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The tempest over bubble fusion—the much-disputed 2002 claim that collapsing bubbles can spark fusion reactions—may finally have fizzled out. Purdue University investigators last week charged bubble fusion’s leading proponent, nuclear engineer Rusi Taleyarkhan, with two counts of misconduct after concluding that he falsely created the appearance that members of his lab had independently verified the effect. In 2002 Taleyarkhan, then at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, was the chief author of a study published in Science claiming to have stimulated fusion in a beaker of acetone by bombarding it with high-frequency sound and neutrons in an effect called sonofusion, or bubble fusion....

SHALFORD, England—Gordon Murray, celebrated for designing the fastest, most powerful cars in the world, has gone to the other extreme. His latest product, the T.25, a fuel-abstemious three-seater passenger car, is made from metal tubes and recycled plastic bottles. Murray is famous for his Formula 1 race cars that won a string of Grand Prix races and World Championships first for the Brabham and then the McLaren racing teams. He designed the F1, which was for years the world’s fastest road car, and the sleek, powerful gull-winged Mercedes SLR....

BIG PINE KEY, Fla. – In Chris Bergh’s neighborhood, the difference between no man’s land and lush forest is a five-minute walk. At the end of one street, 5 feet above sea level, endangered Key deer and rabbits roam past driveways before darting behind thick pine trees lining both sides of the road. Behind the green walls, they slurp from drinking pools fed by an ample supply of fresh water underneath the ground....

Eliminating worn-out cells extends the healthy lives of lab mice — an indication that treatments aimed at killing off these cells, or blocking their effects, might also help to combat age-related diseases in humans. As animals age, cells that are no longer able to divide — called senescent cells — accrue all over their bodies, releasing molecules that can harm nearby tissues. Senescent cells are linked to diseases of old age, such as kidney failure and type 2 diabetes....

Problem: you’re a fungus that can only flourish at a certain temperature, humidity, location and distance from the ground but can’t do the legwork to find that perfect spot yourself. Solution: hijack an ant’s body to do the work for you—and then inhabit it. A paper, to be published in The American Naturalist’s September issue, explores the astounding accuracy with which this fungus compels ants to create its ideal home....

SOFIA (Reuters) - Torrential rains and floods hit Bulgaria on Thursday, killing at least 10 people, cutting off electricity, blocking roads and sparking evacuations, officials said. Heavy rainfall in the Black Sea resort city of Varna triggered a flood wave late on Thursday in one of its low-laying suburbs that killed at least 10 people, the mayor of Varna told the national radio. TV footage showed smashed cars on top of each other on the streets of the suburb, where a state of emergency was declared....

As the condition of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan continues to deteriorate, nuclear safety experts, government regulators and health physicists are keeping close watch on the situation to determine the danger—both real and hypothetical—that the incident poses to people near the plant. Japanese authorities have carved the area around Fukushima into two zones, recommending that individuals within 20 kilometers of the plant evacuate and that anyone living 20 to 30 kilometers from the plant take shelter and stay put....

LONDON − There’s still a chance that some people who dream of a white Christmas will get their wish. While there may be less snow falling overall in a warming world, there will still be blizzards. Paul O’Gorman, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reports in the journal Nature that that the kind of snowstorms that hit the US in 2014 will remain a hazard, even though there may be fewer of them....

Lightning is relatively uncommon in the Arctic—the air is usually not warm enough for thunderstorms. Now that might be changing, new data suggests. A study recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds that Arctic lightning has tripled in the last decade alone. The researchers, led by Bob Holzworth of the University of Washington, analyzed data collected by the World Wide Lightning Location Network between 2010 and 2020. The network, operated by the University of Washington, has lightning sensors all over the world....

I will never forget my first encounter with Eliza. My father just doesn’t appreciate me, I keyed into a clunky, noisy teletype back in 1969. Eliza, a computer program that simulated a conversation with a Rogerian psychotherapist, responded, just as noisily, Tell me more about your parents. I responded, Well, they just don’t GET it–you know, who I really am and what I’m capable of. Eliza typed back, Not being understood must be very hard for you....

One bad apple spoils the barrel, so the saying goes. But what if the barrel itself is rotten? A number of studies have shown that seeing a peer behave unethically increases people’s dishonesty in laboratory tests. What is much harder to investigate is how this kind of influence operates at a societal level. But that is exactly what behavioral economists Simon Gächter of the University of Nottingham in England and Jonathan Schulz of Yale University set out to do in a study published in March 2016 in Nature....

How do you fight deadly bacteria that shrug off modern antibiotics? Simple: juice up the immune system to fight its own battles. Researchers have come up with a new compound that activates the immune system’s first line of defense. Mice that received the chemical were less likely to succumb to drug-resistant staph or other infections. The group speculates that the drug could make such infections receptive to antibiotics again. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria sicken about two million people and kill 90,000 every year in North America, says immunologist Robert Hancock of the University of British Columbia....

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazineScientists are increasingly turning to non-invasive imaging to further the ‘3Rs’ of work in animals–replacement, refinement and reduction. Although the use of animals in modern medicine and biology is essential, researchers are actively working to reduce the numbers used and improve on how they are used.Medical technologies, such as computed tomography (CT) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), together with imaging techniques specific to biology, can assist in this....

The next chapter in cosmic exploration is starting to take shape: NASA engineers have proposed a space station that—if Congress approves its funding—would begin orbiting the moon in about a decade. A primary goal is to develop the infrastructure and experience to one day land humans on Mars. The Deep Space Gateway (DSG) project would likely be a collaboration among the U.S., Russia and other international partners. It would sit in a lunar orbit about 240,000 miles from Earth—1,000 times farther than the International Space Station (ISS)....

One of the most ambitious and extreme experiments on Earth opened at the South Pole in 2010. IceCube, a giant particle detector buried in the polar ice, captures elusive, high-energy species of neutrinos—fundamental particles that fly straight through almost everything they touch. The project, for which I am the principal investigator, aims to use neutrinos to study distant cosmic phenomena—particularly the mysterious, violent processes thought to produce the charged particles known as cosmic rays, which continually bombard Earth....

Our team of more than two dozen students and research scientists at Virginia Tech has spent much of the past year analyzing and publicizing unsafe drinking water in Flint, Michigan. Our “open science” research collaboration with Flint residents revealed high levels of lead, Legionella and damage to potable water infrastructure due to a failure to implement corrosion control treatment. Despite Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) messages that the water was safe, we fought to educate residents about severe public health risks....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. A Soviet-designed “Novichok” chemical is the nerve agent responsible for poisoning a former spy and his daughter, British Prime Minister Theresa May said today. Sergei and Julia Skripal were found collapsed on a park bench on Sunday March 4 in the English town of Salisbury, a few hours after eating lunch and spending time at a restaurant and pub nearby....

David Zacks, a retina specialist and assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center, explains. Many of us think that as we grow older our eyesight is destined to deteriorate. We talk about “tired” or “old” eyes as if we are fated to have the gift of vision taken from us simply because we have aged. For example, in what might be the earliest reference to cataracts in the Bible (Genesis, Chapter 27, Verse 1) we learn that, “And it came to pass, that Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim…” The truth is that, with today’s treatment options, there is no intrinsic reason for our vision to worsen with time....

LE BOURGET, France—The biggest political moment in climate change history has arrived. Four years of planning, debating and hyping U.N. climate change negotiations came to a head this morning in this tightly guarded tent city on the outskirts of Paris as French President François Hollande officially opened the talks before 140 heads of state and thousands of others eager to see a new global accord. “Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high, since what is at stake is the future of the planet, the future of life,” Hollande told a packed plenary hall of leaders, ministers and diplomats....

The coming year will surely include no shortage of new smartphones, tablets and other mainstream gadgets now entrenched in the consumer market. Some will focus on aesthetics, taking a page from Samsung’s curved-glass design for its new Galaxy Round. Others will opt for better cameras, higher-resolution displays, longer battery life and further, incremental advances. Many new devices, however, will debut in 2014 with the hope of tapping into some as-yet unmet need....