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With their lithe limbs, stretchy skin, and colorful camouflage, octopuses have many admirers among scientists and engineers. Soft robotics makers, for example, aim to mimic the creatures’ ability to slip into small spaces. Camouflage experts would like to create tunable color surfaces similar to those octopuses use to evade predators. Inspired by the octopus’s shape- and color-shifting abilities, researchers have now created a superstretchy skin that lights up in different colors....

Two new studies provide the strongest evidence yet that oil and gas companies have caused a rash of earthquakes in the central United States by injecting wastewater into underground wells. One study, in Science, finds that the extraordinary increase in quakes took place almost exclusively within 15 kilometres of such wells. The second, in Science Advances, confirms that most seismic activity in one state, Oklahoma, is linked to wells that are used to dispose of huge volumes of saltwater....

The remains of long, thin cells preserved inside the 50-million-year-old fossilized cocoon of an unknown worm species represent the oldest animal sperm ever found, say researchers at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. Benjamin Bomfleur and his colleagues spotted the sperm fragments when they used an electron microscope to examine the inner surface of the cocoon fossil, which had been collected by an Argentinian expedition on Seymour Island, which lies off the Antarctic Peninsula....

Starhopper’s biggest leap was also its last. SpaceX’s first prototype for its Mars-colonizing Starship vehicle aced its final test flight today (Aug. 27), rising several hundred feet off the ground at the company’s facility in the tiny South Texas town of Boca Chica. Starhopper lifted off just after 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT; 5 p.m. local Texas time), reached a hover altitude and then flew sideways to touch town at a separate nearby landing pad....

Discoveries of water on Mars are now so common that the subject has become the butt of jokes among planetary scientists: “Congratulations—you’ve discovered water on Mars for the 1,000th time!” Most of these findings have involved either visual evidence for ancient, long-gone water or evidence for present-day ice, vapor or hydrated minerals. The discovery of actual liquid water on the surface, in the present day, could change the course of Mars exploration....

Two years into the COVID pandemic, as the highly contagious Omicron variant pushes infections to record highs, U.S. physicians have a growing arsenal of therapies to keep mild disease from worsening. At the same time, limited availability and challenging logistics are complicating decisions about which patients receive them. Here is a rundown of what is on hand for hospitalized patients, as well as for people who are primarily recovering at home....

For ticks, mealtime is an extended affair. The arachnid parasites latch on to hosts for days at a time. To find out exactly how ticks penetrate and anchor into the skin of their hosts, researchers examined tick mouthparts under microscopes and watched as the parasites attached themselves to the ears of mice. As they report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, ticks first burrow into the host’s skin with two telescoping, barbed structures called chelicerae....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Hurricane Ophelia, by then downgraded to Storm Ophelia, reached Ireland on Monday October 16. At the time of writing there had already been three deaths and countless reports of severe damage to buildings and fallen trees. Unlike other severe storms to reach Ireland and Britain, such as the 1987 Great Storm, Ophelia was in many ways a typical tropical cyclone with a tight spiral of cloud, powerfully strong winds, and a cloud-free eye....

During the 2016 election cycle, certain Web sites spread false information across the Internet. But a new study suggests they did not have as much impact as some have feared. About 44 percent of voters, mostly right-leaning, saw at least one site, the study found.* Yet those voters also saw plenty of legitimate news on the Web. “This content, while worrisome, is only a small fraction of most people’s information,” says Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College and one of the three authors of the study, which was published today in Nature Human Behaviour....

A number of you have asked me to respond to a new documentary called What the Health, which you can find on Netflix or Vimeo. This is the latest in a growing number of documentary films focusing on how what we eat affects our health and environment, and how business, industry, and public policy affect what we eat. Other films in this general category include Forks over Knives, Cowspiracy, Farmland, Food, Inc....

Strong emotional bonds between mothers and infants increase children’s willingness to explore the world—an effect that has been observed across the animal kingdom, in people, monkeys and even spiders. The more secure we are in our attachment to Mom, the more likely we are to try new things and take risks. Now researchers are discovering that this effect continues into adulthood. A mere reminder of Mom’s touch or the sound of her voice on the phone is enough to change people’s minds and moods, affecting their decision making in measurable ways....

The global implications would be profound. The loss of the rainforest would cause a large-scale drying across the region. The circulation of the atmosphere could change in response, altering weather patterns around the world. How long it can keep holding on is the million-dollar question. The new study shows that an irreversible tipping point is inching closer — but it hasn’t arrived. And it’s still unclear how long it might take to get there....

At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. had some of the best broadband access in the world. It reached more homes, and at a lower price, than most every other industrial country. Ten years later the U.S. is a solid C-minus student, ranking slightly below average on nearly every metric. Just how the U.S. lost its edge and how it plans to get it back are the issues before the Federal Communications Commission as it prepares to launch the most significant overhaul of network policy since the birth of the Web....

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s government approved the use of pesticides with the active ingredient cyantraniliprole to fight the coffee borer beetle, a note published in the country’s Official Gazette said on Friday. Coffee cooperatives had been lobbying for the approval after the government said it would no longer allow farmers to use another product, endolsulfan, to prevent the beetle from damaging crops. Cyantraniliprole is approved for use in the United States, the European Union, Canada and Japan, according to a statement from Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry....

Safe, low-cost, energy-dense batteries are widely considered to be the holy grail in furthering low-carbon energy use. Making high-performance batteries has proved elusive, but scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory claim they’ve made a breakthrough. The Oak Ridge lab announced yesterday it has designed and tested a completely solid lithium-sulfur battery with about four times the energy density of comparable lithium-ion battery technology. Given the abundance of elemental sulfur, the battery can also be produced at a much lower cost....

By Jeff Tollefson & Richard Van Noorden of Nature magazineWith many of the world’s nations dragging their feet on cleaning up fossil-fuel emissions, even slow progress stands out. This spring, China’s state-owned Huaneng Group plans to fire up the first phase of its flagship clean-coal demonstration project, moving the country one step closer to capturing and storing the carbon it emits. Despite being more than a year behind schedule, the GreenGen coal gasification plant in Tianjin puts China at the forefront of global efforts to exploit coal resources without releasing carbon dioxide....

Every robot has its limit. For the famous Roomba vacuum, it’s two to three hours. For the several thousand robots deployed in Iraq, about the same. For the warehouse robots sorting our sneaker orders, eight hours. And the Energizer Bunny? Forget about it – a few minutes, tops. Perhaps more than any other factor, the life span of batteries has limited the infiltration of robotics into daily life. As computer processing and sensors have become cheaper and more powerful by the year, batteries, woefully inefficient and slow to recharge, have slogged behind, leaving engineers to dream of a day when they’ll have the juice to give life to their boldest creations....

Some dinosaurs, just like people, had to crawl before they could walk. The conclusion comes from a rare clutch of remarkably pristine dinosaur embryo fossils dating back to 190 million years ago. Although the embryos–the oldest yet discovered–were found in South Africa in 1978, analysis had to wait until the fossils could be sent to a paleontology laboratory with the right tools, including a vibrationless table and special dissecting devices....

That’s the conclusion of new research that shows deforestation can significantly reduce tropical rainfall far from the area where trees have been cut down. That’s because air passing over forests picks up moisture given off by trees and plants, fueling rains. When those trees disappear, so does some of that rain. “What we found was this really strong impact – air that traveled over a lot of forest brought a lot more rain than air that didn’t travel over very much forest,” said lead author Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds....

Moviegoers aren’t the only ones wearing 3D glasses nowadays — doctors could benefit from them, too, a new study suggests. In the past, doctors have been skeptical of using 3D technology in their work, preferring to rely on their own experience. But that may change, thanks to improved 3D glasses and even glasses-free systems. Funded by industry sponsors, the study of 50 surgeons using the new technology showed improvements in surgical precision and speed....