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Tweaking the immune system could be key to treating, or even preventing, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research in rodents suggests that immunizing animals can lessen fear if they are later exposed to stress. Researchers have known for some time that depression and immune-system health are linked and can affect each other. Early clinical trials have shown that anti-inflammatory drugs can reduce symptoms of depression, raising hopes that such treatments might be useful in other types of mental illness, such as PTSD....

President Obama warned Congress that it must tackle “dangerous carbon pollution” in a pointed State of the Union address describing Superstorm Sandy and other natural disasters as no “freak coincidence.” The speech establishes a clear turning point for a president who treated climate change tentatively during a re-election campaign that featured a rare autumn hurricane with record storm surges and a blistering drought – all coming during the nation’s warmest year....

The cause of prostate cancer, which infects one in six U.S. men in their lifetimes, has long eluded researchers. A new study presents a convincing argument that prostate cancer, like some other cancers, including cervical cancer, lymphoma and sarcomas, might be linked to a virus. Researchers, reporting in a study that will be published online tomorrow in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the retrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was present in about a quarter of cancerous prostate cells—and just 6 percent of control cells, which suggests a possible relationship....

The booster settled softly onto the deck of SpaceX’s robotic “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship at 1:30 a.m. EDT (0530 GMT) on Friday (May 6), nine minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a successful mission to carry the Japanese communications satellite JCSAT-14 to orbit. Chants of “USA! USA! USA!” erupted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California as the Falcon 9 stuck its landing on the ship, which was stationed about 200 miles (320 kilometers) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean....

As we recently discovered, the first major holiday in May—Star Wars Day on May 4th—is full of math fun. But would you believe that the other big holiday in May—the much more important Mother’s Day—is also chock-full o’ math goodness? Believe it or not, it is. For example: How many mothers are there in the United States? How many children were born this year? What’s the most common number of kids?...

Vultures have an image problem. Charles Darwin did them no favors when he saw a turkey vulture from the deck of the Beagle in 1835 and called it a “disgusting bird” whose bald head was “formed to wallow in putridity.” Despite their vital cleanup role, vultures are not nearly as cute as polar bears, nor do they inspire the same interest when extinction looms—as it does for more than half of the world’s 23 vulture species....

“You don ’t look autistic.” This is what people say when I first tell them I ’m on the spectrum. But I do look autistic. The problem is that people, especially medical professionals, don ’t know what to look for when it comes to identifying and diagnosing autism in women and girls. I am a professor, a screenwriter, producer, mother and a woman who has autism. The challenges I have had in getting my diagnosis lead me to believe that we have to develop a more accurate standard autism test and better diagnostic criteria specifically for women and girls....

If you’ve been following the news, you know that there’s some hype about the new blood pressure guidelines that were just released by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA). Under their new, more stringent guidelines, a significantly greater number of people will be diagnosed with hypertension than before. According to the New York Times, the number of men under age 45 who will be diagnosed will now triple and for women double....

The F-15 Eagle is the latest jet fighter to receive the alternative fuels treatment, flying October 22 on a 50-50 blend of conventional jet fuel and an alternative—in this case made from specially processed animal fat: beef tallow bio-jet fuel. Already, nearly the entire fleet of 40-plus aircraft flown by the U.S. Air Force has been certified to fly on jet fuels made from natural gas or coal—the exceptions being the drone aircraft that have been too busy abroad to be tested at home....

Electric utilities, environmental advocates and a nonpartisan climate think tank all agree that they dislike the way U.S. EPA sets interim goals for states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a draft rule for the power sector. But in comments due yesterday, they diverged widely on how to make that portion of the proposal more workable. The interim targets, or “glide path” requirements, are an issue EPA will need to address in its final rule after hearing complaints from across the electric industry (ClimateWire, Dec....

The Bitcoin Network’s so-called “blockchain” digital public ledger system records all transactions once they have been deciphered and validated. Adapted for other uses, such a system could serve as a gatekeeper and auditor to defend against, say, a cyber prankster looking to turn off your freezer via the Internet. Moreover, it could enable two autonomous automobiles to exchange data, ensuring that one stops at a traffic light while the other crosses the intersection....

A blood thinner routinely used to prevent brain damage in strokes dramatically reduced the risk of amputation from severe frostbite in a preliminary study. Researchers report that only 10 percent of frostbitten toes and fingers had to be amputated in patients who were given tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), an anti-clotting agent, in addition to standard frostbite treatment (rewarming, rehydrating and cleaning the wounded areas); in contrast, 41 percent of frostbitten digits had to be amputated in victims who received only conventional care....

Climate change looks far more threatening than it did six years ago as the world marches toward a warming of 4 degrees Celsius higher by the end of the century compared to the preindustrial era, said Lord Nicholas Stern, a professor of economics and chairman of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. Stern called for new and better climate models and better economic assessments of climate impacts but maintained that the main obstacle to action is political will....

Quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli expressed disdain for sloppy, nonsensical theories by denigrating them as “not even wrong,” meaning they were just empty conjectures that could be quickly dismissed. Unfortunately, many remarkably popular theories of consciousness are of this ilk—the idea, for instance, that our experiences can somehow be explained by the quantum theory that Pauli himself helped to formulate in the early 20th century. An even more far-fetched idea holds that consciousness emerged only a few thousand years ago, when humans realized that the voices in their head came not from the gods but from their own internal spoken narratives....

Editor’s Note (10/2/20): This story is being republished in light of the news that President Donald Trump, who has tested positive for the novel coronavirus and is suffering mild symptoms, has received a dose of Regeneron’s antibody cocktail, according to his doctor Sean Conley. Jill Horowitz stood outside the Quaker Ridge Shopping Center in New Rochelle, N.Y.—an early COVID-19 hotspot—in March, stopping shoppers as they walked into the grocery store. She handed them blue pamphlets soliciting volunteers for a Rockefeller University antibody research study....

China has Asia’s most extensive stem cell research effort, with a particular emphasis on driving innovative adult stem cell therapies toward clinical trials. Although it is hard to find statistics that pull together China’s fast-growing patchwork of stem cell initiatives, the country must have at least 300 researchers in the field, working in 30 separate institutions. A delegation sent late last year by the UK Department of Trade and Industry to look at stem cell research in Asia visited a dozen Chinese labs and concluded: “The facilities were, in every case we saw, equipped, funded and staffed to levels at least as good–in most cases better–than equivalent centres in the UK”....

Having autism can sometimes mean enduring a litany of traumatic events, starting from a young age. And for many, those events may add up to severe and persistent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Before Gabriel could even talk, his father’s girlfriend at the time told him his mother had abandoned him. At age 3, he was sexually abused by a cousin. He was mercilessly bullied once he started school, showed signs of depression by age 7 and by 11 began telling his mother he did not want to live....

Man’s best friend does not like anything muscling in on that friendship. The first experimental test of jealousy in dogs shows that canines nip even at stuffed pooches when these fakes take away the attention of the dogs’ owners. This new findings support the view that jealousy is a primordial emotion seen not only in humans, but in other animals as well, researchers said. The results also show that jealousy does not require especially complex minds, the scientists said....

I could not forget Thanksgiving 2020 if I tried. I had a COVID patient who was dying, and his family had to say goodbye through a screen. The man had his eyes closed. He was breathing heavily and shallowly, seemingly unaware of what was happening around him. As his family spoke, I placed my hand on his. He seemed to smile. The he passed away. I realized then that my role as a respiratory therapist had changed....

Rivers transport 200 million tons of carbon to the oceans every year, according to new research that calculates the role of rivers in carbon storage. The study, conducted by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, assessed samples from 43 river systems that put out more than 20 percent of the world’s river sediments. Their calculations show that the levels of carbon transported by rivers are equivalent to 0.02 percent of carbon in the atmosphere, but that over thousands of years, this could add up to significant chunks of carbon extracted from the atmosphere....