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The rapid growth of Catholic-affiliated hospitals in the U.S. could significantly reduce access to inpatient sterilization procedures, according to a new study that examines the rising influence of religion on reproductive health services. The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, estimates that Catholic hospitals reduce the per-bed annual rates of inpatient abortions by 30 percent, and tubal ligations, or sterilization, by 31 percent. Those impacts are being magnified by rapid consolidation among hospitals nationwide, a trend that resulted in a 22 percent increase in Catholic-sponsored or Catholic-affiliated hospitals between 2001 and 2016....

The American chestnut tree, which towered over eastern U.S. forests before succumbing to a deadly fungus in the early 20th century, appears to be an excellent sponge for greenhouse gases, according to a new study. If scientists can develop a fungus-resistant version of the tree, the chestnut could play a key role in the battle against climate change, Purdue University scientists say. “Maintaining or increasing forest cover has been identified as an important way to slow climate change,” said Douglass Jacobs, whose chestnut tree study appears in the June issue of Forest Ecology and Management....

The election of Donald Trump as the nation’s next president spurred celebration in some quarters and dismay in others, including among those concerned about the steady warming of the planet. The unrestrained emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have altered the Earth’s climate, raising sea levels, impacting ecosystems, and increasingly the likelihood of extreme weather. In terms of numbers, the world’s temperature has risen by more than 1°F since 1900 and 2016 is expected to be the hottest year on record....

A few years ago I bought a latte at Starbucks on the way to the airport, parked my car and got on a flight for the U.K. Eight hours later I got off at Heathrow, bought a prepay chip for my cell phone and went to buy a ticket for the train into London, when my credit card gave up the ghost and refused to work anymore. Not until I got back to the U....

By Tim Ghianni NASHVILLE Tenn. (Reuters) - Dozens of animals pulled from a burning Tennessee wildlife rehabilitation center have died and hundreds of the rescued are being treated for smoke inhalation by veterinarians, the head of the organization said on Tuesday. Firefighters had pulled a dozen dead animals from the flames and about 60 more have died in the day since the early Monday fire at Walden’s Puddle non-profit center in suburban Nashville, said Lane Brody, chief executive of Walden’s Puddle....

No doctor has ever prescribed a shirt to save a patient’s life. But on a family summer vacation in 2017, Rob Leibowitz wore a T-shirt while walking around Disney World that bore the phrase: “In Need of Kidney, O Positive.” After a picture was posted on Facebook, the story went viral, and a few months later, Leibowitz, who had been on the transplant list for several years, underwent a successful surgery to implant a kidney donated by a complete stranger....

It’s only a matter of time before a movie villain pulling off the crime of the century needs a cutting tool that is harder than anything else on Earth. Perhaps it’s a burglary that involves cutting into a case made of diamond—which, as we have all learned from countless heist films, is itself hard enough to cut glass. Or maybe it’s a devious scheme predicated on boring a hole into the depths of the planet with the world’s hardest drill bit....

Hawaii’s supreme court has ruled that the construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on top of the mountain Mauna Kea is invalid. The December 2 decision is a major blow to the international consortium backing the US$1.5-billion telescope, and a win for the Native Hawaiians who have protested against its construction on what they regard as a sacred summit. Hawaii’s Board of Land and Natural Resources should not have approved the permit in 2011, the court said, because it did so before protestors could air their side in a contested case hearing....

On a sweltering June day in 2021, Nicole, whose real name has been changed to protect her privacy, walked into an HIV treatment clinic in Atlanta, Ga., expecting something different. She had shouldered a lifetime of discrimination for being both Black and transgender while also dealing with HIV, diabetes and hypertension. She worked as a manager of a fast-food restaurant while parenting several LGBTQ youths. Accessing consistent health care was a daily battle, and Nicole’s past interactions with providers had left her feeling discouraged....

Bill Perkins, associate professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., explains. Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the term “anesthesia” in 1846 to describe drug-induced insensibility to sensation (particularly pain), shortly after the first publicized demonstration of inhaled ether rendered a patient unresponsive during a surgical procedure. Two broad classes of pharmacologic agents, local and general, can result in anesthesia. Local anesthetics, such as Novocain, block nerve transmission to pain centers in the central nervous system by binding to and inhibiting the function of an ion channel in the cell membrane of nerve cells known as the sodium channel....

SEOUL—It is not unusual this week to see children and adults wearing face masks here as they walk the streets and subway stations. People are taking this precaution due to an outbreak of Middle East respiratory s yndrome (MERS) that began in May after a man infected with the disease returned to Seoul from the Middle East, initiating the first outbreak beyond that region. On the morning of June 9, South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare announced eight new cases of MERS, bringing the total in South Korea to 95....

By Brendan Borell of Nature magazine One in five of the world’s invertebrate species are threatened with extinction, according to the latest report from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). From the checkerspot butterfly to the giant squid, spineless creatures are thought to represent around 99% of biodiversity on Earth. However, until now, scientists have never attempted a comprehensive review of their conservation status. In fact, fewer than 1% of invertebrates had been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has listed threatened species on its Red List since 1963....

Prions, the protein family notorious for causing “mad cow” and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, can play an important role in healthy cells. “Do you think God created prions just to kill?” mused Nobel laureate Eric Kandel. “These things must have evolved initially to have a physiological function.” His work on memory helped reveal that animals make and use prions in their nervous systems as part of an essential function: stabilizing the synapses that constitute long-term memories....

Long before ancient Egyptians swaddled their pharaohs in balm-and-resin-soaked linens and placed them in treasure-bedecked tombs, their more egalitarian predecessors were using essentially the same embalming recipe. The finding, published in PLoS ONE, pushes back known use of the multi-ingredient ointment by about 2,000 years, the authors estimate. The early blend includes a resin that probably came from at least 1,000 kilometers away from the gravesites, hinting that the region already had an established and extensive trade network....

Deep below the surface of the ocean and the floor below it there is a gentle, slow and nearly silent phenomenon that for decades has remained invisible to geologists. Discovered in the 1990s, so-called “slow-slip events” or just “slow earthquakes” are gentle ruptures in fault lines that may play a role in large, more destructive quakes. In a new report this week in Science, seismologists say that whereas slow quakes may not predict big, dangerous ones in the way a weather forecaster can predict a hurricane days before it hits, the slow movements may still tell them about earthquake dynamics and when a fault system has become dangerous....

Editor’s note: This editorial was written and published in 1911. Although our editors of a century ago pondered some lofty aspirations for the orderly future of humans, it was only three decades later that the brutal reality of a Nazi social order suffused with a eugenicist ideal brought home the practical shortcomings of the philosophy. The Science of Breeding Better Men ADA JUKE is known to anthropologists as the “mother of criminals....

This Friday, Buzz Aldrin will be landing on the moon again—this time in the 3-D, computer-generated film, Fly Me to the Moon. In the kiddie flick, Aldrin voices a digital version of himself during the historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission in 1969. The story follows three adventure-seeking young houseflies that stow on board the NASA spacecraft. ScientificAmerican.com spoke to Aldrin by phone about the movie and about NASA, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary....

Editor’s Note: This story was published in September. Since then, the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed again. It is now scheduled to lift off no earlier than December 24. Earlier this month NASA announced that on December 18, after years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope will finally leave Earth on a mission to revolutionize astrophysics and cosmology. But before this $10-billion observatory can begin its work, it must survive a daunting commute that includes a voyage at sea, a rocket launch and a 1....

HUMBO, Ethiopia — The bees have returned. For decades, farmer and beekeeper Adila Agebo’s hives in this small agricultural community were nearly dry. Years of stripping the hills of their vegetation to make charcoal, collecting firewood and construction material from what remained of the forests, and letting animals graze on the green remnants had devastated the landscape. Severe soil erosion led to landslides down the hills into the villages. Large silt deposits choked farms of productivity and washed out roads, leaving a community already susceptible to hunger in an even more dire situation....

LONDON – Britain’s plutonium stockpile, the biggest in the world, has just grown by another three tonnes as the German and Dutch governments have handed over their stores, apparently glad to be rid of it. This manmade metal was once thought to be the most valuable substance in the world. 10 kg could make a nuclear bomb, or generate 100 million kilowatt hours of electricity. But plutonium is now widely seen as a major liability, particularly if you have 118 tonnes of it, as the UK now does....