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Originally posted on the Nature news blog. Posted on behalf of Katia Moskvitch. Phew. Five experimental geckos that were feared lost in space have phoned home, restoring hopes that research into their zero-gravity sex lives can go on. The four females and one male are onboard a satellite as part of an experiment to investigate sexual activity and reproduction in microgravity carried out by Russia’s space agency. Roscosmos launched the lizards using a six-tonne Foton-M4 rocket on 19 July....

[This is Part 3 of an In-Depth Report on The Future of Nuclear Power.] A 98-foot-wide, two-mile-long ditch with steep walls 33 feet deep that bristles with magnets and radar reflectors will stand for millennia as a warning to future humans not to trifle with what is hidden inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) outside Carlsbad, N.M. Paired with 48 stone or concrete 105-ton markers, etched with warnings in seven languages ranging from English to Navajo as well as human faces contorted into expressions of horror, the massive installation is meant to stand for at least 10,000 years—twice as long as the Egyptian pyramids have survived....

As an understocked purveyor of large dried fruit might say, we’re out of big dates for a while. The Orwellian 1984 came and went, we partied like it was 1999, the most ominous monoliths in 2001 turned out to be ideological and the Clarkesque follow-up of 2010 recently ended without interplanetary incident. We have another five centuries before we judge the prescience of Zager and Evans, if we are still alive....

NASA scientists are meeting with representatives from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute (IKI) this week, to continue discussion of a possible collaboration on the institute’s upcoming Venera-D mission to Venus, NASA officials announced last week. Russia launched 16 space probes toward Venus as part of the Venera series between 1961 and 1983, including the only probes to ever successfully land on the surface of hellish planet. The IKI Venera-D mission is scheduled to launch sometime in the 2020s....

Neuroscientists know a lot about how individual neurons operate but remarkably little about how large numbers of them work together to produce thoughts, feelings and behavior. They need a wiring diagram for the brain—known as a connectome—to identify the circuits that underlie the organ’s functions. Now researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and their colleagues have developed an innovative brain-mapping technique and used it to trace the connections emanating from nearly 600 neurons in a mouse brain’s main visual area in just three weeks....

TREND WATCH: Around 3.5% of the world’s natural-gas supply was wastefully burned, or ‘flared’, at oil and gas fields in 2012, according to the latest estimates from satellite data. The United States has the greatest number of flares, but Russia leads the world in the total volume of flared natural gas (see chart, ‘Top natural-gas-flaring nations’). In 2012, the 143 billion cubic metres of gas flared led to the emission of more than 350 million tons of carbon dioxide, around 10% of the annual emissions of European Union member states....

Although sex addiction is the name, researchers and clinicians still debate about what exactly constitutes the game. A few years ago, there was an effort to add a brand new diagnosis of “Hypersexual Disorder” to the list of official psychiatric diagnoses, but ultimately the attempt was rejected. Left without a legitimate diagnosis, those suffering do their best to get help for a problem without a name or consistent description. Whatever you call it, it’s a real thing....

In 2006, Japanese researchers reported a technique for creating cells that have the embryonic ability to turn into almost any cell type in the mammalian body — the now-famous induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In papers published this week in Nature, another Japanese team says that it has come up with a surprisingly simple method — exposure to stress, including a low pH — that can make cells that are even more malleable than iPS cells, and do it faster and more efficiently....

When a Venus flytrap snaps its fleshy lobes around an unsuspecting insect, it’s game over for the prey. The plant’s unusual habit of snacking on animals has captured the imagination of people ranging from Charles Darwin to playwright Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken (the latter two created the 1982 musical Little Shop of Horrors, which stars a human-eating plant). Now, in an experiment that might seem straight out of a pulp science-fiction novel, scientists have harnessed the flytrap’s power for themselves: they have developed a method to trigger its trap using soft, semi-organic artificial neurons....

A new study confirms that coral reefs could become yet another casualty of climate change if something is not done to cool the warming globe. The reason: marine cements that bind together reefs can’t form in waters full of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2). Those off the west coast of Central America, particularly around the Galapagos Islands, are kept soft by the more acidic waters in that region—and may provide an early look at how coral reefs will fare in the rest of the world as atmospheric CO2 levels rise....

There are bacteria in wine that may be beneficial for people’s health, new research finds. In the study, researchers in Spain isolated 11 strains of bacteria from wine, including strains of Lactobacillus, which are also found in yogurt, as well as Oenococcus and Pediococcus bacteria, which are associated with the wine-making process. “Up to now, many studies have reported that the best [foods] to deliver probiotics are dairy fermented products, so that the probiotic properties of wine-related [Lactobacillus] were hardly studied,” said study author Dolores González de Llano of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain....

Sucking carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from smokestacks and burying them underneath the ground is a key technology cited by politicians and scientists as a way to help combat climate change. One open question is where best to store the CO2. A recent analysis points to the volcanic rock off the East Coast of the U.S. Such rock, known as basalt, might be better than other sites, such as deep saline aquifers or nearly empty oil wells, because the rock not only stores CO2 but also over a relatively short period of years forms carbonate minerals out of it—in other words, limestone....

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. For a digestible summary of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s “guidance for fully vaccinated people,” released 3/8/21, check out the lists near the end of in this 3/8/21 piece by Allison Aubrey and Rachel Treisman for NPR. The lists summarize “what fully vaccinated people can do” (including: visit indoors unmasked with other fully vaccinated people, and visit indoors and unmasked with unvaccinated people who are at low risk for severe COVID-19) as well as the precautions that fully vaccinated people should still take (including: wear a well-fitted mask and socially distance in public; avoid medium-sized and large gatherings; and wear masks, physically distance “and take other prevention measures when visiting with unvaccinated people from multiple households”)....

After decades of stability, the global prices of such food staples as wheat, maize and rice have skyrocketed since 2004. Causes include high energy and fertilizer costs, surging demand and economic development, and a move to biofuels. Virtually all of the world’s extra corn produced from 2004 to 2007—primarily grown in the U.S.—went to make fuel. Prices may not start to decline until the middle of the next decade. In the meantime, the high costs have put tremendous stress on the world’s poor and may exacerbate regional conflicts....

According to conventional wisdom, athletes should down fluids even before they feel thirsty. But excessive hydration can be deadly, says a study of Boston marathoners. It may lead to hyponatremia, the potentially fatal depletion of sodium, an electrolyte essential for cellular function. Normal number of millimoles of sodium per liter of blood: 135 to 145 Number of marathoners studied: 488 Number with hyponatremia at the finish: 65 Percent who drank every mile: Among runners with normal levels: 54 Among those with hyponatremia: 75 Percent who drank more than three liters during race: Among normals: 26 Among those with hyponatremia: 42 Percent who weighed more at the finish (from fluid intake): Among normals: 29 Among those with hyponatremia: 71 SOURCE: New Eng land Journal of Medicine, April 14...

It may be satisfying to think back on good deeds. But beware: studies suggest these rosy recollections can prime us for future behaviors that are actually less ethical. When reassured of our rock-solid morality, it seems, we give ourselves more leeway in ethically slippery situations—a phenomenon dubbed “moral licensing.” In a recent example, California researchers found that individuals who had just written about a past good deed—such as helping a troubled friend or doing charitable work—worked harder for dough from an ethically iffy source....

After Roger Ebert lost the ability to speak in 2006 due to a post-cancer surgery tracheostomy, the film critic has communicated via Post-It notes, an eloquent and hilarious array of hand gestures, and his Mac laptop synthesizer. The version that read out pre-typed introductions at his annual film festival in 2009 had an upper-class English accent the British might call “emollient.” Ebert and his wife Chaz called it “Sir Laurence” and shortly thereafter replaced it with a more accessible American–accented voice called “Alex....

The Internet Age is upon us. But rather than circulating online, the 23rd Decennial Census stuck with the tried-and-true, and flooded the U.S. Postal Service March 16 through 18 with surveys en route to more than 120 million households nationwide. The 10-question form, which probes for demographic information such as age, sex and race, will help determine how more than $400 billion will be allocated to communities across the country. Citizens and noncitizens alike are required by law to complete the form and mail it back to the U....

Watching television may be bad for the kids; making televisions, it seems, may be bad for the climate. To produce flatpanel displays, manufacturers rely on nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), a potent greenhouse gas that was not covered by the emissions-regulating Kyoto Protocol when it was drafted in 1997, because so little of it was used then. Now exploding sales of flat-panel TVs and other digital devices, coupled with incomplete recapture of the chemical during manufacture, could spell trouble, warn Michael J....

Bisphenol A, phthalates, polychlorinated biphenyls, polybrominated diphenyl ethers—these barely pronounceable chemicals contaminate the bodies of nearly all American pregnant women. Worse, research suggests that most pass through the placenta and into the bloodstream of developing fetuses. But how scared should expectant parents be? Sometimes the way risks are reported makes chemicals sound more dangerous than they really are, and in any case many environmental health risks are surprisingly easy for pregnant women to avoid....