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A few frog species in the jungles of East Asia take hopping to the extreme. These daredevil amphibians, dubbed parachute frogs, leap from treetops and soar through the rain-forest canopy to evade predators. Some can cover more than 50 feet in a single glide. Although they lack the true wings of birds and bats, these frogs use extensive webbing between their toes as a winglike surface to slow their descent. They also have oversized feet, as well as flaps of loose skin along their limbs and sticky toe pads to help them safely land....

We are in the golden age for vaccines. We have dozens of highly effective vaccines licensed for infectious disease, promising new technologies contributing to massive advancement of vaccine development, and several promising vaccines on the horizon. Unfortunately, vaccines have been a victim of their own success. With the drastic reduction of once-devastating diseases like whooping cough and measles, it seems like some parents think that the vaccines themselves are the new danger....

Serious nuclear incidents that followed Friday’s catastrophic Japan earthquake have raised fears of radiation leakage, a weather-dependent matter that could have a far-reaching impact. Were there to be a significant release of radiation, tracking the fallout would become a meteorological problem. Japan lies in the mid latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, as does the United States. Likewise, its weather is dominated by prevailing westerly winds, but with significant variation near the earth surface....

Listen to an audio version of the article. In 1972 the distinguished virologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet looked back over medical progress made in the 20th century with considerable satisfaction, surveying it for the fourth edition of the book Natural History of Infectious Disease. That very year routine vaccination against smallpox had ceased in the U.S., no longer needed because the disease had been eliminated from the country. During the previous year the combined vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella had been licensed, and four years before, in 1968, a pandemic of influenza had been quelled by a new vaccine formula....

From Quanta (Find original story here). When Matthew Helmus was about eight years old and desperate for a pet, he saved up enough money to order a lizard through an ad in the back pages of Mad magazine. The creature arrived in his mailbox a few weeks later — a green anole he dubbed Ari the Anole — and remained his close companion for years. “They make really good pets because they are so robust,” said Helmus, now a research fellow in ecology at VU University in Amsterdam....

There’s a green gold rush on Capitol Hill. With Congress plowing toward legislation on energy and climate, lobbyists and their clients are swarming House and Senate offices. They are booking up conference rooms, shaking hands and submitting proposals for financial help and policy changes. There are hundreds of hired guns now working on the energy issues. They represent a swath of diverse and sometimes conflicting interests, from small companies turning algae into oil to traditional utilities and big corporations, including Google, United Parcel Service and Safeway....

The thought of parasites preying on your body or brain very likely sends shivers down your spine. Perhaps you imagine insectoid creatures bursting from stomachs or a malevolent force controlling your actions. These visions are not just the night terrors of science-fiction writers—the natural world is replete with such examples. Take Toxoplasma gondii, the single-celled parasite. When mice are infected by it, they suffer the grave misfortune of becoming attracted to cats....

Nitrogen-containing pollutants from agriculture, transport and industry in China has increased by more than half in 30 years, a study shows, adding to concerns about the country’s deteriorating environment. “Rapid economic growth in China has driven high levels of nitrogen emissions in the past few decades,” says Zhang Fusuo, an agriculture researcher at the China Agricultural University in Beijing and a co-author of the study. Once emitted into the air, key nitrogen pollutants — ammonia and nitrogen oxides — can be transformed to secondary pollutants such as ammonium and nitrates, and then washed to Earth by rain and snow....

Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert calls his company’s efforts to deliver a legged reconnaissance robot “basic research.” After seeing the mechanized Cheetah in action (see video below), you can see that it is anything but basic. Even though tethered to a treadmill and in the early stages of development, the Cheetah can run nearly 30 kilometers per hour (kph). It may not be able to catch a real cheetah—which can run upward of 120 kph, faster than any other land animal—but Boston Dynamics does plan eventually to deliver a version that can move at a speed of about 80 kph....

He made the emotional plea to his colleagues: Pass this bill. “It might give somebody like my wife a chance to walk,” Texas Representative Drew Springer said through tears late Thursday at the state Capitol in Austin. “I’d trade every one of my bills I’ve passed, every single one of them, to get the chance to hear HB 810.” HB 810 is one of three bills being considered in the Texas Legislature that would make it easier for sick people to try unproven therapies at their own risk, and cost....

Bloomin’ jellyfish! Overfishing, climate change and ocean dead zones may be downers for humans and other critters, but they turn out to be a boon for jellyfish schools, reports the recent “Jellyfish Joyride” paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. A surge in jellyfish populations may eventually lead to what study authors call “a less desirable gelatinous state,” which could have “lasting ecological, economic and social consequences.” Swimming safely in aquariums, jellyfish might look like rare, delicate creatures, but many species are quite hardy—not to mention, harmful....

A self-driving Uber sport utility vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., on Sunday night. Elaine Herzberg, 49, had been pushing a bicycle across a busy road about 100 meters from the closest pedestrian crosswalk when she stepped in front of the vehicle, which was traveling 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, Tempe police chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle. The fatal accident prompted Uber to temporarily halt testing of its driverless vehicles on public roads in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto....

If you want to be absolutely secure, you should make up a different password for every single Web site you visit. Each password should have at least 16 characters, and it should contain a scramble of letters, numbers, and punctuation; it should contain no recognizable words. You should change all of these passwords every couple of weeks. And you should not write any of them down anywhere. That, at least, is what security experts advise....

In the race to adapt to a rapidly changing climate, warm-blooded animals might have the edge. New research suggests that over millions of years of planetary history, birds and mammals have outperformed amphibians and reptiles at adapting to changing temperatures and shifting their habitats to more suitable locations. The study published yesterday in Nature Ecology and Evolution analyzed data on more than 11,000 vertebrate species, including fossil records from the past 270 million years....

Theoretical physics is full of big, thrilling ideas: dark energy, mysterious particles and multiverses, to name a few. It can all be overwhelming to the uninitiated, and challenging for scientists to communicate to the public. So how can physicists bridge that gap and discuss their work in a manner that is both captivating and educational? Clifford V. Johnson, a theoretical physicist at the University of Southern California, wants to spark public conversations that are as jam-packed with big ideas as those he routinely has in private with his academic colleagues....

We’ve all experienced a bruise or two here and there throughout our lives. Some of us who are a bit clumsier may have seen a few more. Bruising is a very commonly reported symptom at the doctor’s office. But it can infrequently be a sign of something more concerning. How do you know when a bruise is something you should worry about? And what causes them? What is a Bruise? A “bruise,” or “ecchymosis” (the fancy medical term for a bruise), is a collection of blood and fluid underneath the skin where blood vessels lie to feed the skin and nearby tissues in the body (such as muscle)....

By Matt Kaplan The use of dire predictions to encourage action on climate change may be backfiring and increasing doubt that greenhouse gases from human activities are causing global warming.Although scientific evidence that anthropogenic activities are behind global warming continues to mount, belief in the phenomenon has stagnated in recent years. “When I was a pollster, I was detecting that many dire messages seemed to be counterproductive, we really needed someone to determine why,” says Ted Nordhaus at the Breakthrough Institute, a Californian think-tank for energy and climate issues....

Rocking babies to sleep—to both quiet the wails of youth and preserve the sanity of young parents—has been commonplace dating back to prehistory. Similarly, rhythmic motions like the muted clank of a train ride coax many of us adults into an instant slumber—but why? Two new studies published today in Current Biology suggest our brains are evolutionarily programmed to respond to rocking. The research shows in both humans and mice, rocking to sleep may have significant health benefits such as better quality of sleep and even improved long-term memory formation....

Astrobiology—the study of extraterrestrial life—has made great strides since its 1960s origins, when the evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson derided it as “a science without a subject.” Today it is booming as never before, driven by perennially high public interest and steadily growing scientific respectability. In a press conference last week two senior NASA officials—Ellen Stofan, the agency’s chief scientist, and John Grunsfeld, the former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s science programs—predicted that astrobiologists would at last find their elusive alien subjects within only a decade or two....

One of the ocean’s most fearsome predators is muscling into new parts of the icy Arctic Ocean. Orcas, also known as killer whales, are showing up in places they’ve never been spotted before. Scientists believe melting sea ice is to blame. “[Killer whales] will normally avoid ice to avoid entrapment and suffocating,” said Brynn Kimber, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, at a press conference Wednesday hosted by the Acoustical Society of America....