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Over the past decade a kind of brain surgery known as deep-brain stimulation (DBS) has helped some Parkinson’s disease sufferers develop better control of their physical movements. But the risks that come with the invasive procedure—not to mention the costs—keep physicians and patients cautious. The treatment is usually indicated when medicine no longer addresses the neurodegenerative disorder’s symptoms effectively. Now, a new study from European researchers indicates that deep-brain stimulation’s benefits are just as promising for people in the earlier stages of Parkinson’s....

MONTEREY, Calif. – Move over, polar bear. The white prowler of Arctic ice fields may now be an icon of climate change, but when it comes to ocean acidification – the shift in ocean chemistry caused by rising carbon dioxide emissions – it’s the tiny Pacific Northwest oyster that dominates the discussion. The little mollusk brings in an estimated $110 million for West Coast shellfish growers, an economic shot in the arm for many struggling communities in Washington and Oregon....

The coronavirus outbreak has reached the Arctic—and is imperilling a massive international scientific project, after a team member tested positive for the virus. The mission, called MOSAiC, is operating from the German research vessel Polarstern, which has been intentionally frozen in Arctic sea ice since last October. From this ice-encrusted platform, a rotating cast of scientists and technicians are sampling the ice, atmosphere and ocean in an attempt to understand the intricacies of the rapidly changing Arctic climate....

The United States’ smallest meteorologist must be scratching his head about now. Each February for the past 125 years, Punxsutawney Phil – the Pennsylvanian groundhog long considered a living symbol of Groundhog Day – has sauntered from his burrow to cast a shadow on the weeks and months ahead. His predictions, though not always accurate, are cheered by hundreds of fans who flock to his den at Gobbler’s Knob, a wooded hillock just outside the town that bears his name....

China has bet on solar energy as a cleaner alternative to coal, but whether installed solar panels can meet the country’s need for energy is becoming a troubling question. China had installed nearly 19.5 gigawatts of solar panels as of the end of 2013. However, “many solar installations failed to generate as much electricity as planned,” said Ji Zhenshuang, deputy director at the Beijing-based China General Certification Center, which examined 472 Chinese solar projects over the past four years....

Is it a boy or a girl? When it comes to personal identity, gender is so foundational that it is often the first thing we ask new parents when we learn that a human being has entered the world. But as the behavioral sciences have revealed, gender is not the simple binary matter implied in that age-old question. Nor is it so easy to determine from a child’s visible anatomy. For an estimated 0....

With the winner of the presidency and party control of the Senate still unclear the morning after Election Day, the future of the nation’s health system remains uncertain. At stake is whether the federal government will play a stronger role in financing and setting the ground rules for health care coverage or cede more authority to states and the private sector. Should President Donald Trump win and Republicans retain control of the Senate, Trump still may not be able to make sweeping changes through legislation as long as the House is still controlled by Democrats....

By Ewen Callaway Nature magazineBy transforming cells from human skin into working nerve cells, researchers may have come up with a model for nervous-system diseases and perhaps even regenerative therapies based on cell transplants.The achievement, reported online today in Nature, is the latest in a fast-moving field called transdifferentiation, in which cells are forced to adopt new identities. In the past year, researchers have converted connective tissue cells found in skin into heart cells, blood cells and liver cells....

EDINBURGH, Scotland – Pelamis platurus, otherwise known as the Yellowbelly Sea Snake, has a new mechanical namesake, a flexible 180-meter monster – nearly the length of two football fields. It is floating here next to a dock, ready to go to sea. The giant red machine is named after the serpent, one of the few known to thrive in the open sea. The device is designed so that when it’s hit by big waves, it writhes snake-like in the water....

After more than a decade of careful planning and hours of nail-biting tension, this morning an emissary from Earth made history’s first soft landing on a comet. The European Space Agency’s dishwasher-size Philae lander touched down on the craggy surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko shortly after 10:30 A.M. Eastern time, after being released seven hours earlier from its mother ship, the Rosetta orbiter. “We are there. We are sitting on the surface....

Lasers are most familiar as pinpoint beams of coherent light, but the principle of lasing—amplification by stimulated emission—occurs just fine without light, as two reports of ultrasound lasers demonstrate. One device consists of layers of gallium arsenide and aluminum arsenide that emit and partially trap sound vibrations in the solid (phonons) oscillating in the terahertz range. A voltage creates a burst of phonons, which reverberate and multiply, and the amplified ultrasound exits one end....

The U.S. has one of the highest hospital readmission rates in the world. About 20 percent of Medicare patients wind up being readmitted within 30 days after discharge. Hospitals have tried a variety of strategies, including patient counseling and home visits to lower readmissions, with mixed results. The office that administers Medicare is hoping that new financial penalties, part of the Affordable Care Act, will push hospitals to tackle the problem more aggressively....

The physics world is abuzz this week with news that Stephen Hawking has solved the famous black hole information paradox—and that he has even discovered “a way to escape from a black hole.” The giddy announcements are somewhat premature, however—this paradox looks like it has staying power. Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, first uncovered the conundrum in the 1970s when he predicted that black holes—supposedly inescapable gravitational pits—actually leak light, called Hawking radiation....

A new analysis of puzzling gullylike features on Mars offers further evidence that water flowed on the Red Planet’s surface, perhaps as recently as several hundred thousand years ago. The findings bolster the case that melting snow from a departed Martian ice age carved these gullies, rather than shifting sands or other “dry” phenomena. The paper, published today in the journal Geology, examines one of the many gullies on crater and valley walls visible in satellite images of the Martian surface....

SACRAMENTO COUNTY, CALIF.—Leo Van Warmerdam pointed to a red shed housing a large generator on his family’s dairy farm as he loped over two acres of manure. The thick black plastic stretching across the manure ballooned as he walked on it, inflated by methane building from beneath. The cover seemed to be doing its job: It didn’t smell much different above the lagoon than it did elsewhere in this livestock-dominated swath of the Central Valley, just south of Sacramento....

Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. It’s 2 AM and you wake up with chest pain. What should you do? Maybe it’s just indigestion, but maybe it’s a heart attack. How do you know what to do? When is Chest Pain Serious? Heart attacks kill more people in the US than any other single disease, and the main symptom that people have from a heart attack is chest pain....

Clinical guidelines published this week announce what may be the most radical change in the treatment of type 2 diabetes for almost a century. Appearing in Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association, and endorsed by 45 professional societies around the world, the guidelines propose that surgery involving the manipulation of the stomach or intestine be considered as a standard treatment option for appropriate candidates. This development follows multiple clinical trials showing that gastrointestinal surgery can improve blood-sugar levels more effectively than any lifestyle or pharmaceutical intervention, and even lead to long-term remission of the disease....

PROFILE NAME Justin R. Rattner TITLE Intel Senior Fellow and director and chief technology officer, Intel Labs LOCATION Hillsboro, Ore. Why are wearable computers getting so much attention recently? The sensor technology, the communications technology and the computer technology have all reached a point where, for the first time, the potential for highvolume consumer wearables is real. That’s what’s new. Today you can put essentially everything that’s in a smartphone into a set of eyeglasses, although they would be a bit heavy....

View slideshow The idea of soaring through the sky with nothing more than a suitcase-sized rocket strapped to one’s back has captured the public’s imagination since rocket packs (read The Trouble with Rocket Packs) were first introduced shortly after World War II. And when James Bond strapped one on over his tux in Thunderball, its fascination only grew. Yet, with the exception of the occasional demonstration at a Pro Bowl game, parade or convention, the rocket pack has remained mostly grounded, a vision of the future that never quite materialized....

Like surveyors charting out a parcel of land by measuring angles, distances and elevations, astronomers have long mapped the positions of celestial objects in the sky. Those celestial maps are about to see some major revisions. New and upcoming campaigns using ground-based telescopes or spacecraft promise to fill in many new details in astronomers’ maps of the sky. Together these projects will catalogue detailed positional information on several billion stars and galaxies near and far....