rock were photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in January as they broke free from a disintegrating comet zooming around the sun. The relatively rare images are providing insight into how these icy space rocks die. The new images show a large, bright speck of light—the solid core of Comet 332P (short for 332P/Ikeya-Murakami)—trailed by a parade of smaller bluish-white dots. Over the course of three days, those small dots can be seen falling farther behind the comet’s main body....

Learning to read Chinese might seem daunting to Westerners used to an alphabetic script, but brain scans of French and Chinese native speakers show that people harness the same brain centers for reading across cultures. The findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Reading involves two neural systems: one that recognizes the shape of the word and a second that assesses the physical movements used to make the marks on a page, says study leader Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Gif-sur-Yvette, France....

Some people try to make the most of their spare time by exercising, volunteering or simply recharging their batteries. Others like to use that time to build robots that can be blasted to the moon and then set free to roam the lunar landscape. A group of engineers and researchers calling themselves Team Part-Time Scientists have chosen the latter, and are building a moon rover named Asimov they hope will win the coveted Google Lunar X PRIZE by early 2014....

The hydrogen explosions, melting fuel rods and radiation leaks at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are having an immediate impact on perceptions of nuclear power worldwide as many countries are earnestly searching for alternatives to fossil fuels. Safety will be a major concern, particularly as emergency workers in Japan continue battling to keep spent fuel rods stored on site at Fukushima Daiichi from melting down. Even before the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi could be brought under control and investigated, Germany earlier this week said it would shut down seven of its nuclear power plants built before 1980....