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By Helen Shen of Nature magazineThe nerves in a human brain form a three-dimensional grid of criss-crossing fibers, say researchers who have mapped them.The regular pattern creates a scaffold to guide brain development and support more complex and variable brain structures, says Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The grid structure, by dint of its simplicity and symmetry under deformation, allows for continuous re-wiring,” he says....

Scientists have found three viruses in bats in Laos that are more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known viruses. Researchers say that parts of their genetic code bolster claims that the virus behind COVID-19 has a natural origin—but their discovery also raises fears that there are numerous coronaviruses with the potential to infect people. David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, calls the find “fascinating, and quite terrifying”....

In summer 2003, more than 52,000 Europeans died from heat-related ills, 30,000 in France alone, during an unrelenting heat wave that featured temperatures 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit (3.6 degrees Celsius) higher than normal. Crops also suffered, with corn production down by 30 percent and wheat by 21 percent, among other foodstuffs. And a similar hot spell in Ukraine in 1972 led to a wheat shortage that prompted that staple’s prices to more than triple by 1974....

In a candid conversation with Frank Rich last fall, Chris Rock said, “Oh, people don’t even know. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.” The findings of three studies, published over the last several years in Perspectives on Psychological Science, suggest that Rock is right. We have no idea how unequal our society has become. In their 2011 paper, Michael Norton and Dan Ariely analyzed beliefs about wealth inequality....

A leading psychopathy researcher has used the threat of legal action to have changes made to a research paper critical of a widely used criminological rating scale he developed 20 years ago. In the process the paper, which was accepted for publication in 2007 by Psychological Assessment, was delayed three years. It finally appeared in the journal’s June issue, but the whole affair has raised questions about how legal threats can impact the progress of psychological science....

In the U.S. some five million people have Alzheimer’s disease and 10 million boomers will be at risk for memory problems over their lifetime. Worldwide, more than 100 million people may have Alzheimer’s by the year 2050. As clinicians, we have learned to recognize that jokes about “old-timer’s disease” and “Teflon brain” are often calls for help from seniors worried about their memory lapses. Living longer is obviously no fun if you cannot remember your home address or drive a car....

It is one of the most disputed observations in physics. But an explanation may be in sight for a mysterious excess of high-energy photons at the centre of the Milky Way. The latest analysis suggests that the signal could come from a dark-matter particle that has just the right mass to show up at the world’s largest particle accelerator. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), housed at the CERN particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is due to restart colliding protons this summer after a two-year hiatus (see ‘LHC 2....

In 2009 Daphna Joel, A neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University, decided to teach a course on the psychology of gender. As a feminist, she had long been interested in questions of sex and gender, but as a scientist, her research had been mostly on the neural underpinnings of obsessive-compulsive behavior. To prepare for the class, Joel spent a year reviewing much of the extensive and polarized literature on sex differences in the brain....

Key concepts Chemistry Cooking Food science Solutions Introduction Have you ever cooked up homemade candy? Maybe from chocolate—or table sugar? Maple syrup is not only deliciously gooey and great on breakfast foods such as pancakes and waffles, it can also amazingly turn into maple candies with a range of textures. For example, it can be made into sticky maple taffy or hard, molded maple sugar candy. Early spring is the time of year when maple producers in North America start to tap their trees and collect the sap to turn it into maple syrup, so it’s a perfect time to explore this tasty, fascinating food....

CARBON CALCULATION In “The Last Resort,” Richard Conniff states that “our cars each typically emit 4.6 [metric tons, or about five U.S. short tons] of carbon dioxide a year.” I would appreciate an explanation as to how this figure was derived. Assuming an average vehicle is 4,000 pounds, I find it hard to believe that in a given year, an automobile produces more than twice its weight in carbon dioxide. For example, if a car drives an average of 10,000 miles a year and gets 20 miles per gallon, it will consume 500 gallons of gasoline in a year....

The ultimatum game brings out conflicting impulses in human beings. In the game, a researcher offers two players a set amount of money and explains that if they agree on how to divvy it up they will keep that money for themselves. If they don’t, neither will get anything. One player then offers the other a split. Our thirst for fairness dictates that most players will reject a patently unfair division–such as offering only $4 out of a total of $20....

With a stroke of his pen, former President George W. Bush created three new marine monuments some 2.5 times larger than the entire U.S. national park system. The ocean reserves in the remote Pacific are bigger than Texas—335,000 square miles (540,000 square kilometers) of ocean in all concentrated around U.S.-controlled islands—and “the largest conservation area ever protected anywhere on Earth,” says William Chandler, vice president for government affairs at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute....

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Hurricane-force winds and torrential rain disrupted transport networks and cut power supplies in Britain and France on Tuesday, one of the busiest travel days of the year just before Christmas, pushing the death toll to at least six people.Winds of up to 90 mph hit both sides of the Channel with heavy downpours causing flooding, traffic jams, and cancellations of rail, flight and ferry services.In Britain the number of people killed in two days of storms rose to at least five after a man died trying to rescue his dog from fast-flowing waters in Devon, southwest England....

Supporters of science around the world will take to the streets on 14 April for the second annual March for Science. Over the past year, the march—which began as a single day of demonstrations in April 2017 — has evolved into a global advocacy movement. Nature takes a look at why people are marching, how the movement has changed over time and what its future could bring. How many cities are hosting marches, and what kind of turnout do organizers expect?...

By David JonesNEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - Two European shipping firms were ordered on Tuesday to pay a $10.4 million penalty and given four years probation for illegally dumping oil-tainted bilge water as well as falsifying records.The firms - Columbia Shipmanagement GmbH of Germany and Columbia Shipmanagement Ltd of Cyprus - admitted to illegal activity on three oil tankers and one container ship, including bypassing the use of required pollution prevention equipment....

Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. More likely than not, you have had to deal with someone who just seemed a little “off” at some point in your life. Maybe a frustrating coworker who makes everyone’s lives miserable? Or an estranged family member who is often considered the “black sheep” that no one can really handle being around?...

Organic semiconducting materials will never replace the silicon chips in your computer, but now they are finding their way into applications ranging from flexible displays to low-cost radio-frequency identity tags, for which silicon chips are not suited. The past year has witnessed advances in both the development of specific devices and understanding of the basic physics of the materials. On the device front, Paul W. M. Blom and his student Ronald C....

TAMPA, Fla. — On a wall full of guns is a sign that welcomes the presence of personal firearms in a cluttered pawn shop at the heart of this election battleground state. The invitation also extends to receptive ideas about climate change. A big 29-year-old by the name of Chris Fajardo answered easily when asked whether people are affecting the Earth’s temperatures. “Yeah, absolutely,” he said. Fajardo handles sensitive deliveries for the store, and he pressed an inky thumbprint onto a government form before leaving with a package late last week....

CEREBRAL INSIGHTS Charlie Rose Brain Series www.charlierose.com DVD (free online or $24.95 per episode) Wouldn’t it be great if you could eavesdrop on conversations between some of the greatest brain scientists in the world? Now you can, thanks to veteran television journalist Charlie Rose. In his 13-part series on the brain, which premiered in October 2009 and continues through November 2010, Rose and his co-host, Nobel laureate Eric R. Kandel, along with esteemed neuroscientists, explore a different aspect of the brain in each episode....

The sun is an alien place where matter in a state rarely encountered on Earth roils and twines and sometimes erupts into space. Despite decades of telescope monitoring, scientists lack a fundamental understanding of how and why these outbursts happen. In the past couple of decades physicists have tried re-creating the situation on the sun’s surface in the controlled setting of the laboratory. One study recently wrapped up at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is turning up intriguing results....