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A laboratory mouse has a modest home: a small, smelly cage lined with soft bedding, which it shares with up to four other animals. But it is home nonetheless—a place of comfort. That is, until the massive hand of a researcher reaches in to pluck it out for an experiment. The experiment might gauge whether a mouse feels anxious or social, or tap the activity in its brain. But does the intrusion of the researcher’s hand influence the very behavior under study?...

Frito-Lay, the snack food giant, wanted to sell more potato chips to women. So it commissioned a neuroimaging study, which found that women looking at a shiny bag of potato chips had increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, associated with guilt. In the hopes of boosting sales, Frito-Lay switched to matte bags. But how savvy was this swap? Not very, suggest psychologists Satel and Lilienfeld (the latter serves on the board of Scientific American Mind) in Brainwashed, which documents the rise of overhyped neuroscience....

THE GASOLINE GARDEN It is the next step for biofuels: genetically engineered plant life that produces hydrocarbons as a by-product of its normal metabolism. The result will be fuel—common gasoline, even frut—using nothing but sunlight and CO2. In July, Exxon Mobil announced plans to spend more than $600 million in pursuit of algae that can accomplish the task. Joule Biotechnologies claims to have already succeeded, although the company has yet to reveal any details of its proprietary system....

In the 1960s widening U.S. Highway 27 just north of Tallahassee cut Florida’s Lake Jackson into two sections. When water levels fell too low in either part, thousands of turtles, frogs, snakes and alligators would hit the road to head for the other side—where cars and trucks often hit the animals. In February of 2000 Matt Aresco, then a PhD student at The Florida State University in Tallahassee, drove through and was stunned at the sight of dozens of crushed turtles....

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch will soon start shrinking. In October, The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit foundation based in the Netherlands, floated out and installed System 001 (nicknamed Wilson), to remove some of the rubbish floating on or just below the ocean’s surface. The patch of 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, which lies halfway between Hawaii and California, is roughly twice the size of Texas. System 001 is a 600-meter floating pipe, deployed in a U-shape, with a 3m-deep skirt....

The symbol H+ is the code sign used by some futurists to denote an enhanced version of humanity. The plus version of the human race would deploy a mix of advanced technologies, including stem cells, robotics, cognition-enhancing drugs, and the like, to overcome basic mental and physical limitations. The notion of enhancing mental functions by gulping down a pill that improves attention, memory and planning—the very foundations of cognition—is no longer just a fantasy shared by futurists....

The voice is the human musical instrument. It consists of a vibrating element, resonating chambers and energy that produces the vibrations. The energy comes from the breath originating in the lungs. Vibrations occur in the two vocal cords at the lower part of the voice box, or larynx, that are arranged in a “V” shape, perpendicular to the trachea. Finally, the resonating chambers consist of multiple structures located above the vocal cords: the upper part of the larynx, the pharynx, the nasal cavity, the mouth....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. On April 15, 1980, animal rights advocate Henry Spira took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to decry the use of animals in the safety testing of cosmetics. “How Many Rabbits Does Revlon Blind for Beauty’s Sake?” the ad asked. The question alluded to the use of the Draize test, which involved dripping substances such as toluene into rabbits’ eyes, causing pain and sometimes blindness....

Roughly 44 percent of Californians smoked tobacco in 1965. By 2010, 9.3 percent did—a shift that might have seemed impossible before it happened. Understanding exactly how such a social transformation occurred in the past may prove key to understanding how individuals might alter their behavior to help combat climate change in the future. By studying past instances of social transformation, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) hope to predict future change in response to global warming as part of California’s Carbon Challenge—a study commissioned by the California Energy Commission to help the state cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels....

Killing research animals is one of the most unpleasant tasks in science, and it is imperative to do it as humanely as possible. But researchers who study animal welfare and euthanasia are growing increasingly concerned that widely used techniques are not the least painful and least stressful available. This week, experts from across the world will gather in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, to debate the evidence and try to reach a consensus....

In 1996, Charles Sawyers designed early clinical trials for one of the first drugs aimed at a cancer-specific genetic mutation. The drug was imatinib, the cancer was chronic myeloid leukaemia and Sawyers — a clinical oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York — saw patients who had been debilitated by the disease rapidly improve when given the medicine. “It was unbelievably satisfying,” he says. Unfortunately, he then saw many of those cancers come roaring back as they became resistant to the drug....

Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century by Kevin Fong Penguin Press, 2014 With degrees in medicine, astrophysics and engineering, Fong has dedicated as much of his life to discussing the health challenges of space travel as he has to treating trauma patients. In Extreme Medicine, he writes of those challenges as well as more terrestrial medical advancements that have pushed the boundaries of possibility. “While our medical pioneers weren’t concerned with geographical conquest,” he writes, “they were very much in the business of exploration....

On an August afternoon in Washington, D.C., typically miserable for its heat, humidity and stillness, reporters gathered at a downtown hotel not known for its air-conditioning. Stuffed inside a windowless conference room that was being heated still further by the television people’s lights, we waited for Michael J. Wallace, who had been trying, in fits and starts, to unveil nuclear power’s second act. On arrival, Wallace, a meticulous manager not known for ad-libbing, looked out over the sweating reporters and smiled....

News that Salmonella bacteria came back from a trip to outer space deadlier than before sparked headlines earlier this fall. It might seem like fodder for a science-fiction thriller, but such temporary changes are par for the course when bacteria encounter new environments—and researchers have seen it before without the need for a rocket ship. “These are not mutated bugs from space,” emphasizes Cheryl Nickerson of Arizona State University, who led the team that sent the cultures onboard the space shuttle in September 2006 and reported the work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA....

In August 2001 when President Bush forbade the creation of new embryonic stem cell lines with federal money, he softened the blow to biomedical research by promising that more than 60 ES cell preparations could still be used to develop prospective treatments for the sick. Yet a growing list of problems with those cells forces the Food and Drug Administration to consider whether material from them is even safe to try in people....

By Amelie Baron PORT-DE-PAIX, Haiti (Reuters) - Only cactus grows along the dirt road fringing arid fields on the way to the isolated village of Bas des Moustiques, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix in Haiti. A lack of rain in recent months has killed crops in Haiti’s poorest region, and left people struggling to survive. Julia Sodietra, 41, has lost hope as she fights a losing battle to provide for her large family....

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Jane Koca grinned as she stepped out of a Tesla Model S at a neighbor’s ride-and-drive event, where half a dozen models were on display. Her next car, she said, will be a plug-in. “I’ve been waiting,” she said. “Each year, they get better and better.” The rollout of new and second-generation plug-in models that can go longer on a single charge by major automakers has ushered in what some analysts call a second era in electric vehicles....

It’s a moment nearly everyone has experienced. You’re contentedly chewing a wad of gum when an unforeseen turn brings about a quick disposal—the hard way. Whether the cause is imminent detection by a high school teacher, a dearth of garbage cans or even an untimely hiccup, you gulp down the rubbery gob whole. It’s only then that a refrain from childhood echoes through your mind: “Don’t swallow chewing gum—it will stay in your system for seven years!...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expressed support today for Senate legislation intended to strengthen shark conservation but expressed concern about a provision that it says would encroach on other countries’ sovereignty. Stephanie Hunt of NOAA’s legislative affairs office said the agency supports provisions requiring that sharks brought to U.S. ports have their fins intact. That policy is already in effect along the Atlantic Coast, but Pacific ports use a biomass ratio system that critics say is full of loopholes....

By Richard A. Lovett Attempting to offset global warming by injecting sunlight-reflecting gases into the upper atmosphere isn’t the quick fix for global climate change that advocates believe it might be, a new study finds.In a paper published July 18 in Nature Geoscience, Kate Ricke, a climate physicist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her colleagues show, by modeling, that not only could solar-radiation management lead to declines in rainfall in the long term, but its effects will also vary by region....