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Probiotic foods and supplements are among the fastest growing sectors in the health food marketplace, thanks to an explosion of popular and scientific interest in the “microbiome.” It’s clear that the bacteria that live in and on our bodies have an enormous impact on our health—one that we are only just beginning to explore. But commerce isn’t one to wait around for all the data to come in. Although we have a long way to go to before we understand exactly how to influence and interact with our microbiota, we’re already being bombarded with new products: probiotic powders, juices, teas, fizzy vegetables, funky soybeans, and fermented grains....

The world is in the grips of an obesity epidemic. Scientists have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to understand the metabolic, genetic and neurological foundations of why we keep gaining so much weight. But, as David H. Freedman writes in “How to Fix the Obesity Crisis” (Scientific American, February 2011),you do not have to know everything there is to know about the physiological aspects of obesity to grasp a few simple concepts of how to lose weight....

When Randy Cortright of the University of Wisconsin found an aromatic fluid floating in his beaker that smelled just like gasoline, he thought he had a problem. After all, the chemical engineer wanted to make fuel from plants for the hydrogen economy that was supposed to boom about now. Instead, when he put the fluid in a chromatograph, he found it had all the hydrocarbon components of a high-octane gasoline....

Pundits have argued over whether a carbon tax would create or kill jobs ever since the U.S. Green Party first floated the Green New Deal, a plan to build a sustainable, environmentally clean economy. In the past three years a number of U.S. legislators—and Democratic presidential candidates—have released carbon-tax plans or bills, with widely varying estimates about impacts on jobs. Marilyn A. Brown and Majid Ahmadi of the Georgia Institute of Technology put the Green New Deal’s details into the U....

In the year and a half since modern, mass-market electric cars have been available for purchase, many a pundit has attempted to paint a picture of what driving and owning one of these vehicles is like. From ludicrous myths (exploding batteries) to questionable claims (a more relaxed morning commute), it can be hard to know exactly what a plug-in car will do in the real world. Now EV owners are beginning to speak up on what it is like to be early adopters and how the cars behave during daily driving....

Astronomers claim to have identified a galaxy in the distant universe that is farther away than any known object in space. The galaxy is so far away that, inasmuch as researchers can see such a faint object, they see it as it looked about 13 billion years ago, just 600 million years or so after the big bang; the light it emitted at that time is only now reaching Earth....

MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia’s government has suspended for one night a curfew imposed to curb the spread of Ebola, so that New Year’s Eve church services can go ahead, Deputy Information Minister Isaac Jackson said. The government introduced the curfew in September at the height of an epidemic that has killed more than 3,400 people in Liberia and at least 4,400 more in Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to World Health Organisation figures....

Over the past year alone, catastrophic rain events characterized as once-in-500-year or even once-in-1,000-year events have flooded West Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and now Louisiana, sweeping in billions of dollars of property damage and deaths along with the high waters. These extreme weather events are forcing many communities to confront what could signal a new climate change normal. Now many are asking themselves: Are they doing enough to plan for and to adapt to large rain events that climate scientists predict will become more frequent and more intense as global temperatures continue to rise?...

Every night to me is Halloween Like an ancient scene You know just what I mean! —King Diamond, “Halloween” Yes, we do indeed know what you mean, thanks, King! In that same spirit (ugh, sorry) of Halloween—and following up on our massively successful, dozens-of-page-views-getting indie rock science songs playlist—Scientific American presents a Spotify playlist of br00tal, science-themed heavy metal mayhem for the truest warriors only. Science references in heavy music are everywhere: U....

Wildfires burn hot, fast and unpredictably. Although wildland firefighters receive extensive training to keep themselves safe, they sometimes become cut off by flames that can reach temperatures of 1,600 to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To protect themselves in these extremely dire situations, each carries a portable fire shelter (essentially a small, specially formulated foil tent) that can be deployed to shield them from flames and hot gasses. But this technology has serious limits, and researchers are now exploring new materials and designs—and putting prototypes through a gauntlet of fiery tests....

Just after midnight on January 28, 2011, the government of Egypt, rocked by three straight days of massive antiregime protests organized in part through Facebook and other online social networks, did something unprecedented in the history of 21st-century telecommunications: it turned off the Internet. Exactly how it did this remains unclear, but the evidence suggests that five well-placed phone calls—one to each of the country’s biggest Internet service providers (ISPs)—may have been all it took....

You know about choking, toxic emissions from cars, cigarettes and coal-burning plants. But did it ever occur to you that your handy dandy printer might be a source of lung-damaging pollutants? Be advised: researchers from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, have discovered that certain laser printers emit high concentrations of tiny particles into the air. “People could be exposed to dangerous levels of ultrafine particles emitted by printers if they are in an environment that is poorly ventilated and the printer operation is frequent or continuous,” says Lidia Morawska, a physicist and co-author of the study, which appears in this month’s online issue of the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science & Technology....

In Greco-Roman mythology Jupiter is the king of the gods, a deity who destroyed an older race of titans to become the jealous and vengeful lord of heaven and Earth. Strange though it may seem, scientific theory lends credence to this historical fiction. As the largest, heaviest object orbiting our sun, Jupiter’s namesake world is the lord of planets, a dominant force in the solar system. Eons ago, while flinging leftover debris from planetary formation out of our solar system, Jupiter probably also tossed some down toward our primordial globe, delivering some of the water that now fills our oceans....

With tongue and tail wagging wildly, Larry the lead dog crossed the finish line in March in sunny Nome, Alaska—after running 1,131 miles to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for the third year in a row. To most mortals, Larry looks like a happy but nondescript, scrawny mutt. To sled dog mushers, he is a mini legend that simply needs no introduction. To scientists, Larry may hold the key to a physiological mystery....

Like a good magic trick, a clever puzzle can inspire awe, reveal mathematical truths and prompt important questions. At least that is what Martin Gardner thought. His name is synonymous with the legendary Mathematical Games column he wrote for a quarter of a century in Scientific American. Thanks to his own mathemagical skills, Gardner, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in October, presented noteworthy mathematics every month with all the wonder of legerdemain and, in so doing, captivated a huge readership worldwide....

Scientists have recently found humanity’s nitrogen footprint on watersheds once thought to be isolated and pristine, indicating our impact on the world is more widespread than previously imagined. These findings show that natural nitrogen equilibriums have shifted drastically and are now driven largely by human factors. This world awash in nitrogen can have devastating effects on health, ecology and the climate. Nitrogen is an important element to all life as we know it....

In a finding that challenges climate skeptics, a team of scientists reported this week that a seeming slowdown in global sea-level rise in the last decade was not a slowdown at all. Their work—released in Nature Climate Change—found that a natural weather cycle known as La Niña provides most of the explanation for the pause in sea-level rise observed after 2003. The phenomenon lowered precipitation over the oceans in the last decade, dampening the warming signal, they said....

By Victoria Cavaliere and Brendan O’BrienNEW YORK/MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - A deadly blast of arctic air shattered decades-old temperature records as it enveloped the eastern United States on Tuesday, snarling air, road and rail travel, driving energy prices higher and overwhelming shelters for homeless people.At least nine deaths have been reported across the country connected with the polar air mass that swept over North America during the past few days. Authorities have put about half of the United States under a wind chill warning or cold weather advisory....

By Colin Packham and James Regan SYDNEY (Reuters) - Torrential rains were forcing residents and tourists to flee coastal areas along the Great Barrier Reef as the strongest cyclone in three years barreled across the Coral Sea for the Australian mainland. Tropical Cyclone Ita is forecast by meteorologists to cross the coast near Cooktown on Australia’s far northeast coast between 1100 and 1400 GMT. Residents refusing to be evacuated to shelters or higher ground by emergency crews and police are being warned to hide in their bathrooms until the worst of the storm passes....

The subtitle may sound like hype, but it is a rare case of truth in labeling. Against the backdrop of political violence in Nepal—beginning with the massacre of the king’s family in 2001 by the eldest son and ending with the Maoist insurgency this crisis spawned—Mishra tells the story of trying to save the greater one-horned Asian rhino from extinction. Kings did indeed play a pivotal role in the creature’s conservation, and the murder of the recent king led to its now uncertain future....