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Research on prosthetics takes its greatest strides during or just after wartime, and the past several years have sadly been no exception. Todd A. Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and his team have pioneered “targeted reinnervation,” which jacks an artificial arm into the nervous system. They transplant nerves from the shoulder of a lost arm to a patch on the chest. In trying to move the arm, the person causes chest muscles to flex, which electrodes pick up and transmit to the prosthesis....

Dear EarthTalk: Isn’t the interest in electric cars and plug-in hybrids going to spur increased reliance on coal as a power source? And is that really any better than gasoline/oil in terms of environmental impact? —Graham Rankin, via e-mail It’s true that the advent of electric cars is not necessarily a boon for the environment if it means simply trading our reliance on one fossil fuel—oil, from which gasoline is distilled—for an even dirtier one: coal, which is burned to create electricity....

The signing into law of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in May also contributed to his decision, he said, because it provided the assurance he needed that his research would move forward even without him at the helm. Alan E. Guttmacher, deputy director of NHGRI for the past six years, will serve as acting director. Monkey Think, Monkey Do Neuroprosthetics took another step forward when University of Pittsburgh researchers got two rhesus macaques to feed themselves using mentally controlled robotic arms....

Christopher Columbus explored the New World during wildly tempestuous seafaring times. In the summer of 1502, during his final American voyage, for example, Columbus commanded his fleet to the shelter of an island, now home to Haiti, as a hurricane tore through. Three of the four ships broke anchor in the walloping winds. New research shows that hurricane activity picked up along the American East Coast after 1400, following spikes in nearby sea surface temperatures of up to 3....

If the world wants to keep the lights on, leaders must tackle threats to global water supply, according to the latest prognosis from the World Energy Council. In a report published yesterday based on the findings of over 140 experts internationally, the group calls for swift action to ensure resilient energy infrastructure. Based on last year’s U.N. projections of a 40 percent global shortfall of water availability by 2030, the report focuses on water’s crucial role in power generation....

Flawlessly accounting for the behavior of matter on scales from the subatomic to the astronomical, quantum mechanics is the most successful theory in all the physical sciences. It is also the weirdest. In the quantum realm, particles seem to be in two places at once, information appears to travel faster than the speed of light, and cats can be dead and alive at the same time. Physicists have grappled with the quantum world’s apparent paradoxes for nine decades, with little to show for their struggles....

When neurologist Josef Parvizi electrically stimulated a portion of his epileptic patient’s brain, the subject reported a striking mood change, along with some physical effects: He reported feeling a vibration or shakiness in his chest, his heart rate sped up significantly and he gained a foreboding sense that he was going to face something challenging. He distinctly felt “positive” about the trial, however, and was determined to overcome the obstacle....

For seven years, the U.S. government has been searching for an energy miracle via the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA–E. And yet, over the same time span, the biggest advance has been the quick deployment of various renewable energy technologies everyone knows about, accompanied by a rapid drop in cost. But Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and former founder of Microsoft, says that’s not enough to really revolutionize energy supply and significantly reduce carbon emissions....

Investigators from the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) are in Texas probing an apparent chemical leak that killed four workers and injured a fifth at a DuPont plant in La Porte, Texas. The workers probably died from exposure to methyl mercaptan while responding to a valve leak around 4 AM on Nov. 15, DuPont said in a statement. The community around the plant was not at risk, the company adds....

What would you see if you could look inside a hallucinating brain? Despite decades of scientific investigation, we still lack a clear understanding of how hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), mescaline, and psilocybin (the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms) work in the brain. Modern science has demonstrated that hallucinogens activate receptors for serotonin, one of the brain’s key chemical messengers. Specifically, of the 15 different serotonin receptors, the 2A subtype (5-HT2A), seems to be the one that produces profound alterations of thought and perception....

IF YOU HAVE SEEN the recent Hollywood blockbuster Inception, a movie that does to dreaming what The Matrix did for virtual reality, you may have been holding your breath as Ariadne, an architecture student, folded the streets of Paris over herself like a blanket. This stunning sequence, an homage to M. C. Escher, is testimony to the bizarre nature of dreams. Watching it made the neuroscientist in me reflect on what dreams are and how they relate to the brain....

Thanks to hybrid hydraulics, there is something especially awesome in the power of the next generation of garbage and delivery trucks that will soon be rolling through your neighborhood. Although they may still look like big, bulky trucks, inside they boast hydraulic power-train systems that are significantly more energy and fuel efficient than similar conventional or gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles. If hybrid hydraulics prove their mettle for more industrial uses, cars may not be far behind....

U.S. businesses that commit to cutting carbon emissions by 3 percent annually through 2020 could reap as much as $190 billion from reduced energy bills, increased productivity and innovation, and the tapping of new clean energy sources such as solar, a new report from the World Wildlife Fund and CDP has found. But the window of opportunity is closing fast, and failure to begin curbing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the end of this decade will make it much harder to meet carbon reduction goals over the long term, according to the report....

By Brendan O’Brien (Reuters) - At least two people were killed and 20 injured when a tornado ripped through a small northern Illinois town on Thursday night, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner said on Friday. The tornado destroyed dozens of houses and businesses as it swept through Fairdale, Illinois, a small town about 75 miles west of Chicago. “Our hearts and thoughts go out to those impacted by yesterday’s storms,” Rauner said in a statement....

Around this time of year, I tend to look back at the list of commitments I made in early January: I will exercise more often, spend more time with family, do a better job balancing my personal and professional lives, leave my laptop home when we go on vacation, and so on. And yet, only two months into the new year, I find I am not doing such a good job....

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - Montana wants 145 bison that originated in Yellowstone National Park given away to six organizations in five states, including New York’s Bronx Zoo, to further the conservation of America’s last pure-bred wild buffalo, under a plan released on Wednesday. The select bison were part of an experiment Montana wildlife managers launched a decade ago with the U.S. Department of Agriculture that quarantined the animals to produce a herd certain to be free of a cattle disease carried by roughly half of Yellowstone’s buffalo....

Ibogaine’s promise is that it works better than standard drug addiction treatments, though it has serious dangers and is illegal in many countries, including the United States. There are more orthodox treatments that have been better studied. The U.S. National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) has collected evidence for the effectiveness of various treatments in an online publication. Some treatments are pharmacological and some are behavioral. Medications used include naltrexone, methadone, and buprenorphine, which are given for addiction to opioids such as heroin and cocaine....

The first new nuclear reactor in the U.S. in nearly three decades is taking shape outside Augusta, Ga. Southern Company has dug up a patch of red clay down to bedrock for the foundation of a new AP-1000—a new generation of reactor with passive safety features that keep working even when the power goes out. Southern plans to build two such AP-1000s in the next six years, and other utilities have plans for 12 more, along with another six new reactors of various designs, all of them with passive safety features....

Skyler was counting down the days. In just a few months, the 14-year-old would attend a life-changing medical appointment. It would be the first step toward resolving body and identity issues that the teenager had been struggling with for years. Skyler’s sex at birth (or, to use trans terminology, his “assigned” gender) was female, yet he did not readily identify as a girl. From the age of four, Skyler hated wearing dresses, which he would rip apart with scissors....

The only way to confirm that someone has Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts an estimated five million Americans, is by peering into their brains and seeing plaque, nestled between the twisted endings of affected nerve cells. Unfortunately, these markers can only be viewed during postmortem investigations. To date, researchers are unsure whether these bundles (made of a protein fragment called amyloid beta) cause all—if any—of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s dementia. Previous work has led to different theories on when plaque forms in the Alzheimer’s-ravaged brain: One view holds that they are the cause of the disease, protein deposits develop and disrupt the functions of axons and dendrites (projections originating at the cell body that send and receive messages, respectively)....