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US President Donald Trump signed a directive on December 11 that instructs NASA to send astronauts back to the Moon. The order comes with no specific time frame and, as yet, no funding. But the Trump administration had been signalling its interest in returning humans to the Moon’s surface, raising lunar scientists’ hopes for a formal change in policy. “This is huge,” says David Kring, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who has worked in recent years on possible lunar landing sites for astronauts....

HANGZHOU, China – In one of this nation’s most popular tourist cities, famed for the beauty of its surrounding mountains, willow trees, lotus blossoms and ancient stone-arch bridges, a new sightseeing attraction is making its debut: the local landfill. With its so-called “trash tour,” the landfill has attracted more than 10,000 visitors since it launched last year. There, tourists visit its trash-to-gas power plant, play environmental video games and hike in an eco-park the size of 10 football fields....

The first discovery of a cancer gene marker—the BRAF oncogene for melanoma and colorectal malignancies—back in 2002 changed the way many researchers thought about cancer treatment. Rather than approach the disease based on what region of the body it stemmed from, scientists began to identify cancers in terms of their genetic signatures. Researchers now recognize more than 200 kinds of cancer—all genetically unique. And pinpointing a genetic signature, such as EGFR mutations in lung cancer or HER2 mutations in breast cancer, can guide therapy decisions....

Revolutions often spring from the simplest of ideas. When a young inventor named Steve Jobs wanted to provide computing power to “people who have no computer experience and don’t particularly care to gain any,” he ushered us from the cumbersome technology of mainframes and command-line prompts to the breezy advances of the Macintosh and iPhone. His idea helped to forever change our relationship with technology. What other simple but revolutionary ideas are out there in the labs, waiting for the right moment to make it big?...

The rapidly warming Arctic is no stranger to loss. Climate change is gradually claiming some of its most iconic features, from melting glaciers in Greenland to shrinking sea ice in the ocean. But some casualties may be more surprising than others. Research suggests that small lakes and ponds across the Arctic tundra are also steadily disappearing. Hundreds, in fact, have vanished from the landscape in the last few decades alone. Some of them may have been there for hundreds of years, scientists say....

It might seem counterintuitive to link Arctic sea ice that disappears in the summer to a colder winter in the northeastern U.S. and Europe, but scientists have reason to believe the connection is real and will make itself felt this upcoming season. Less sea ice in summer means the Arctic Ocean warms more. It radiates much of that excess heat back to the atmosphere in winter. That release disrupts typical atmospheric conditions, thereby affecting how the jet stream behaves....

At a time when the screen size of television sets is growing so fast that it appears headed to eclipse that of movie theater screens, the latest breakthrough in display technology has come in the form of an ultraslim 11-inch (28-centimeter) screen that is a mere 0.12 inch (three millimeters) thick at its thinnest point. The innovation in Sony’s new XEL-1 television is its use of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology that promises advanced levels of contrast and brightness, a broad spectrum of color reproduction and a rapid video response rate....

Since getting his business degree nine years ago, Larry has been the model hard-charging executive bound for the top. After the 28-year-old joined a consulting company, he was quickly promoted to a position with loads of responsibility, a company car and an enviable income. Along with the fulfilling tasks came constant travel and 60- to 80-hour workweeks, including meetings on weekends. But he did not mind. “Occasionally it occurred to me how stressful the job was,” he says....

For more than 20 years the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) has been monitoring dozens of indices of drought around the country, including satellite measurements of evaporation and color in vegetation, soil-moisture sensors, rainfall estimates, and river and streamflow levels. Although the agency’s weekly assessments have identified periods of exceptional drought before, lately dryness has been ramping up. “The changing climate is definitely contributing to more natural disasters, drought being one of them,” says Brian Fuchs, a climatologist who oversees the weekly report at the NDMC....

Key concepts Physics Air Pressure Vortex Aerodynamics Introduction Here is a riddle for you: I am everywhere but you don’t see me—what am I? The answer is: air! It is all around us, but it is usually invisible. We can, however, see the effect air has—for example when wind is moving tree branches. Air can move gently to create a nice breeze or turn into a wild and destructive hurricane. Not only can wind move objects with air, you can do it, too—as long as the objects are not too heavy!...

By Zeeya MeraliExtracting entangled electrons from superconductors could help to create quantum-computing networks. It might even put the theory of quantum mechanics through one of its toughest tests yet.Hopes for building a working quantum computer hinge on physicists’ ability to intertwine electrons into pairs such that changes made to one instantly affect its partner – a process called entanglement. Photons can be entangled relatively easily; electrons are much harder. This is a big problem if we ever want to integrate quantum computing with electronic chips, says Szabolcs Csonka at the University of Basel in Switzerland....

As you read these words, your eyes scan the page, picking up patterns to which your mind assigns meaning. Meanwhile your heart contracts and relaxes, your diaphragm rises and drops to control your breathing, your back muscles tense to maintain your posture, and a thousand other basic tasks of conscious and subconscious life proceed, all under the coordinated control of roughly 86 billion neurons and an equal number of supporting cells inside your skull....

Key concepts Energy Radioactivity Exponential decay Odds Introduction One way of creating energy is with nuclear reactors. These plants are generally safe, but occasionally there are accidents in which dangerous radioactive material escapes. You might have read about nuclear disasters, such as those at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima, in the news or in a history lesson. Disasters like these can take years or even decades to clean up, and make it unsafe for humans to live nearby for even longer....

Marilyn Monroe’s measurements (37C-23-36, for inquiring minds) were extolled by many of her contemporaries as perfect. But a new study appearing in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that her hourglass figure—and waist to hip ratio of 0.64—alone was not enough to ensure her allure; it also had to be coupled with the way she moved. “For centuries people have been trying to understand what makes people appreciate beauty,” says Kerri Johnson, a psychologist at New York University and co-author of the new report....

The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) behind the ongoing outbreak—which the World Health Organization has declared an international public health emergency—was named after the family of viruses it belongs to. The term “coronavirus” may have initially been unfamiliar to many, but most everyone has encountered milder forms of such viruses, of which four strains cause about a fifth of common cold cases. Other types cause diseases that are endemic in certain animal populations....

The brain is extraordinarily good at alerting us to threats. Loud noises, noxious smells, approaching predators: they all send electrical impulses buzzing down our sensory neurons, pinging our brain’s fear circuitry and, in some cases, causing us to fight or flee. The brain is also adept at knowing when an initially threatening or startling stimulus turns out to be harmless or resolved. But sometimes this system fails and unpleasant associations stick around, a malfunction thought to be at the root of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)....

Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Gout is a fairly common medical condition that sends almost 4 million people to the doctor’s office every year. If you are overweight, drink alcohol, or are under treatment for high blood pressure, you are at risk for gout. You may have heard of this rather mysterious medical condition - you may have even heard it referred to as “the disease of kings” - but what exactly is it?...

Southern Africa, India and Southeast Asia will be plagued with both high susceptibility and a lack of coping mechanisms as climate change takes its toll, according to models published in a new study. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s (CGIAR) Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security identified world regions that will bear the brunt of climate change’s consequences on food availability. The project’s researchers measured current food security indicators and climate-sensitive zones in 2050, and the overlap between the two....

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. (Inside Science) – Asteroid and comet impacts could have created refuges for early life on Earth, protecting the first microorganisms from the sun’s harsh rays when the planet still lacked an ozone shield. “Most people associate impacts with the extinction of the dinosaurs, but they can also be beneficial to life,” said Gordon Osinski, a geologist at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada....

Late Sunday evening, as Earth’s shadow painted the full moon’s face a deep, rusty red, a wayward meteor smashed into the lunar surface. The collision’s aftermath—a brief flash of light at the bloody orb’s darkest edge—lasted just long enough for some sharp-eyed eclipse viewers to spot. Such impacts are normally “hard to detect,” says Ryan Watkins of the Planetary Science Institute. “Most of the impacts are very small,” she notes, “and we can only see them on portions of the moon that are dark or only slightly illuminated....