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The right to protect against unauthorized copying of digital television and film seemed to take a step back for the entertainment industry and content provider–and a step forward for the consumer and video pirate–when a federal court struck down the planned July 1 introduction of the “broadcast flag.” The flag is a set of bits in a digital transmission that can prevent recording. But advocates of free recording are not celebrating the defeat of the flag–transmissions standards currently being devised could trump the ruling....

“Many people, particularly scientists, believe that we are suffering in the U.S. from a national epidemic of irrationality—what Senator J.W. Fulbright of Arkansas has called the ‘swinish blight of anti-intellectualism.’ Fluoridation of public water supplies has been recommended by an impressive list of scientific organizations. However, from the beginning there has been opposition. The anti-fluoridation argument has three main themes: 1. fluoridation is an experiment which has not proved its value and may hold unknown dangers; 2....

Over the past millennium the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, which causes leprosy (Hansen’s disease), has changed very slowly. Yet in less than a century it has given rise to strains resistant to a heavily used antibacterial treatment. This genetic history has come to light with a little fishing—a technique known as DNA fishing, developed in part by geneticist Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen in Germany. Beginning with old bones and teeth, the researchers trawl for ancient bacterial DNA using strands of contemporary DNA as “bait....

Laeon Israel is a professional cybersleuth. As a senior forensic analyst at Charles Schwab, he is responsible for bringing to light information that will be used in the prosecution of financial crimes. And he came to this by way of an aircraft carrier. In the 1990s Israel was a Navy deck seaman onboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. His role was to help with the upkeep of the physical ship—all 1,123 feet of it....

SAN FRANCISCO – Something big and mysterious is rising from a floating barge at the end of Treasure Island, a former Navy base in the middle of San Francisco Bay. And Google’s fingerprints are all over it. It’s unclear what’s inside the structure, which stands about four stories high and was made with a series of modern cargo containers. The same goes for when it will be unveiled, but the big tease has already begun....

Editor’s note: We are posting the text of this article from the August 1977 issue of Scientific American for all our readers because the author has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. Three months ago the Bell System began the, commercial evaluation of a light-wave communication system in which messages are coded into pulses of light transmitted through hairthin glass fibers. The new system carries voice. data and video signals over one and a half miles of underground cable interconnecting two switching offices of the Illinois Bell Telephone Company and a large commercial building in Chicago’s business center....

A group of U.S. agencies is in the midst of the most detailed study ever done of the enormous plumes of fire-generated smoke that can sometimes cross the entire country before they dissipate. The goal is to better understand the health, climate and weather impacts of the nation’s increasing volume of wildfires. “It’s the first really major campaign with fires as its sole focus,” said David Fahey, head of the chemical sciences division at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory....

By Lisa Rapaport Mothers who are obese during pregnancy have almost twice the odds of having a child with autism as women who weigh less, a U.S. study suggests. When women are both obese and have diabetes, the autism risk for their child is at least quadrupled, researchers reported online January 29 in Pediatrics. “In terms of absolute risk, compared to common pediatric diseases such as obesity and asthma, the rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the U....

If you have ever jumped at a loud noise and felt an adrenaline rush, you have experienced the effects of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). In the body, this hormone triggers the familiar fight-or-flight response—racing heart, shortness of breath, sweaty palms. In the brain, however, it acts as a chemical messenger, playing a role in anxiety and depression. That role, a new study suggests, is more complex than anyone expected. Because animal research from the past decade found that CRH contributes to anxiety and depression, drugs were developed that would block its actions in the brain....

By Shereen Lehman (Reuters Health) - Outdoor workouts left women in a better mood and kept them exercising longer than counterparts who exercised indoors, according to a small study from Canada. Results of the three-month trial involving women in their 50s and 60s suggest that outdoor exercise programs should be promoted to help older women keep active, the researchers conclude. “Being physically active is essential to be healthy and remain functional with age,” said senior author Isabelle Dionne of the University Institute of Geriatrics of Sherbrooke in Quebec....

A decisive experiment for science is going to take place on November 6 in which millions of American voters are expected to participate. With early voting already begun in some states, the midterm election will determine whether Democrats or Republicans will control each of the two chambers of Congress and have the task of checking or supporting Pres. Donald Trump’s agenda for the rest of his term. Science is at the core of several of the most divisive issues voters will weigh in on....

Ancient sea salt drilled from a geologic basin in Russia is providing dramatic new clues as to how Earth’s early atmosphere became oxygen-rich—allowing life as we know it to evolve. Buried deep beneath the surface for billions of years, the salt reveals surprising clues about the chemistry of the ocean and atmosphere from long ago. The salt, excavated by an international team led by Russian scientists, is about a billion years older than other, similar geologic samples....

Scientists have drilled into one of the most isolated depths in all of the world’s oceans: a hidden shore of Antarctica that sits under 740 meters of ice, hundreds of kilometers in from the sea edge of a major Antarctic ice shelf. Humans have never glimpsed this place; reaching it required seven years of planning and 450 tonnes of fuel and gear. But understanding what is happening down there, so far from human view, will be crucial for predicting the future fate of Antarctica’s ice sheets amid rising temperatures....

The global crisis for endangered species is more serious than the financial meltdown, with numbers of imperiled animals and plants rising at record rates, scientists are warning in a report released today. In its latest four-year assessment of endangered species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has added several new entries to the Red List of Threatened Species. Judging from the list’s expansion, the report warns, the world is unlikely to meet a goal of reversing a trend toward species depletion by 2010....

Mixing family and politics has always been fraught. I know—my mother was a Democrat, my father a Republican. The night Jimmy Carter won the presidency, dad slept in the guest room. For the U.S., the bitter campaign that ushered in Pres. Donald Trump in 2016 was a lot like that of 1976 in my house. Many families were politically divided, and the calendar forced the issue: The cherished American holiday Thanksgiving came just days after the election....

Like many biological forms, tree rings speak to the imagination of both artists and scientists. To create the image at the left, Connecticut-based artist Bryan Nash Gill took a cross section of a fallen willow tree, sanded it smooth and then charred it to raise the grain. Next, he rolled ink over the wood and laid down a piece of paper to transfer the pattern. Gill’s work is a way of “making the wood sing,” he says....

TransCanada is suing the U.S. government for more than $15 billion in losses and damages for denying the Canadian company’s permit to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. The U.S. State Department denied the permit in November, saying that the proposed $8 billion pipeline would undermine U.S. global leadership on climate change. Keystone XL would have transported more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil each day from the Canadian tar sands in Alberta to oil refineries in Texas....

Bacteria living on human bodies contain genes that are likely to code for a vast number of drug-like molecules — including a new antibiotic made by bacteria that live in the vagina, researchers report in this week’s issue of Cell. The drug, lactocillin, hints at the untapped medical potential of this microbial landscape. “They have shown that there is a huge diverse potential of the microbiome for producing antimicrobial molecules,” says Marc Ouellette, a microbiologist at the University of Laval’s Hospital Centre (CHUL) in Quebec, Canada, who was not involved in the research....

As a tendril of oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster creeps south in the Gulf of Mexico—potentially already caught up in the swirl of a massive conveyor of ocean water known as the Loop Current—the larger question is, where will the at least 5 million gallons of oil already spilled end up? “The proximity of the southeast tendril to the Loop Current means it is increasingly likely to become entrained,” said marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the U....

The way doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s disease may be starting to change. Traditionally clinicians have relied on tests of memory and reasoning skills and reports of social withdrawal to identify patients with Alzheimer’s. Such assessments can, in expert hands, be fairly conclusive—but they are not infallible. Around one in five people who are told they have the neurodegenerative disorder actually have other forms of dementia or, sometimes, another problem altogether, such as depression....