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Antidepressant use among Americans is skyrocketing. Adults in the U.S. consumed four times more antidepressants in the late 2000s than they did in the early 1990s. As the third most frequently taken medication in the U.S., researchers estimate that 8 to 10 percent of the population is taking an antidepressant. But this spike does not necessarily signify a depression epidemic. Through the early 2000s pharmaceutical companies were aggressively testing selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the dominant class of depression drug, for a variety of disorders—the timeline below shows the rapid expansion of FDA-approved uses....

From his sniper’s perch on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, a lone gunman fired 1,000 bullets from high-powered rifles into a crowd of concertgoers in 2017, murdering 58 innocent people and injuring 869 others. After he committed suicide at the crime scene, the mass murderer’s brain was shipped to Stanford University to seek a possible biological explanation for this depraved incident. What could the scientists possibly find during such an inspection?...

Dawn A. Marcus, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicines department of anesthesiology, explains. When experiencing a severe, throbbing headache, a person often places his hands on both sides of his head and claims, “It feels like my brain is pushing to get out, so it feels better to hold it in.” This sensation gives a false impression that the brain itself is enlarging and causing the pain sensation....

This is the consequence of failure at Copenhagen: A marked shift in scientific effort from solving global warming to adapting to its consequences, a hodge-podge of uncoordinated local efforts to trim emissions - none of which deliver the necessary cuts - and an altered climate. Climate experts, scientists and negotiators say that, absent international agreement, the children and grandchildren of those living today will negotiate a world where planetary geo-engineering is a part of daily life, sea-walls defend coastal cities, the world’s poor are hammered by drought, floods and famine and our planet is heading toward conditions unseen for the last 100 million years....

If Jupiter’s moon Europa has geysers, the natural engines that power them are well-hidden. Scientists have re-examined data from NASA’s Galileo mission in greater detail in search of regions on Europa warm enough to be linked to plumes of water vapor. If hotspots exist on this moon—which harbors a huge ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell—they will most likely remain hidden until NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in the late 2020s or early 2030s, the researchers determined....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. After decades of bafflement and frustration, the world is still struggling to guess the secret of Silicon Valley’s success. Sure, the towns and cities at the San Francisco Bay’s southern end have plenty of high-tech talent, but that’s scarcely an explanation: those ambitious young engineers and innovators could find work just about anywhere they choose. You can list the features that brought so many of them to the valley, but the riddle remains....

In the past decade an extraordinary claim has captivated cosmologists: that the expanding universe we see around us is not the only one; that billions of other universes are out there, too. There is not one universe—there is a multiverse. In Scientific American articles and books such as Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, leading scientists have spoken of a super-Copernican revolution. In this view, not only is our planet one among many, but even our entire universe is insignificant on the cosmic scale of things....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

In recent years astronomers have extended their view almost to the very edge of the observable universe. With the venerable Hubble Space Telescope researchers have spotted a handful of galaxies so faraway that we see them as they appeared just 400 million years or so after the big bang. But even as astronomers peer ever deeper into the universe to explore the cosmic frontier, others are finding new realms to explore in our own backyard....

NEW YORK, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Children whose mothers were exposed to high levels of fine particulate pollution in late pregnancy have up to twice the risk of developing autism as children of mothers breathing cleaner air, scientists at Harvard School of Public Health reported on Thursday. The greater the exposure to fine particulates emitted by fires, vehicles, and industrial smokestacks the greater the risk, found the study, published online in Environmental Health Perspectives....

Few cry for the cocaleros. Cocaine is the bane of law enforcement across the Americas. But both the drug and the coca farmers – known in Spanish as cocaleros – who cultivate the drug’s source face the same threats as any other crop or product in our warming climate. Except that cocaine appears ready for the challenges. The coca bush is the raw material for a lucrative and often-violent drug trade and the target of decades of international eradication efforts....

Rashid Akmaev, a research scientist at the University of Colorado, explains. The short answer is yes, and at various times this question of lunar tides in the atmosphere occupied such famous scientists as Isaac Newton and Pierre-Simon Laplace, among others. Newton’s theory of gravity provided the first correct explanation of ocean tides and their long known correlation with the phases of the moon. Roughly a century later it was also used to predict the existence of atmospheric tides when Laplace developed a quantitative theory based on a tidal equation now bearing his name....

Two eyes positioned above a pair of nostrils that are themselves perched above a mouth—such is the layout of the face for vertebrate creatures ranging from sharks to humans. However well that arrangement may be optimized for finding and eating food, among mammals the face has taken on another critical role: communication. Nowhere is this function more apparent than in the human visage. Primates in general have complex social lives, and they commonly use facial expressions in their interactions with one another....

Megan McPhee, research assistant professor at the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station, steers us to an answer: This behavior is best exemplified by salmon, which combine conventional open-water navigation and a keen sense of smell to find their way. Salmon can migrate out to sea to feed for several years before returning to spawn in the same stream, sometimes even the same section of stream, in which they were born....

(Adds nationalities of missing crew members, quote from South Carolina governor, updates storm’s location) By Neil Hartnell NASSAU, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The fate of more than 30 crew aboard a cargo ship missing in heavy seas whipped up by Hurricane Joaquin off the Bahamas was unknown on Friday as the powerful storm battered the island chain for a second day. News the vessel had lost both power and contact with shore came as forecasters shifted the likely track of the potentially catastrophic storm further away from the U....

BOULDER, Colo. – Climate science research often involves a little derring-do mixed in with a lot of tedium. Some scientists scramble up equatorial peaks to measure melting glaciers; others scour dry African lakebeds for sediment that reads like a talking science book. For paleoclimatologist James White, adventures begin when a C-130 transport plane drops him and his team in the middle of Greenland’s ice cap. In conditions that redefine the word “cold” for this native Tennessean, White drills through ancient ice to unlock clues to the Earth’s past climate – and predict its future....

Investigators across five continents reported that they were able to replicate only about 40 percent of the results from 100 previously published studies in cognitive and social psychology, in a study described today in the influential journal Science. The massive collaboration, called the Reproducibility Project: Psychology, could serve as a model for examining reproducibility of research in other fields, and a similar effort to scrutinize studies in cancer biology is already underway....

The world is watching South Korea as the latest outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) unfolds. But how exactly the virus jumps to humans in the first place is still unknown, and clues to that puzzle lie thousands of kilometres away. The cluster of hospital-associated cases in South Korea—the largest MERS outbreak outside the Middle East—has so far killed 7 people and infected 95, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)....

Opening a copy of The Mathematical Intelligencer you may ask yourself uneasily, ‘‘What is this anyway—a mathematical journal, or what?’’ Or you may ask, ‘‘Where am I?’’ Or even ‘‘Who am I?’’ This sense of disorientation is at its most acute when you open to Colin Adams’s column. Relax. Breathe regularly. It’s mathematical, it’s a humor column, and it may even be harmless. Department of Mathematics School of Horticulture Central State University of the East January 27, 2018 Fields Medal Committee Fields Institute 222 College St....

A ransomware attack hit computers across the world on Tuesday, taking out servers at Russia’s biggest oil company, disrupting operations at Ukrainian banks, and shutting down computers at multinational shipping and advertising firms. Cyber security experts said those behind the attack appeared to have exploited the same type of hacking tool used in the WannaCry ransomware attack that infected hundreds of thousands of computers in May before a British researcher created a kill-switch....