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SeaWorld San Diego, long known for its live killer-whale shows, will begin phasing out the performances next year in favor of conservation-based shows, company representatives announced yesterday (Nov. 9). SeaWorld has come under attack in recent years over how it treats the captive whales, but experts say the company’s new approach could foster new interest in protecting the species. “In 100 years, we’ll look back and be disgusted by how we treated [the whales],” said marine biologist Ted Phillips, who studied marine mammals and their mental capacities at Duke University....

A technology with the potential to blur the boundaries between biology and electronics has just leaped a major hurdle in the race to demonstrate its feasibility. A team at the University of California, Berkeley, led by neuroscientist Jose Carmena and electrical and computer engineer Michel Maharbiz, has provided the first demonstration of what the researchers call “ultrasonic neural dust” to monitor neural activity in a live animal. They recorded activity in the sciatic nerve and a leg muscle of an anesthetized rat in response to electrical stimulation applied to its foot....

Emily writes: “I’ve heard claims that you can remineralize your teeth and even heal cavities through certain diet and lifestyle choices. These claims usually involve cutting out grains and other foods high in phytic acid. Most of the arguments I’ve encountered so far have been anecdotal. Is there any scientific documentation of this process?” I’ve been hearing a lot about this, too, Emily! And when I researched the topic, I was a little surprised (and pretty excited!...

Recovery is a complicated fitness area to navigate. It means different things to different athletes, and each one has their favorite recovery ritual. The problem gets compounded when you introduce something as complex as compression. It can be applied statically or intermittently, and it varies from gentle pressure to very intense medical support. There are many factors to consider when you ask the question: does compression truly aid in athletic recovery?...

A quintessential moment in Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw’s 2004 autobiography occurs as she scrambles up Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano for a better view of an eclipse in 1991. This is her third trip to see an eclipse and her second in under a year. Clouds had thwarted both previous attempts, and she is determined not to let rising clouds foil her yet again. Her bus was stopped at a barrier. She wrote, “I had a fixation that I must get as high as possible....

Some 350,000 women die each year during pregnancy or soon after giving birth, with women in sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan facing the highest risks. Although global rates of maternal death have been dropping by about 1.5 percent each year since 1980, there is still a long way to go if countries hope to meet United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 by 2015—a 75 percent reduction in the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births from 1990 levels....

Energy-guzzling China is facing a coal conundrum. Rapid urbanization and industrialization will keep China’s coal consumption at record highs of around 4 billion tons per year by 2015. At the same time, the country will have to fight for coal security and to keep its supply line uninterrupted, according to the first energy outlook report from China’s Energy Research Institute (ERI). Swelling urban populations in pursuit of better housing, appliances and vehicles are keeping their foot on the gas when it comes to China’s energy consumption....

When I was in grade school, we were fed the now disputed notion that Eskimo languages, reflecting local concerns, had an unusually large number of words for snow. But nobody told us about the Inuit word iktsuarpok, which would have come in handy to describe one’s behavior after putting in a call for a pizza delivery. Iktsuarpok “refers to the anticipation one feels when waiting for someone, whereby one keeps going outside to check if they have arrived....

The Chasmagnathus granulatus crab leads a simple life. It spends its days burrowing for food and trying to avoid its nemesis, the seagull. But recent research has shown that despite its rudimentary brain, this crab has a highly sophisticated memory. For example, it can remember the location of a seagull attack and learn to avoid that area. In mammals, this kind of behavior requires multiple brain regions, but a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that the C....

Call it a tall task: researchers have decoded the genomes of the giraffe and its closest relative, the okapi. The sequences, published on May 17 in Nature Communications, reveal clues to the age-old mystery of how the giraffe evolved its unusually long neck and legs. Researchers in the United States and Tanzania analyzed the genetic material of two Masai giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi) from the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, one at the Nashville Zoo in Tennessee and an okapi fetus (Okapia johnstoni) from the White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida....

Tens of millions more tons of fish have been taken from the seas than are recorded in official statistics, suggests a huge and controversial project aiming to estimate the ‘true catch’ of the world’s fishing industry. The work is detailed in a paper in Nature Communications by fisheries researchers Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and it builds on a decade-long project that has drawn in hundreds of researchers from around the world....

When Leslie Norrington moved from Arlington, Va., to Adams Morgan in northwest Washington, D.C., a month ago, she brought all of her belongings. But not her car. “I don’t need it. My apartment is just over a mile from my office, so I walk every day,” she said. While Norrington, 25, still has her car in Virginia, it likely won’t be hers for much longer. “I think I might give it to my parents,” she said....

Smartphones have become the Swiss Army knives of the digital age. No need to fill your pockets and handbags with cameras, maps and music players—just grab your all-in-one iPhone or Android device on your way out the door. The new Apple Pay feature in iOS 8 promises to help the newest iPhones and iPads replace yet another staple of modern life: the credit card. Apple launched its latest attack on the status quo on October 20, with dozens of major retailers—Macy’s, McDonald’s and Whole Foods Market among them—ready to accept payment....

Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, John Nash—these “beautiful” minds never fail to enchant the public, but they also remain somewhat elusive. How do some people progress from being able to perform basic arithmetic to grasping advanced mathematical concepts and thinking at levels of abstraction that baffle the rest of the population? Neuroscience has now begun to pin down whether the brain of a math wiz somehow takes conceptual thinking to another level....

In fact, between Oregon, Paris, and San Bernadino, it’s time to add how to talk about gun violence to our parenting repertoire. I don’t claim to have all the answers—no one does, but here are eight tips to answer kids’ tough questions. A couple of weeks ago, my 7-year-old had an anonymous threat of gun violence directed at his school district. Nothing came of the threat, and the teachers, school administrators, and authorities reacted swiftly and bravely....

Head and neck cancer patients were once primarily older heavy smokers and drinkers. Now, the majority who are diagnosed with the disease are closer to middle age (many ages 40 to 55) and developed it not from years of tobacco or alcohol use but rather because they engaged in oral sex. This shift has been traced to an increase in the human papillomavirus (HPV), the sexually transmitted infection that also causes cervical cancer....

The stars will align for planet hunters twice in the next three years, allowing them to probe the nearest star to our own solar system for Earth-size alien worlds. Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.24 light-years from Earth, will pass in front of background stars in both October 2014 and February 2016. Astronomers should scrutinize Proxima during these two periods, looking for subtle light shifts that could reveal the presence of close-orbiting planets, a new study reports....

Darold Treffert, a physician who has studied savantism for many years, has chronicled the ways that people with no artistic interest or talent can suddenly develop a passion for painting or music after experiencing head trauma or other types of brain insult. Acquired savantism—the name for this phenomenon—appears to activate less-used brain circuitry that allows processing of images or sounds in new ways. Treffert writes about acquired savantism in the August issue of Scientific American in Accidental Genius....

The launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed yet again. NASA’s long-awaited space observatory is now scheduled to lift off from French Guiana no earlier than Dec. 24, two days later than previously planned. “The James Webb Space Telescope team is working a communication issue between the observatory and the launch vehicle system,” NASA officials said in a statement on Tuesday (Dec. 14). “This will delay the launch date to no earlier than Friday, Dec....

All Fired Up Three books provide insights on creativity “No matter what kind of creativity I studied, the process was the same. Creativity did not descend like a bolt of lightning that lit up the world in a single brilliant flash. It came in tiny steps, bits of insight, and incremental changes,” psychologist Keith Sawyer writes in Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity (Jossey-Bass, 2013). In his book, Sawyer draws on research and personal experience to provide simple strategies to enhance innovative thinking....