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NASA says that the sole commode on the International Space Station is working again after a week on the fritz, but that it’s not 100 percent. The problem: a pump that separates out liquid waste malfunctioned, forcing the station’s three crew members to play space plumbers. “They swapped out lots of pieces of hardware,” NASA spokesperson Nicole Cloutier said, noting, “It’s still not working in the most ideal sense.” To maintain pressure in the pump, she says, crew members (Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman) must manually add water after every three flushes....

For the past 20 years pregnant women with an increased risk of developing blood clots have often been prescribed a common blood thinner to prevent serious complications from the clots, including preeclampsia (high blood pressure in the mother), disruption of the placenta, low birth weight and loss of the fetus. The largest randomized clinical trial to examine the therapy finds that the drug—low-molecular-weight heparin—is not effective. The find, reported in The Lancet, is the result of a dozen years of analysis of patients across five countries....

Arrival Once we are settled in a red pickup truck, my driver and I leave the airport behind and make our way through Chile’s Atacama Desert toward an isolated peak known as Cerro Manqui. Two hours later, as the car hugs a curve of the winding road that summits the mountain, I welcome a familiar sight: sunlight bouncing off the silver shells of the twin Magellan telescopes, Baade and Clay. My heart beats a little faster....

Once a year I treat myself to a night at the opera. Not the Marx Brothers movie—I own a copy and watch it more than once a year. No, I mean an evening at the actual Metropolitan Opera, which is pretty much the most spectacular entertainment opportunity in New York City once the baseball season is over. Of course, my rare trips to both the Met and Yankee Stadium bring to mind the kangaroo in the saloon who responds to the bartender’s comment about not getting a lot of marsupial customers with, “Not at these prices....

Homo Sapien’s Success In “The Most Invasive Species of All,” Curtis W. Marean includes a fanciful image of Neandertals telling boastful tales around their campfires. While this was clearly meant as a literary device, it points out a serious oversight: he left speech out of his list of current theories of why humans came to dominate the planet. And his few references to language imply that he believes speech was equally available to all human groups....

Russia’s nuclear ambitions were on full display at “AtomExpo”—a three-day festival of international nuclear technology and conversation hosted by Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company, this past June in Moscow. Whether it was Fukushima’s plant manager describing those first critical moments during the tsunami and the new thinking on “extreme” natural events or the myriad branches of the Rosatom empire showing off their wares at their slick booths, the message was clear: When it comes to nuclear, Russia is open for business....

DragonBox Compatibility: Apple iOS and OS X, Google Android, Microsoft Windows Cost: $6 Scientific American says: “A game that teaches the concepts behind algebra without being intimidating or ‘mathy.’” Description: Developed by WeWantToKnow, the goal of DragonBox is to create an app that’s fun and at the same time teaches players to solve difficult mathematical equations. Image courtesy of F-Sim F-Sim Space Shuttle Compatibility: Apple iOS, Google Android Cost: $3.99 Scientific American says: “Challenging game with amazing graphics....

The next big oil spill could be out of sight. Climate warming has packs of Arctic sea ice in retreat, opening up vast areas for oil and gas drilling. That is posing a new problem for spill detectors: There is still a lot of ice in the region, and people cannot see through it. Remember that giant oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout?...

During the summer of 1963, when i was six years old, my family traveled from our home in Philadelphia to Los Angeles to visit my maternal relatives. I already knew my grandmother well: she helped my mother care for my twin brothers, who were only 18 months my junior, and me. When she was not with us, my grandmother lived with her mother, whom I met that summer for the first time....

The most misused metric in science is getting a makeover — although many researchers would like it to disappear altogether. Information firm Thomson Reuters says that it will become more transparent over how it calculates impact factors, an annual ranking of more than 10,900 scientific journals that it published on 29 July, along with the names of 39 journals that it is barring from the list. The firm, which is headquartered in New York, is also revamping its commercial analysis product, InCites, to add metrics based on individual articles, and to allow users to make their own calculations....

The expected rollback to federal climate science has begun. In its preliminary budget proposal, the Trump administration has targeted environmental protections and climate change research. And while the cuts are essentially an opening salvo in what promises to be a fight with Congress once the budget requests formally arrive, they also demonstrate the level of hostility many scientists feared their work would face from the White House. The administration is seeking a nearly 20 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget, including to its satellite division, The Washington Post reported....

LONDON – Police in eastern England have closed a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the 2009 “Climategate” email thefts without identifying any suspects but exonerating the staff at the targeted University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The online theft and subsequent double release of thousands of carefully selected documents, emails and files relating to the unit’s work put fire into the belly of the climate skeptic lobby and triggered death threats to CRU leader Phil Jones and his staff....

Abdulsalam Nasidi’s phone rang shortly after midnight: Nigeria’s health minister was on the line. Nasidi, who worked at the country’s Federal Ministry of Health, learnt that he was needed urgently in the Benue valley to investigate a cluster of dying patients. People were bleeding out of their noses, their mouths, their eyes. Names of spine-chilling viruses such as Ebola, Lassa and Marburg raced through Nasidi’s mind. When he arrived in Benue, he found people splayed on the ground and tents serving as makeshift hospital wards and morgues....

A new study warns that cold-blooded land animals like lizards and insects in the tropics may wither as the world warms. “Cold-blooded” is the layman’s term for ectotherms—animals whose body temperature is contingent on the surrounding environment, rather than internally regulated like that of warm-blooded creatures. They thrive in temperatures ranging from 68 degrees to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (20 to 40 degrees Celsius), above which they overheat. As the globe warms, researchers warn they may be forced to swelter in burrows and under bushes with little time to eat, find mates or rear young....

By Thin Lei Win BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A $100 million fund launched on Tuesday aims to make people in disaster-prone regions of Asia and Africa better able to cope with natural disasters and crises, so that they can get their lives and economies back on track more quickly and effectively. The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) set up by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Rockefeller Foundation will focus on South and Southeast Asia, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, where typhoons, floods, earthquakes and drought destroy lives and jobs and hamper development....

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography records of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels show that Jan. 1 was the first day of the new year above that concentration, followed by Jan. 3 and Jan. 7. Daily averages have continued at this level or higher through Jan. 9, though they could continue to dance up and down around that mark due to day-to-day variations caused by weather systems. But even with those fluctuations, 2015 will likely see many months above 400 ppm, possibly starting with the very first month of the year....

Obesity rates in the U.S. and abroad have soared: The world now has more overweight people than those who weigh too little. One reason relates to the way the body reacts to its own fat stores by setting in motion a set of molecular events that impede the metabolic process that normally puts a damper on hunger. A new study published August 22 in Science Translational Medicine provides details of how this process occurs, giving new insight into why obese individuals have trouble shedding pounds....

Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King by Mike Pitts Thames & Hudson, 2014 ($29.95) One of the most surprising archaeological finds in recent history was the discovery of the skeleton of 15th-century English king Richard III buried underneath a parking lot in Leicester in 2012. For centuries archaeologists thought the king’s remains had been lost, with his bones most likely having been scattered into the River Soar....

The Trump administration’s plan to revoke California’s ability to set its own clean car standards promises to ignite a monumental legal fight between a dozen states and the federal government. “We’ll see you in court,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said yesterday. His comments came after news broke that Trump EPA officials will announce a formal effort as soon as today to repeal California’s ability to set vehicle standards that exceed federal requirements....

Major oil companies are urging the White House to ensure that U.S. EPA’s upcoming greenhouse gas reporting rules do not include what the industry considers burdensome requirements or force disclosure of proprietary information. Representatives of the American Petroleum Institute and several large companies – BP America, Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co. and Chevron Corp. – met with Office of Management and Budget and EPA officials last Tuesday. At issue are draft rules that require annual greenhouse gas reporting from an estimated 13,000 sites, including refineries, other oil and gas sites, power plants, and many other types of industrial operations, such as cement and metals production....