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After 19 attempts over 51 years, Russia has yet to chalk up a fully successful mission to Mars. That includes its ambitious Phobos–Grunt probe, launched November 8 from Kazakhstan and now stranded in low Earth orbit. Unable to regain control of the spacecraft, the Russians now expect it to fall back to Earth around January 9. Responding to shame over the nation’s Mars program, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to criminally prosecute those responsible if possible....

By Nicola Jones of Nature magazinePiracy is stopping oceanographers and meteorologists from collecting data vital to understanding the Indian monsoon and rainfall patterns in the United States, researchers say.Pirate activity off the coast of Somalia has skyrocketed in recent years. The first surge came in 2008, when there were 135 attacks; from January 2010 to January 2011 there were more than 280 reported incidents. Shipping insurers have been increasing the size of the ’exclusion zone’–the region of the Indian Ocean in which vessels must have special insurance to cover them against piracy....

Sepsis is a serious and often deadly illness, yet it remains an unfamiliar threat to most of the general public, as well as one of the most difficult diseases for doctors to diagnose and treat. The condition, which begins with an aggressive immune system reaction to an infection, kills 18 million people around the world every year, including around 260,000 in the U.S. By many estimates, sepsis—and its most severe form, septic shock—is the leading cause of death for intensive care patients in the U....

TORONTO — The remains of a bustling port and barracks for sailors or military troops have been discovered near the Giza Pyramids. They were in use while the pyramids were being built about 4,500 years ago. The archaeologists have been excavating a city near the Giza Pyramids that dates mainly to the reign of the pharaoh Menkaure, who built the last pyramid at Giza. Also near the pyramids they have been excavating a town, located close to a monument dedicated to Queen Khentkawes, possibly a daughter of Menkaure....

Diplomatic tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are affecting the farthest reaches of the Northern Hemisphere. Seven of the Arctic Council’s eight members — all except Russia, which currently holds the council’s rotating chairmanship — have agreed to boycott future meetings. The boycott, announced earlier this month by the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, indefinitely pauses council proceedings on issues from climate change to Arctic oil drilling. “We remain convinced of the enduring value of the Arctic Council for circumpolar cooperation and reiterate our support for this institution and its work,” the seven nations said in a joint statement released March 3....

Your brain doesn’t take a rest when you do. While you slept last night, regions of your brain may well have been going over the events of the previous day in a process that could be related to consolidating memories, a team of researchers at the University of Arizona (U.A.) in Tucson says. In fact, the review may be taking place at several times the speed, by whch the experiences took place when you were alert....

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, officials across all levels of government have been preparing for the law’s sweeping changes to the health care system. For many state legislators, those preparations have included enacting new restrictions on the availability of insurance coverage for legal abortions. When the online insurance marketplaces erected under the ACA become operational, shoppers in only about half of U.S. states will have access to health plans that cover abortions....

Scholars have seen the golden ratio in nautilus shells, the Parthenon, da Vinci paintings and now in stars. A new study of variable stars observed by the Kepler space telescope found four stars that pulsate at frequencies whose ratio is near the irrational number 0.61803398875, known as the Greek letter phi, or the golden ratio (which is also sometimes referred to as the inverse of that number, 1.61803398875…). The golden ratio had not turned up in the celestial sphere before astronomer John Linder of The College of Wooster in Ohio and his colleagues analyzed the Kepler data....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. Last month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the welcome, belated determination that partially hydrogenated oils—the primary source of trans fats—could no longer be considered “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS). Although the ruling is preliminary, it is expected to become permanent. If it does, it will virtually eliminate industrially produced trans fat in the U....

No reasonable employee wants their boss to know where they are all the time. Just as no reasonable boss wants his employees to know where she is all the time. In the former case, those who have to drive around know that one way to get around the problem is to purloin an (entirely illegal) GPS jammer. I understand from my underworld contacts that such a jammer can be obtained for less than $100....

For a cell to make proteins, the nucleus first has to issue instructions. Once these genetic memos outlive their usefulness, they end up deactivated in repositories known as processing bodies. Research now suggests that these P-bodies are less like junkyards and more like office centers, where messages are amassed, silenced and reactivated. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, relays instructions archived in DNA to ribosomes, where it gets translated into proteins. Expunging outdated mRNAs is necessary, lest they interfere with newer orders, explains Roy Parker of the University of Arizona....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The global ransomware attack called “WannaCry,” which began last week and continues today, could have been avoided, or at least made much less serious, if people (and companies) kept their computer software up to date. The attack’s spread demonstrates how hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries are running outdated software that leaves them vulnerable....

Ever since its discovery in mid-October as it passed by Earth already outbound from our solar system, the mysterious object dubbed ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “first messenger”) has left scientists utterly perplexed. Zooming down almost perpendicularly inside Mercury’s orbit at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour—too fast for our star’s gravity to catch—‘Oumuamua appeared to have been dropped in on our solar system from some great interstellar height, picking up even more speed on a slingshot-like loop around the sun before soaring away for parts unknown....

This past summer anthrax killed a 12-year-old boy in a remote part of Siberia. At least 20 other people, also from the Yamal Peninsula, were diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease after approximately 100 suspected cases were hospitalized. Additionally, more than 2,300 reindeer in the area died from the infection. The likely cause? Thawing permafrost. According to Russian officials, thawed permafrost—a permanently frozen layer of soil—released previously immobile spores of Bacillus anthracis into nearby water and soil and then into the food supply....

Treatment of severe depression with magnetic stimulation is moving beyond large mental health centers and into private practices nationwide, following more than two decades of research on the treatment. Yet even as concern about its efficacy fades, one potential side effect—seizures—continues to shadow the technology. Called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), the noninvasive technique uses electromagnets to create localized electrical currents in the brain. The gentle jolts activate certain neurons, reducing symptoms in some patients....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. Climate is back. On Monday Pres. Obama rolled out a plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants by 2030 to an average of 30 percent less than 2005 levels. His timing is in tune with public opinion. Now that the economy is recovering from the global financial crisis, new polls show that public concern is once again rising....

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe by Lisa Randall HarperCollins, 2015 (($29.99)) Exotic entities such as dark matter—the invisible material thought to make up about 27 percent of the universe—do not seem to have any direct impact on our lives here on Earth. But physicist Randall pokes a hole in that notion by proposing that a rogue disk of weird dark matter might have been responsible for aiming the comet that scientists suspect hit Earth and killed our planet’s dinosaurs 66 million years ago....

By Michael Fleeman (Reuters) - California’s three-year drought threatens to wipe out the last of the Muir Woods coho salmon that make their way each year from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in a freshwater creek running through the redwoods near San Francisco, state officials said on Monday. As the annual salmon migration reaches its peak in streams through the northern part of the state, those in Redwood Creek, the southernmost home for returning coho salmon, are on the verge of local extinction, officials said....

A researcher is about to test a technology that he says could be a breakthrough for curbing greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, natural gas generators and other industrial facilities. Canadian professor Guy Mercier’s answer to curbing fossil fuel emissions is literally set in stone. With $300,000 in new grant money from Carbon Management Canada, a network of academic centers, he plans to run gas emitted from a Holcim cement plant through pulverized concrete and rock....

As we saw in our discussion of The Tolls of Elsinore, shippers could increase their profits by understating their cargoes’ value strategically. Some shippers figured out that they could do even better by bribing the two inspectors who came on board. The King heard that among his eight inspectors at least three were corrupt. The King reasoned that the corrupt inspectors knew one another and that only if both inspectors entering a ship were corrupt would they take the bribe....