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If you’ve never heard of chemtrails, don’t fret. Before spending time in Southern California I hadn’t heard of them either. But whether it’s being in the land of obsession-with-healthy-living, or perhaps just being near a few major airports, I now hear about chemtrails quite frequently in SoCal. So what are chemtrails? Should we be worried about their effects on our health? What Are Chemtrails? Chemtrails, short for chemical trails, are what some call the white trails you see left behind as a plane passes overhead....

Scientific American presents Nutrition Diva by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. We recently observed World Food Day, a global event dedicated to increasing awareness of hunger and malnutrition and designed to encourage and recognize initiatives that increase food security. If you caught any of the coverage, you probably heard some disturbing statistics: About a third of all the food that is grown in the world every year is simply thrown away....

The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) was thought to have evolved in Europe as the ice sheet expanded when a glacial period swept the Earth about 2.6 million years ago. But fossil evidence now suggests that the animal ‘pre-adapted’ to living in the cold and harsh environment on lofty Tibetan terrains. While hiking up and down Tibetan mountains, Xiaoming Wang, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California, and his colleagues stumbled on some jawbones and teeth in rocks up to 4,730 metres above sea level....

With oil nearing $100 a barrel and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations steadily rising, the U.S. must commit seriously to a long-term plan that will improve the nation’s energy security and address climate change threats. To date, national leaders have expended a lot of rhetoric on the importance of those goals, but relative to the country’s magnitude as both a consumer of energy and a producer of carbon dioxide, they have taken few meaningful steps to reach them....

A Charlotte, N.C., man was charged with first-degree murder of a 79-year-old woman whom police said he scared to death. In an attempt to elude cops after a botched bank robbery, the Associated Press reports that 20-year-old Larry Whitfield broke into and hid out in the home of Mary Parnell. Police say he didn’t touch Parnell but that she died after suffering a heart attack that was triggered by terror. Can the fugitive be held responsible for the woman’s death?...

One of the most powerful climate pollutants on earth, hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, account for a small portion of U.S. climate pollution, but scientists say it’s important for countries to urgently cut them just because they’re so potent—and growing. Efforts to cut HFCs became more difficult both in the U.S. and globally on Tuesday, when a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has overstepped its authority in regulating HFCs under the Clean Air Act....

Scientists using a CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing technique have managed to pump up muscle protein levels in four dogs suffering from the most common form of muscular dystrophy. The advance may hasten clinical trials for similar treatments in humans battling this fatal muscle-wasting illness. If the approach proves effective in humans, it could fundamentally change the disease trajectory for people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare genetic disorder that mostly afflicts boys. Genetic mutations cause Duchenne patients’ muscle cells to produce little or no dystrophin, a protein that helps muscles absorb shocks and protects them against degradation over time....

Obese people considering gastric bypass surgery to help trim their fat might one day have another option: swallowing a new supply of gut bacteria. A study in mice suggests that weight loss after bypass surgery is caused not by the operation itself, but at least in part by a change in the amounts of various species of microbes in the gut. A bypass operation separates off a small part of the stomach and connects that directly to the intestines....

Firdaus Dhabhar likes to film babies crying when they get their shots, but not for any sadistic reason. He believes that the wailing is a good sign. A Stanford University researcher who studies how stress changes the body, Dhabhar, along with his colleagues, has discovered that stressed-out laboratory mice exhibit more robust immune responses to vaccines than control groups of mice left in peace. Something similar happens to people. In a study of knee surgery patients, for example, Dhabhar found that the anxiety of their impending operations boosted the number of immune cells circulating in their blood....

I have died many times over. Every night when I lay down my weary self to rest, my consciousness is extinguished. I experience nothing until I wake up inside my sleeping body—in a dream disconnected from the external world. Or later consciousness resurfaces in the morning on my return to the wakening world. Daily life contains many such experiences. In my childhood, I had an appendectomy and was anesthetized—my consciousness was switched off and, following the surgery, was restored....

ENEKO ISLAND, Marshall Islands – Pacific Island leaders today declared that “climate change has arrived” and called for an urgent phase down of greenhouse gas emissions to save their low-lying homelands from destruction. Announcing the Majuro Declaration for Climate Leadership while surrounded by palm trees on an island about a 40-minute boat trip from the capital atoll, heads of state held up their countries as models by taking proactive steps to boost clean energy, protect shorelines and cut carbon emissions....

U.S. Scientists discovered strange DNA strands, which they dubbed “Borgs,” buried in California mud. The strands are not technically alive and are made of genes scavenged from microbes. These chains—the longest extrachromosomal genetic material ever found—most likely enter single-celled archaea and help them break down methane. CANADA Spongelike fossils found in 890-million-year-old reefs near Canada’s northwestern coast might record the earliest-known animal. The ancient specimens bore branching tubes that resemble the skeletons of modern organisms used to make commercial bath sponges....

By Janelle WeaverMammals may possess the biochemical machinery to produce morphine–a painkiller found in the opium poppy, according to a new study.Meinhart Zenk of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St Louis, Mo., and colleagues detected traces of morphine in the urine of mice after injecting chemical precursors of the drug. They report their findings April 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Like other opioids, morphine is a potent, potentially addictive pain reliever....

Enriched Living Three books propose ways we can enhance how we think and feel. Self-improvement books often claim that only by changing the way you think—perhaps by picturing yourself in the ideal job, say, or with the perfect mate—will you be able to make your life better. Not so, says psychologist Richard Wiseman. In The As If Principle: The Radically New Approach to Changing Your Life (Free Press, 2013), Wiseman argues that people need to modify their actions to change how they feel....

Arsenic’s potent effect on humans has been known since at least the Roman Empire. For centuries, it was a popular poison for murderers because it can’t be seen, smelled or tasted in food or water. That made it difficult to detect. As chemical detection methods improved, its use as a poison declined. But arsenic, a naturally occurring chemical element in the Earth’s crust, remains a threat to human health. Regular, long-term exposure increases the risk of chronic disorders such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease for millions of people around the world....

There’s an age-old adage in biology: structure determines function. To understand the function of the myriad proteins that perform vital jobs in a healthy body—or malfunction in a diseased one—scientists have to first determine these proteins’ molecular structure. But this is no easy feat: protein molecules consist of long, twisty chains of up to thousands of amino acids, chemical compounds that can interact with one another in many ways to take on an enormous number of possible three-dimensional shapes....

LONDON—It could be the last word in concrete solutions to carbon emissions: a paving slab that generates electricity with every footstep taken on it, providing clean power to both cities and remote areas not connected to a national grid. Best of all, it requires mainly used tires and concrete. The invention is the brainchild of industrial engineering graduate Laurence Kemball-Cook, who came up with the idea, perfected it in his final year at Loughborough University in central England, patented it, set up his company Pavegen and is now busy taking it to the world....

More than one in three women and more than one in four men fall prey to stalking, rape or other physical or psychological violence by a partner at some time in their lives. Despite these grim statistics and evidence that victims can end up suffering mental and physical health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, health professionals have yet to nail down the best way to stop the abuse—which they call “intimate partner violence”—and to care for those affected by it....

(Reuters) - A 7-year-old girl banned from attending school in Connecticut over fears that she may be carrying the Ebola virus after a trip to Nigeria will be allowed back on Friday, according to a joint statement by the school district and the girl’s father. A widely publicized lawsuit brought by the father, Stephen Opayemi, against Milford Public Schools demanding her readmission will be settled, according to the statement, without giving further details....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. When I was in graduate school studying ecology during the 1980s, we all shared a conviction to make the world a better place. Oh, the power of youthful optimism and energy! We had hopes of stopping rainforest degradation, reversing coral reef decline, saving endangered species and ensuring clean air for everyone. Thirty years and thousands of eager graduate students later the planet has lost more than 50 percent of her primary forests, atmospheric carbon dioxide now exceeds 400 ppm and 70 percent of coral reefs have been destroyed....