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In a new paper, hydrologists suggest at least part of the answer to the Earth’s future water woes may be buried underneath the oceans. Over the past several decades, massive aquifers beneath the seabed have been found off coastlines across the globe, filled with water that ranges from fresh to about two-thirds less saline than seawater. In a review article recently published online in the journal Nature, researchers arrived at a new estimate for total usable global offshore groundwater: 500,000 cubic kilometers – a quantity 100 times greater than the amount of water extracted from land aquifers since 1900, the study states....

For years, a particular protein has been cast as a lynchpin of long-term memory. Inhibiting this enzyme could erase old memories, whereas adding it could strengthen faded ones. But two independent groups of US scientists have now seriously challenged the role of this ‘memory molecule’ by developing mice that completely lack it — and showing that these mice have no detectable memory problems. Their results are published today in Nature....

By Tiffany O’CallaghanSmall-scale animal studies suggest that surgeons might one day be able to simply open the refrigerator when the need for patient-ready bioengineered blood vessels presents itself.Patients with coronary artery disease or peripheral arterial disease are often treated with bypass surgeries – in which the blood vessel that has narrowed as a consequence of the illness is closed off and circumvented by the implantation of an unrestricted ‘conduit’. To avoid complications, surgeons prefer to use vessels taken from a patient’s own body – harvesting a portion of vein from the leg, for example....

Cells are one of the fundamental units of life, but their inner workings remain largely mysterious. Structural biologists, who work to visualize tiny substances, have described many of a cell’s most important molecules. However, their techniques typically require those molecules be frozen in place, so they do not always reflect the dynamic processes that drive life. For the first time, researchers have developed a method to peer inside living cells, in real time, to observe one of the most important and conserved processes in all of biology: gene transcription....

Photographers who instruct their subjects this way can still end up with a blurry image if they themselves move their hands even slightly when depressing the shutter, shaking the camera. The problem is so common among people who use digital cameras and camcorders, especially in low light when the shutter must stay open longer, that manufacturers are introducing image stabilization systems that automatically correct for human shudder. “The industry is moving toward cameras with higher megapixels, smaller size and longer zoom lenses that magnify shake,” says Jay Endsley, manager of digital camera advanced development at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, N....

Scotch tape, packing tape, Post-its—no man-made adhesive holds a candle to the sticky world of animal adhesives, where geckos scurry across ceilings and tree frogs leap from leaf to leaf on tacky toe pads without missing a step. Unable to beat nature, researchers have joined it. The ripping sound of Velcro echoes the prickly, sweater-grabbing burdock seeds that inspired the childhood wonder material. Gecko feet bristle with millions of branching, self-cleaning fibers called setae, the inspiration for so-called “gecko tape....

As controversy continues around the Keystone XL Pipeline that would snake through the U.S., a similar drama plays out north of the border. Canadian officials are deciding whether to green-light a pipeline that would carry a semiliquid hydrocarbon mix for 1,172 kilometers from Alberta’s tar sands over the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific coast of British Columbia. Near its proposed terminus, the proposal has met with public outcry and fierce opposition from the Coastal First Nations, a coalition of indigenous tribes....

We inhabit a giant spiral-shaped galaxy that glows with hundreds of billions of stars, a colossus so massive that at least two dozen lesser galaxies revolve around it. But how did this enormous entity arise? Clues come from the Milky Way’s oldest and wisest stars—those in the stellar halo, the galactic component that envelops the bright disk housing the sun. Halo stars stand out because they formed before supernova explosions had scattered a large amount of heavy elements into the galaxy, so halo stars possess little iron....

SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France, March 24 (Reuters) - An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed into a mountainside in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people on board including 16 schoolchildren. Germanwings confirmed its flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf went down with 144 passengers and six crew on board. One of the plane’s black box recorders has been found at the crash site, about 100 km (65 miles) north of the Riviera city of Nice, and will be examined immediately, France’s interior minister said....

Two words have pushed fuel-efficient cookstoves in a way that millions of deaths and acres of felled forest could not: climate change. Early interest in the cookstoves, initially envisioned in the 1970s and ’80s as a means of reducing deforestation in developing countries, waned when well-meaning projects failed to deliver results. Even as the awareness of the health risks that come from poor, inefficient cooking methods grew, cookstove projects largely remained a fringe activity....

This year has been the worst in recent history for natural disasters in the U.S., with record-level floods, fires, and hurricanes. Such disasters naturally bring up questions about why, and religious beliefs are often part of the answers given. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church claimed that the tornado in Joplin, MO was a direct result of the town’s sins. Michele Bachmann’s aides scrambled to classify her comments about Hurricane Irene’s “message to Washington” as a joke....

Why do we yearn for the explosive gustatory delight of sugar? Neural feedback loops, sensory pleasures and environmental factors like poor sleep all amplify our desire for a sugar rush. But new research suggests some of us—much more than others—may also be genetically attuned to crave such sweet sustenance. An international team scoured the genes of more than 6,500 Danish people taking part in a large health study on heart disease....

Crop pests and diseases are moving towards the poles at about the same speed as warmer temperatures. The finding suggests that climate change is driving their relocation, and raises major concerns about food security. Climate change is expected to cause changes in the distributions of species around the world, with an overall shift away from the equator and towards the poles. Ecologists have already documented such a shift in many wild species, including some birds and insects....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Cyberattackers pose many threats to a wide range of targets. Russia, for example, was accused of hacking Democratic Party computers throughout the year, interfering with the U.S. presidential election. Then there was the unknown attacker who, on a single October day, used thousands of internet-connected devices, such as digital video recorders and cameras compromised by Mirai malware, to take down several high-profile websites, including Twitter....

By Geoff BrumfielIn an effort to put the world’s largest scientific experiment back on track after delays and cost overruns, Europe is shaking up the agency overseeing its portion of the multinational ITER reactor.On February 16, Frank Briscoe, a British fusion scientist, will take the reins as interim director of Fusion for Energy (F4E), the agency in Barcelona, Spain, that manages Europe’s ITER contribution–the largest of any partner’s. Briscoe replaces Didier Gambier, a French physicist who joined the F4E as director when it formed in 2007....

An engineer is petitioning the White House to study the possibility of building a real-life starship Enterprise like the fictional vessel in television’s “Star Trek.” The proposal was submitted through the White House’s official “We the People” channel, which promises an administration response to any petition that gathers at least 25,000 signatures. Just last month, a petition to build a Death Star like the spherical spaceship in the movie “Star Wars” garnered that critical mass, and is currently awaiting its official response....

A wealth of data suggests that averaging the answers of many people often outperforms any individual, even expert, opinion. The wisdom of the crowd is far from infallible though—in cases where specialized knowledge is needed, even if the crowd contains experts, they are drowned out by majority ignorance. But a study published today in Nature, led by behavioral economist Drazen Prelec of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents a new method that can extract correct answers from a crowd even when the majority opinion is wrong....

To keep your kids from developing an allergy to peanuts, should you give them nuts at an early age or withhold them? For years the debate has generated more heat than light, but today a landmark study led by King’s College London researchers offers some potent evidence that suggests giving peanuts to infants dramatically decreases the risk of developing an allergy to peanuts. The researchers enlisted 640 children under the age of one to take part in a peanut allergy study....

One hundred years after the RMS Titanic foundered in icy waters 375 miles south of Newfoundland, the dangers of vessels striking an iceberg continue. Shipboard radar, satellite photos, global positioning systems (GPS) and aircraft patrols have made the North Atlantic safer now than it was during the early 1900s. However, despite improvements in detection methods and more accurate ship positions, as well as trending warmer seas melting the icebergs faster, ships continue to have close encounters with these frozen, floating objects....

U.S. EPA is conducting further environmental analysis on 79 pending permits for mountaintop mining, the agency announced today. The agency said the permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, identified in a preliminary list released today, could all potentially pose a threat to the mountain watersheds and streams, warranting further review under the Clean Water Act. “Release of this preliminary list is the first step in a process to assure that the environmental concerns raised by the 79 permit applications are addressed and that permits issued are protective of water quality and affected ecosystems,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement....