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Even before the COVID pandemic, antimicrobial resistance, in which microbes no longer respond to common medications like antibiotics, was a big concern for public health organizations and health care specialists. In 2019, the latest year for which data are available, antimicrobial resistance led to 4.95 million deaths globally, making it the third leading cause of death after cardiovascular diseases and cancer. After more than two years of COVID, with rampant and inappropriate antibiotic use arising from treatment protocols, public health and health care specialists say antimicrobial resistance is getting substantially worse in many countries....

Five hundred million years ago, strange, mouthless marine creatures called Ediacarans may have soaked up dissolved nutrients exclusively through their skin. Today, only single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, obtain all their food through their membranes, and some larger creatures, including sponges and corals, get a fraction of their sustenance via this process. But there are physical limitations to this strategy—namely absorbing and distributing nutrients in an ever-larger body cavity—which is why animals evolved a branching circulatory system to take nutrients digested in the gut and transport them to the places where they are needed....

In a survey of more than 250 brands of canned food, researchers found that more than 44 percent use bisphenol-A lined cans for some or all of their products. With 109 brands not responding or providing enough information, that number could be a lot higher. The survey, released today by the Environmental Working Group, found that 78 brands use BPA-lined cans for all of their products, 34 brands use BPA-lined cans for some of their products and 31 use BPA-free cans for all of their products....

Whether cute and cuddly or fierce and frightening, animals affect the brain in ways scientists are just starting to appreciate. In a study of people who had electrodes implanted in their brain for the treatment of epilepsy, an international team discovered neurons that respond specifically to animals. The 41 individuals in the study were shown picturesof recognizable landmarks, objects, animals and people for about one second each as tiny electrodes measured the activity of individual neurons in three regions of their brain....

A prescription for an opioid drug such as Percocet or Vicodin can offer pain relief, but it also comes with the potential for abuse and addiction. In the past 20 years the number of overdose deaths from these drugs has more than tripled. In examining whether a legitimate prescription for opioid drugs increases the likelihood of later misuse for teens, a recent study uncovered a surprising trend: it’s the drug-naive teens who are most at risk....

Scientists are predicting an astronomy renaissance on the African continent in coming years, thanks in part to a giant radio telescope array being built there. But the road to cosmic cachet is not an easy one, and African science advocates are scrambling to take full advantage of the opportunities coming their way. “Astronomy really is about to explode across the African continent,” astronomer Kartik Sheth of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory said January 9 at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society near Washington, D....

Cargo trucks gulp about 40 percent of the fuel pumped in the U.S. While most consumer attention focuses on improving the fuel economy of consumer vehicles, a major opportunity goes rumbling by. “Folks do not realize that the fuel use of even a small truck is equal to many, many cars,” says Bill Van Amburg, senior vice president of Calstart, a clean transportation technology nonprofit, and director of the Hybrid Truck Users Forum....

The infamous polar vortex has put the U.S. and Canada in a deep freeze several times already this winter. Alarmed weather forecasters are now routinely displaying big maps that show the extremely low wind chill values: –34 degrees Fahrenheit in Minneapolis, –36 degrees F in Chicago, –39 degrees F in Fargo, N.D., last night alone. But if the air temperature is, say, 15 degrees F, and a 20–mile per hour wind makes the wind chill –2 degrees F, would the temperature of your exposed skin drop to that temperature?...

Of the 160 million tons of seafood that end up on people’s plates each year, 50 percent comes (pdf) from aquaculture. Growing all that salmon, tilapia and shrimp requires a steady supply of the perfect food supplement: oily anchovies and sardines, often called forage fish, which are rich in proteins, fats and vitamins. About 90 percent of the 20 million tons of forage fish pulled from the wild each year is ground into meal or oil to nurture fish farmed for human consumption....

For more than 150 years researchers have tangled with competing explanations for tiny pits preserved in ancient sediments. Some have interpreted those impressions to be so-called fossil raindrops—rainfall literally embossed in the geologic record—but others have argued for air bubbles rising through sedimentary deposits as a more likely mechanism. A new study may shed some light on the kind of imprint raindrops leave in fine-grained sediments and other granular materials. Hiroaki Katsuragi, an assistant professor in the department of electrical and materials science at Kyushu University in Japan, catalogued a variety of droplet impacts and the craters they leave in a series of experiments described in the May 28 issue of Physical Review Letters....

Twenty-five years ago U.S.-led Coalition forces launched the world’s first “space war” when they drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Although the actual fighting did not take place in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS) played a critical role in the Coalition’s rapid dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s military during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Without their orbiting eyes in the sky U.S. troops in particular would have had a much more difficult time navigating, communicating and guiding their weapons across the hundreds of kilometers of inhospitable, windswept desert battlefields in Kuwait and Iraq....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Drop a clump of 100,000 fire ants in a pond of water – or flood a huge area of Texas that’s infested with fire ants and drive them out of their nests in large groups. In minutes the clump will flatten and spread into a circular pancake that can float for weeks without drowning the ants....

Although stars other than our sun are light-years away, their gifts are all around us: the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood. High-mass stars have been especially generous. During their short lives, they cook up such elements as oxygen and magnesium and eject them into space via supernova explosions; the blasts themselves forge still heavier elements, such as gold and platinum. About 80 percent of the Milky Way’s supernovae arise from large stars, so their by-products are everywhere—from the magnesium in chocolate to the gold at Fort Knox....

Two months before the Super Bowl, the Omicron surge was decimating NFL rosters as players tested positive for COVID. In mid-December, the NFL postponed a game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Seattle Seahawks because the Rams, who would go on to win the Super Bowl, had 29 players out with COVID. The number of NFL employees testing positive per week in December went from about 30 to about 300, most of them players who would have to sit out of practices and games....

A mathematician who went from obscurity to luminary status in 2013 for cracking a century-old question about prime numbers now claims to have solved another. The problem is similar to—but distinct from—the Riemann hypothesis, which is considered one of the most important problems in mathematics. Number theorist Yitang Zhang, who is based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, posted his proposed solution—a 111-page preprint—on the arXiv preprint server on 4 November....

We humans are very peculiar primates. We walk upright, precariously balancing our heavy bodies on two short feet. Our heads are oddly swollen, with tiny faces and small jaws tucked below the front of our balloonlike braincases. Perhaps most remarkably, we process information about the world around us in an entirely unprecedented way. As far as anyone can tell, we are the only organisms that mentally deconstruct our surroundings and our internal experiences into a vocabulary of abstract symbols that we juggle in our minds to produce new versions of reality: we can envision what might be, as well as describe what is....

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) pledged yesterday to make climate change a top priority as secretary of State as he sailed through a mostly genial confirmation hearing before the committee he still chairs. Testifying before his Senate Foreign Relations panel, Kerry sidestepped a question about his views on the controversial $7 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline project. But he jumped at a chance to swat down a Republican senator who declared carbon constraints a threat to the U....

The World Meteorological Organization, marking today’s celebration of World Meteorological Day, said there is a need for more focus on the climate issue by young people. The focus comes at a time when most children and young adults in Europe are participating in activities of various organizations, but only a small percentage actively engage in climate issues. “There is no standstill in global warming,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “The warming of our oceans has accelerated and at lower depths....

By Reuters Staff WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget request will propose nearly doubling federal funding to some $1.2 billion for the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the White House said on Tuesday. The budget, which the administration is set to release next Monday, will include an almost $1 billion proposed investment in Department of Health and Human Services research to combat antibiotic resistance. That figure includes $650 million to fund efforts by the National Institutes of Health and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to sharply expand investments in the development of antibacterial diagnostics and research....

View the slide show of threatened species that have yet to make it onto the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and its parent agency, the Department of the Interior, have lately come under fire for their management the Endangered Species Act. Last week a document was leaked that reveals plans to revise the law without prior congressional approval. While agency officials claim that the proposed changes would improve the act’s consistency and clarity, environmental groups contend that they would loosen restrictions on timber and other industries, undermine wildlife protections, and reduce the total number of federally protected species....