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The tap water we drink, cook with, and bathe in typically comes from either surface water sources like streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, or from underground sources like aquifers, permeable rocks that can store and transmit water. A range of dangerous pollutants have been found in this water, including bacteria like e. coli, toxic algae, lead, sulfur, excess iron, and general dirt and grit, that are known to lead to a host of health issues from gastrointestinal problems to neurological disorders, as well as reproductive issues....

Are you one of those people who think of big cities as little more than hotbeds of pollution, crime and social inequalities? Well, think again. A new report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA confirms what many city dwellers, who account for the bulk of people on Earth, have claimed for years: Cities have an almost magical ability, spurred by increased human interaction, to stimulate innovation and increase wealth....

U.S. Astronaut Scott Kelly returns to Earth this month after spending a full year in space, the longest mission for any American. Kelly is one half of nasa’s Twins Study, an investigation into how life in microgravity affects physiology. His identical twin and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly, remained on Earth. U.K. An e-cigarette manufactured by British American Tobacco has received approval as a doctor-prescribed aid for quitting smoking. National health insurance will cover the vaping device....

Of all Earth’s elemental cycles, nitrogen may be the most complex and costly. After all, it takes a lot of energy to turn the gaseous coupled nitrogen atoms that make up nearly 80 percent of our atmosphere into a usable form (most often, one atom of nitrogen paired with three of oxygen, or nitrate). Bacteria known broadly as diazotrophs can perform the trick with the aid of a special enzyme and a ready supply of iron (or, using high pressures and temperatures, nitrogen can be fixed industrially)....

Budding photographers, beware: the beauty of a serene sunset, a peaceful forest or a majestic mountain range is not sufficient to make a vacation snapshot memorable. In fact, pleasing images of landscapes or forests are often the hardest to recognize and remember later on, according to a study presented at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in June. Long thought to be too subjective to define, the properties that make a photo memorable actually remain largely constant from one person to the next, the study found....

Despite efforts to brew ethanol as a sustainable automotive fuel substitute for gasoline, the plant-derived alcohol has its drawbacks. A gallon (3.8 liters) of ethanol, for one, contains almost a third less energy than the same volume of gasoline. So when James A. Dumesic and his fellow chemical engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison developed a straightforward way to extract a synthetic fuel from sugar that in many ways surpasses ethanol, the scientific community took notice....

About five years ago, preeminent neuroscientist Eric Kandel of Columbia University was asked by a radio interviewer what mysteries remained about the brain. “Almost everything,” Kandel responded. Such a statement does not diminish the considerable progress neuroscience has made in the more than a century since Italian physician Camillo Golgi and Spanish anatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal created the first drawings of neurons. But people like Kandel stay humble. They know that every time neuroscientists increase the resolution with which they peer into the brain, they discover new, unimaginable levels of complexity....

Runners who’ve faced off against Oscar Pistorius say they know when the South African is closing in on them from behind. They hear a distinctive clicking noise growing louder, like a pair of scissors slicing through the air—the sound of Pistorius’s Flex-Foot Cheetah prosthetic legs. It’s those long, J-shaped, carbon-fiber lower legs—and the world-class race times that come with them—that have some people asking an unpopular question: Does Pistorius, the man who has overcome so much to be the first double amputee to run at an Olympic level, have an unfair advantage?...

Throughout the 19th century salesmen traveled the U.S. peddling solutions to all medical ills. As depicted in numerous Westerns and in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the “doctor” was aided by a shill in the crowd who would, at the appropriate moment, call out that this medicament, ointment or tincture had solved his woes. Once the unsuspecting public had purchased the con artists’ wares, both would quickly depart before the townspeople discovered the worthlessness of the claims....

For many years psychologists have explored whether narcissism and creativity are linked, and some studies have suggested that the self-obsessed may, in fact, be more creative than the rest of us. But new research from Cornell University argues otherwise. Two hundred and forty-four under­graduates completed a test that measures narcissism (with questions such as, “I enjoy being the center of attention”). Participants then paired up and “pitched” movie ideas to one another, with one playing the role of pitcher and the other evaluator....

For many years, materials scientists wanted to know how the abalone, a marine snail, constructed its magnificently strong shell from unpromising minerals, so that they could make similar materials themselves. Angela M. Belcher asked a different question: Why not get the abalone to make things for us? She put a thin glass slip between the abalone and its shell, then removed it. “We got a flat pearl,” she says, “which we could use to study shell formation on an hour-by-hour basis, without having to sacrifice the animal....

In 2008 it seemed like Enrique Reynaud had the world in his back pocket. A veteran professor of molecular biology at Mexico’s largest and most important university, he was about to start his first company, Biohominis. It was a kind of Mexican 23andMe—a laboratory that could offer insight into a customer’s genetic proclivity to hypertension, diabetes and other diseases. In many ways, Biohominis was the culmination of Mexico’s biotech tradition, which goes back to Norman Borlaug, who kicked off a green revolution around Texcoco....

Four years ago, Jacob Abel cast his first presidential vote for Donald Trump. As a young conservative from Concord, North Carolina, the choice felt natural. But this November, he plans to cast a “protest vote” for a write-in candidate or abstain from casting a ballot for president. A determining factor in his 180-degree turn? Climate change. Climate didn’t become a voting issue for Abel until months after the 2016 election. As a college freshman at Seton Hall University, he found himself increasingly frustrated by lackluster Republican responses to an issue now leading millions to march in the streets....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

Déjà vu—that uncanny feeling of having experienced a situation before—has eluded explanation for centuries. Now the first study to use virtual reality to model the phenomenon in the laboratory is helping demystify the spooky illusion, revealing that the layout of a scene can trigger it. Previous studies of déjà vu suggested the bizarre feeling most commonly concerns places. As such, cognitive psychologist Anne Cleary at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and her colleagues wanted to see if spaces modeled in virtual reality could experimentally replicate the striking experience....

During the summer in Qaanaaq, Greenland, an Inuit hunter paddling next to a resting narwhal observed a thin gauzelike layer coming off the narwhal’s body and dissipating into the water. The event lasted only a few seconds, but Connecticut-based dentist Martin Nweeia, a Harvard University and Smithsonian Institution researcher who studies narwhal tusks as his passion, immediately saw the scientific significance of the hunter’s observation. Whereas the beluga, the narwhal’s nearest relative, is known to enter warmer estuarine waters in the summer to molt, this skin-renewal process had never been scientifically documented for narwhal, in part because no scientist has ever spent sufficient time in remote Arctic locations to record such an event....

DAVIS, Calif. – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and three international regional leaders signed a memorandum of understanding today in a bid to assert regional authority on climate change policy. The “R20 Charter” establishes “regions of climate action” that will share best practices and technologies and form public-private partnerships to execute clean energy pilot projects. Along with Schwarzenegger, signatories included Île-de-France President Jean Paul Huchon of France; Nigerian Delta State Gov....

MENLO PARK, Calif.—The headquarters of Facebook sits on a sprawling campus beside San Francisco Bay, a scenic location with water bordering three sides. The 57-acre site features two- and three-story office buildings in shades of red and orange, outdoor basketball hoops, and sofa-sized benches on large lawns. Just outside the property, however, is a reminder that this location has a major drawback. A roughly 8-foot levee curves next to Facebook’s land....

The difference between HIV infection and full-blown AIDS is, in large part, the massive die-off of the immune system’s CD4 T-cells. But researchers have only observed the virus killing a small portion of those cells, leading to a longstanding question: What makes the other cells disappear? New research shows that the body is killing its own cells in a little-known process. What’s more, an existing, safe drug could interrupt that self-destruction, thereby offering a way to treat AIDS....

Just when everyone had pretty much written it off, the El Niño event that has been nearly a year in the offing finally emerged in February and could last through the spring and summer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday. This isn’t the blockbuster, 1998 repeat El Niño many anticipated when the first hints of an impending event emerged about a year ago. This El Niño has just crept across the official threshold, so it won’t be a strong event....