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By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have invented a speedy method to make potent painkilling opioids using bioengineered baker’s yeast instead of poppies, but need to fine-tune the process to make it commercially viable, according to a study published on Thursday. The new method, if it can be made more efficient, could significantly change the multibillion-dollar pain medication manufacturing business, but raises concerns about aggravating the growing problem of opioid abuse....

By Calla Cofield of Nature magazineThe IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a telescope at the South Pole that detects the subatomic particles known as neutrinos, has measured the highest-energy neutrino oscillations yet.IceCube was designed primarily to study neutrinos streaming from astrophysical objects such as supernovae and ?-ray bursts. But the detection of neutrino oscillations–the transformation of one type of neutrino into another–represents new scientific territory for the experiment, an area that falls under the umbrella of particle physics....

Boca Chica, a finger of mostly undeveloped land in south Texas between the Brownsville Ship Channel and a part of the Rio Grande forming the riverine U.S.-Mexico border, is a haven for many endangered and threatened animals. The creatures include the leatherback, loggerhead, hawksbill, green and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, as well as birds like the piping plover, red knot, and northern aplomado falcon. It is also the habitat of two rare cats, the Gulf Coast jaguarundi and ocelot....

Lawsuits didn’t do it, public shaming didn’t do it, patients and doctors banding together to “free the data” couldn’t do it: For 22 years Myriad Genetics, one of the oldest genetic testing companies, has refused to make public its proprietary database of BRCA1 variants, which lists more than 17,000 known misspellings in that major “cancer risk” gene, along with the medical significance of each. The database lists which mutations increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, which do not, and which have an unknown health effect....

As the COVID-19 pandemic caught hold early this year, a small drug company outside Philadelphia was struggling to market a compound that could help patients battling for their lives. Paratek Pharmaceuticals had spent more than 20 years developing and testing an antibiotic named omadacycline (Nuzyra), which went on sale in the United States in 2019 for use against bacterial infections. Although antibiotics can’t fight the virus that causes COVID-19, almost 15% of people hospitalized with the disease go on to develop bacterial pneumonias, some of which are resistant to existing antibiotics....

More than 230 earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 3.0 have shaken the state of Oklahoma already this year. Before 2008 the state averaged one such quake a year. The surge in seismic activity has left residents and experts alike wondering about the underlying cause. Past research has shown that processes such as wastewater injection at oil drilling and fracking sites throughout the state could induce a small number of earthquakes but scientists have never been able to specifically link some of the more distant or stronger earthquakes with these sometimes faraway wastewater wells....

Listen to an audio version of the article. Pangaea, 252 million years ago—the world is over. Siberia has been erupting for 300,000 years, is still erupting and won’t stop. Not a volcano, mind you, but Siberia—two million square miles of it. A suppurating, billowing, continent-scaled wasteland of glowing rock and steam. The seas, once resplendent with horn corals and sponge reefs, are now sour and laden with mercury. Hot as soup, they bubble deathly swamp gas that feeds vile, hurricane-churned slicks of slime....

For football players, turf toe is a common malady that is more of a nuisance than a serious injury. Even though it’s linked to artificial surfaces found in most domed stadiums (hence its name), players can get turf toe on grass, as well as any other firm surface. So, what exactly is it? Turf toe is actually a constellation of injuries typically involving the stretching of tissue inside the big toe....

At a psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, two toddlers eye gummy bears that lie on a board beyond their reach. To get the treats, both tots must pull in tandem on either end of a rope. If only one child pulls, the rope detaches, and they wind up with nothing. A few miles away, in a plexiglass enclosure at Pongoland, the ape facility at the Leipzig Zoo, researchers repeat the identical experiment, but this time with two chimpanzees....

Whereas cholesterol levels measured in a routine blood test can serve as a red flag for heart disease, there’s no simple screen for impending Alzheimer’s. A new Silicon Valley health start-up hopes to change that. A half million Americans die of Alzheimer’s disease each year. Most are diagnosed after a detailed medical workup and extensive neurological and psychological tests that gauge mental function and rule out other causes of dementia. Yet things begin going awry some 10 to 15 years before symptoms show....

A newly released treasure trove of historical data reveals intriguing details about a secret Cold War project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). The U.S. Air Force’s MOL program ran from December 1963 until its cancellation in June 1969. The program spent $1.56 billion during that time, according to some estimates. While the program never actually lofted a crewed space station, those nearly six years were quite eventful, featuring the selection of 17 MOL astronauts, the remodeling of NASA’s two-seat Gemini spacecraft, the development of the Titan-3C launch vehicle and the building of an MOL launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California....

Steven Weinberg came up with a good idea one day while driving his red Camaro. The paper he wrote, “A Model of Leptons,” was just two and a half pages long—including references and acknowledgments. When it came out in 1967, it was largely ignored. But it became one of the most quoted physics papers ever and helped to earn Weinberg the 1979 Nobel Prize, shared with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow....

Getting seven to eight solid hours of sleep each night might seem an almost impossible luxury to many people. But not getting enough sleep is known to impair mental function and increase the risk for heart disease, among other ill effects. Accumulating evidence also suggests that even short-term, partial sleep deprivation could pave the way for weight gain and other negative metabolic consequences. More than 28 percent of adults in the U....

A high-throughput screening of the human genome and proteome (the proteins expressed in a cell) has allowed scientists to identify more than 200 proteins impacted directly by a mutation to the huntingtin protein, which is known to be the cause of Huntington’s disease. The actual function of the normal huntingtin protein is unknown, but it is believed to be involved in embryonic development. In its mutated form, however, its amino acid elongates, causing the protein to improperly fold, likely resulting in abnormal interactions with other proteins in the nervous system cells it inhabits....

SEPTEMBER’S SPECIAL ISSUE, “Crossroads for Planet Earth,” focused on the unique near-term challenges of the next 50 years–and how our choices may well determine our species’ ability not only to thrive but to survive far into the future. Articles prescribed solutions–ranging from global to local, gradualist to radical–to tackle socioeconomic, demographic and environmental problems. And they drew a bounty of letters, laden with readers’ prognostications, criticisms and alternative answers. But problem solving is a tricky business: to outline long-term fixes to current crises and trends, many authors had to valiantly venture onto that perilous tightrope that is forecasting the future....

Researchers are experimenting with x-ray technology to zap dangerous bacteria that hide in foods such as leafy greens, tomatoes, ground beef and, most recently, peanuts. A new x-ray machine being tested at Michigan State University can reduce pathogens 99.999%, a higher percentage than traditional methods such as chlorine washes, food experts say. The technique, which uses a low-dose form of irradiation, destroys the bacteria on delicate foods without turning them to mush....

Editor’s note: Futures 2 collects together 100 stories from 100 authors. This eclectic selection tries to address the question “what will the future really be like?” in tales just 900 words long. A celebration of flash fiction, the new anthology features contributions from Madeline Ashby, Neal Asher, Tony Ballantyne, Barrington Bayley, Elizabeth Bear, Jacey Bedford, Gregory Benford, Tobias Buckell, Brenda Cooper, Kathryn Kramer, David Langford, Tanith Lee, Ken Liu, Nick Mamatas, Norman Spinrad, Ian Stewart, Rachel Swirsky, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Ian Whates, among others....

Wireless gadgets have changed the way nearly everyone communicates, but one group has benefited more than others: the deaf. For those who cannot make a voice call, texting and video, in particular, have not only opened them up to the hearing world and to each other, but also allowed them to use American Sign Language (ASL), often their native language. About 17 percent (36 million) of U.S. adults report some degree of hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Md....

SpaceX will launch its first all-civilian crew on a three-day journey around the Earth in what will be a historic step for private space travel. The private spaceflight company will launch the Inspiration4 crew, a team of four private citizens, on a veteran Falcon 9 rocket it calls B1062. The previously flown rocket is scheduled to blast off from Pad 39A and Kennedy Space Center here in Florida tonight (Sept. 15) during a five-hour window that opens at 8:02 p....

One evening in the emergency room, I was asked to evaluate a patient requesting admission to the psychiatric unit. Gia was waiting for me, looking pale but fit. (All individuals identified only by their first name have been assigned pseudonyms, and their identifying details have been changed.) She had heard that the hospital was recruiting inpatients for a study of bipolar disorder and wanted to participate. She described herself as moody—upbeat for a few hours, then down, then happy again....