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By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazineGRENOBLE, FRANCEWhen its experiments started in earnest earlier this year, many scientists hoped that the world’s most powerful collider would turn up new particles, additional dimensions and perhaps even a small black hole or two. But beyond a handful of unusual events, the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are frustratingly ordinary.Based at CERN, Europe’s premier high-energy physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland, the LHC accelerates protons to almost the speed of light before slamming them together to create new, heavier particles....

President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a “personal commitment” to work together toward a successful global climate change agreement in Paris later this year as part of a sweeping energy package unveiled in New Delhi yesterday on everything from boosting renewables to curbing air pollution. The deal between the two leaders fell well short of one that Obama and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, unveiled in Beijing last year....

The more advanced a medical intervention is, it seems, the less invasive it is to perform. For example, bariatric surgery once entailed opening a patient’s abdomen from navel to diaphram; today such operations are done laparoscopically through incisions mere centimeters in size. Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a prototype robot that can perform simple procedures inside the stomach without any incisions or external tethers at all—the patient just swallows it....

A new spacecraft is en route to the king of planets. NASA’s Juno mission will arrive at Jupiter July 4 to study our solar system’s largest world up close and personal. Once its primary mission starts around November, Juno will spend at least a year and a half examining the planet’s interior and weather. But some scientists are interested not in what Juno can tell us about Jupiter but in what it could reveal about planets much farther away....

Astronomers have discovered the largest and most distinctive loop-like structure yet observed in our galaxy. The immense loop stretches 20 light-years across and could be producing subatomic particles a thousand times more energetic than those manufactured in man-made particle accelerators. A team of researchers led by Masaaki Sakano of the University of Leicester observed the new formation using the European x-ray satellite, XMM-Newton. (X-rays are preferable for observing the galactic center because the large amounts of dust present there obscure instruments at optical wavelengths....

These are the major threats highlighted in a new United Nations report on emerging environmental concerns. The report, released today, is the latest in an ongoing series that began in 2016. Previous installments have warned of the growing problems of zoonotic diseases, microplastics, drug-resistant microbes, environmental displacement and climate migration, the fragmentation of natural landscapes, and the thawing of permafrost. Some of these issues aren’t new—scientists have been sounding the alarm about many of them for years....

Sometime in the mid-21st century, if all goes according to plan, Ralph McNutt will leave the solar system. Or rather his brainchild will: a potential NASA mission, provisionally called Interstellar Probe, that, in one form or another, McNutt has been questing after for the past half-century—ever since he was a starry-eyed high school student pondering humankind’s next giant leap after Apollo astronauts walked on the moon. Today McNutt is a 65-year-old physicist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and, as the project’s principal investigator, the vital force behind Interstellar Probe....

Key concepts Density Mass Volume Concentration Buoyancy Water Introduction Have you ever wondered why some objects float in water and others sink? It has to do with the density of the objects compared with the density of the water surrounding them. If an object is less dense than the water around it, it will float. Because salt water is denser than freshwater, some things float more easily in the ocean—or extremely salty bodies of the water, such as the Dead Sea....

The picture of Southeast Asia’s deforestation is coming into greater focus. Scientists have developed a new satellite-imaging technique that allows them to have a better bird’s eye view of when carbon-rich peatlands were cleared and to what extent they have been replaced by palm oil trees. The work, which depends on a blend of satellite images, marks the first attempt to systematically quantify carbon loss from peatland destruction across the region and directly tie it to oil-palm expansion....

Exposure to chemicals early in life may alter how breast tissue develops and raise the risks of breast cancer and lactation problems later in life, scientists concluded in a set of reports published Wednesday. The scientists are urging federal officials to add new tests for industrial chemicals and pesticides to identify ones that might disrupt breast development. In some cases, they said, mammary glands are more sensitive to effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals than any other part of the body, so low levels of exposure may be causing breast changes....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The ancient Chinese practiced copromancy, the diagnosis of health based on the shape, size and texture of feces. So did the Egyptians, the Greeks and nearly every ancient culture. Even today, your doctor may ask when you last had a bowel movement and to describe it in exquisite detail. Sure, it’s uncomfortable to talk about....

A federal ban on ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), to conform with the Clean Air Act, is, ironically, affecting 22.9 million people in the U.S. who suffer from asthma. Generic inhaled albuterol, which is the most commonly prescribed short-acting asthma medication and requires CFCs to propel it into the lungs, will no longer be legally sold after December 31, 2008. Physicians and patients are questioning the wisdom of the ban, which will have an insignificant effect on ozone but a measurable impact on wallets: the reformulated brand-name alternatives can be three times as expensive, raising the cost to about $40 per inhaler....

Thousands of tiny seedlings taken from 48 trees and shrubs native to Panama sprouted in a greenhouse. Three thousand of the budding plants then made the journey to the understory of a tropical rain forest. Half were watered during the local dry season, the others were not. Despite the high humidity, some withered in the absence of water, and in so doing suggested that water determines the fate of plants—even in rain forests....

The greater roadrunner is officially classified as Geococcyx californianus. The lesser roadrunner is Geococcyx velox. And the more familiar cartoon Road Runner (beep beep) has been designated on different occasions as Accelerati incredibilus, Velocitus tremenjus, Birdibus zippibus, Speedipus rex and Morselus babyfatious tastius. Consistently unsuccessful in his attempts to catch Fastius tasty-us is Wile E. Coyote, himself variously classified as a representative of the species Carnivorous slobbius, Eatius birdius, Overconfidentii vulgaris, Poor schinookius or Caninus nervous rex....

By Amanda MascarelliPlans to distribute monies from BP’s 10-year Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI) have been thrown into turmoil by a last-minute edict from the White House.On June 15, BP announced that it would distribute $25 million in fast-track funding across three research institutions in its first step towards fulfilling a $500-million pledge for high-priority studies to assess environmental damage from the oil spill.BP had planned to put out a request for proposals for the remaining $475 million within days of the announcement and said that large-scale research centers would be established as part of its mission....

South Korea’s grip on the coronavirus faltered this month when a large church in Seoul had an outbreak—involving 915 cases as of 25 August. The government has reinstated restrictions in the city to prevent a surge, but it’s also reporting details of the outbreak publicly. For instance, it has shared that 120 people infected at the church have spread the coronavirus to people at 22 venues, including 4 call centres and 3 hospitals in Seoul....

Despite a multi-billion-dollar skin care industry and plenty of marketing claims, nothing exists that can prevent our skin from turning into tissue paper as we age—except, perhaps, religiously wearing sunscreen. Accumulated damage from UV radiation and other age-related stressors drains the skin’s pool of renewal cells—or stem cells—and there is no way to stop or slow this process. But hope for skincare junkies is on the horizon. A study published April 3 in Nature provides new insight into how stem cell loss occurs and even identifies two chemicals that may be able to prevent it....

Airline passengers moving through security who meet certain criteria—such as having purchased a last-minute ticket—can expect to be taken aside for a pat-down body search, which some people find invasive. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix now offer such passengers a body scan in lieu of a pat-down. So far, the agency reports, about 80 percent of passengers selected for secondary screening have chosen to step up to the machine....

In 2011, Yale law professor Amy Chua became a household name after publishing her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a memoir documenting her draconian parenting style. Chua generated lots of publicity for her shock value anecdotes, like the time she threatened to burn all her daughter’s stuffed animals as consequence for playing poorly on the piano. Chua claims that her parenting techniques were not only typical of Chinese immigrants, but explained why Chinese Americans, on average, have educationally outperformed other ethnic groups....

China solidified its standing as the world’s wind energy behemoth in 2015, adding almost as much wind power capacity in one year as the total installed capacity of the three largest U.S. wind-producing states: Texas, Iowa and California. New data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance show China installed just under 29 gigawatts of new wind energy capacity in 2015, surpassing its previous record of roughly 21 GW set in 2014. The country also accounted for more than 46 percent of all wind power installed globally for the year, eclipsing the next largest market, the United States, which added 8....