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By George Wigmore of Nature magazine The sequencing of the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) genome has revealed an immune system never seen before in jawed vertebrates. The finding could be used to develop better vaccines and to improve disease management in farmed cod. Kjetill Jakobsen, of the University of Oslo, and his colleagues found that Atlantic cod have lost the genes for three important components of the adaptive immune system, which fights pathogens and creates the immune memory that gives resistance to infection....

On the dwarf planet Ceres, volcanoes rage — but instead of hot lava coming out of them as on Earth, they spew brine and ice. The new evidence for the dwarf planet’s icy volcanism, called cryovolcanism, came from NASA’s Dawn space probe, which orbits Ceres and also studied the nearby asteroid Vesta. Previously, Dawn identified a strange mountain and other features that seemed to have been created by an ice volcano....

Treatment: E1E2/MF59 Maker: Novartis Stage: Phase II pending. Why It Matters Hepatitis C virus is the most common chronic blood-borne infection in the world, having infected an estimated 170 million people. It is the leading cause of liver transplants in the West, and complications from it killed famed Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The viral disease currently causes 10,000 deaths annually in the United States alone, and its annual toll is expected to triple in the next 10 to 20 years....

New research could explain why the Arctic was much warmer during a period millions of years ago that scientists say most closely resembles Earth’s climate today. The climate during the mid-Pliocene Epoch, roughly 3 million years ago, is a good overall match for conditions today with regard to average temperature and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But there are some differences that scientists have had trouble explaining. Analyses of fossils, pollen and chemicals contained in core samples of seafloor sediments suggest the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic were much warmer during the mid-Pliocene than they are today....

When they picture the adverse effects of climate change, public health scientists hope the American public won’t think of them as something that happens to glaciers or polar bears, but turn the focus more on themselves. “The face of climate change ought to be people,” epidemiologist George Luber, associate director for global climate change at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview last week. “We ought to kind of internalize it....

Twenty years ago Rwanda was torn apart by violence. The Hutu majority slaughtered their Tutsi neighbors, killing approximately 70% of the Tutsi minority in the space of only four months. Once the killing finally stopped, a difficult question arose: how to right these monstrous wrongs without creating a cycle of revenge and retribution? Such a cycle would be the epitome of the ancient “eye for an eye” notion of justice, in which punishment is commensurate with the crime, an approach taken even today by most modern legal systems (including the United States)....

Ever since physicists invented particle accelerators, nearly 80 years ago, they have used them for such exotic tasks as splitting atoms, transmuting elements, producing antimatter and creating particles not previously observed in nature. With luck, though, they could soon undertake a challenge that will make those achievements seem almost pedestrian. Accelerators may produce the most profoundly mysterious objects in the universe: black holes. When one thinks of black holes, one usually envisions massive monsters that can swallow spaceships, or even stars, whole....

Zoë Corbyn of Nature magzineScientists are failing to make raw data publicly available, even when prompted to do so by journals, says a study published last week in PLoS ONE.The study of 500 papers from the 50 highest-impact journals reveals wide variation in data-sharing policies and in researchers’ adherence to them. The findings come amid a growing push for sharing raw research data – both to facilitate further research and to better prevent fraud or error....

It’s “sweeping the country,” but does it lead to more recycled material and less trash in the landfill? I live in Durham, North Carolina, but spend some time in New York City. In my NYC digs I recycle the old-fashioned way — separating plastics, paper and glass, and throwing them into separate bins. But in Durham I just toss everything into a single cart and put the cart by the sidewalk every other week....

Key concepts Energy Solar power Sun Heat Cooking Recycling Introduction Have you ever eaten food that was cooked outside, such as for a BBQ or while camping? During the summer it can be a lot of fun to be outdoors and enjoy eating the fruits—or burgers—of your cooking labors. But you don’t always need to burn wood, charcoal or gas to cook outdoors. Did you know that you can directly use solar power to cook food?...

Mobile DNA molecules that jump from one location in the genome to another may contribute to neurological diseases and could have subtle influences on normal brain function and behavior, according to a study published October 30 in Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Retrotransposons are mobile genetic elements that use a copy-and-paste mechanism to insert extra copies of themselves throughout the genome. First discovered in plants about 60 years ago, they are now known to make up more than 40 percent of the entire human genome and may play an important role in genome evolution (pdf)....

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has jolted state leaders mulling the future of U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Already knocked off balance by last week’s surprise Supreme Court decision to freeze the federal climate change regulations, officials yesterday said Scalia’s death—and the questions his absence from the bench raises for the regulation—has left them reeling and uncertain about the plan’s future. “I think it’s taken everybody by surprise,” said Washington Utilities and Transportation Commissioner Phil Jones....

Conor Jackson had a big bat and a bright future. But after he contracted a rare illness in 2009 while playing with the Arizona Diamondbacks he was never quite the same. Last year another major league baseball player – Ike Davis of the New York Mets – was diagnosed with the same thing. Valley Fever is on the rise in Arizona. And that could become a problem for Major League Baseball’s “Cactus League” – spring training that brings fifteen teams and about 1,000 ballplayers to the Phoenix area from mid-February to late March....

By Jonathan Kaminsky(Reuters) - An American oceanographer who helped write an international report on climate change has condensed several of its key findings - such as how choices made today may shape the future world - into a collection of succinct poems in the Haiku style.The poems came to Gregory Johnson, a 20-year veteran of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as he pored over an executive summary of “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis,” while holed up in his Seattle home on a recent weekend with the flu, he said....

Beauty seems mysterious and subjective. Scientists have long attempted to explain why the same object can strike some individuals as breathtaking and others as repulsive. Now a study finds that applying stimulation to a certain brain area enhances people’s aesthetic appreciation of visual images. First, participants viewed 70 abstract paintings and sketches and 80 representational (realistic) paintings and photographs and rated how much they liked each one. Then they rated a similar set of images after receiving transcranial direct-current stimulation or sham stimulation....

Your perspective on yourself is distorted. Your “self” lies before you like an open book. Just peer inside and read: who you are, your likes and dislikes, your hopes and fears; they are all there, ready to be understood. This notion is popular but is probably completely false! Psychological research shows that we do not have privileged access to who we are. When we try to assess ourselves accurately, we are really poking around in a fog....

NONFICTION Life, Linked A reverse journey through geologic time shows the interconnectedness of Earth’s species Otherlands: Journeys in Earth’s Extinct Ecosystems by Thomas Halliday Random House, 2022 ($28.99) As a teenager, I was obsessed with dinosaurs, but I had little aptitude for what came before them. I couldn’t make sense of what John McPhee, in that most glorious line of geopoetry, called “deep time.” Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and life has been around for about 90 percent of it....

Spiders that travel on the wind are also adept sailors when they land on water, researchers have discovered. Morito Hayashi, a spider researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, says that it had been assumed that a wet landing would be deadly for what are known as ballooning spiders—those that drift to new habitats on wind-blown silken threads that they spin to lift themselves aloft. But laboratory experiments by Hayashi and his colleagues, conducted at the University of Nottingham, UK, have shown that spiders can survive afloat, and can also harness the wind to ‘sail’ on the surface of water bodies....

Just as her legendary grandfather Jacques-Yves was passionate about marine life, Alexandra Cousteau’s passion for the future of the earth’s water resources is palpable. “Water will be the principal defining crisis of this century,” Cous­teau says. “History will be made over how we manage our water resources.” Since returning from Costa Rica last September, where she had been campaigning on behalf of marine sanctuaries, Cousteau has made it her personal and professional mission to advocate for protecting and replenishing the earth’s water systems....

HAMPTON COURT PALACE, England – First it was birds and now it is bees that are finding their numbers under increasing pressure from sources as diverse as habitat loss, insecticide use and changing weather patterns. While many in the bird world are convinced that climate change is a major culprit for altering flowering times and therefore the relative abundance or lack of food sources, in the somewhat fustier apiarian world, the jury is out....