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For the second time ever, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has spotted two ultradense stellar remnants known as neutron stars violently crashing together. The gravitational wave event seems to have been generated by particularly massive entities that challenge astronomers’ models of neutron stars. LIGO made history two and a half years ago, when the observatory detected its first pair of neutron stars—city-size objects left behind when a giant star dies—spiraling around one another and then merging....

The Grand Portage National Monument is a former fur trading site full of conifers, wetlands and beaver dams—a history and landscape that may be behind the toxic mercury loads in the monument’s streams. The national monument lies in the northeastern tip of Minnesota on the north shore of Lake Superior—not exactly where one would expect heavy pollution. But experts say the monument’s landscape and history may be a perfect mix for elemental mercury to accumulate and convert into its more toxic form—methylmercury, a contaminant that can impair developing brains and nervous systems in humans and wildlife....

From Sylvester in Looney Tunes to Mr Mistoffelees in the 1980s musical, some of the most famous (albeit fictional) cats share a distinctively sharp appearance thanks to their black and white tuxedo-style coats. Cats with skin and fur marked by white patches in this way are known as “bicolour" or “piebald”. Piebaldism is also common in a range of domestic and farm animals including dogs, cows and pigs, deer, horses and appears more rarely in humans....

One of the great ironies of climate change is that as the planet warms, the technology that people need to stay cool will only make the climate hotter. By 2050, researchers expect the number of room air conditioners on Earth to quadruple to 4.5 billion, becoming at least as ubiquitous as cell phones are today. By the end of the century, greenhouse gas emissions from air conditioning will account for as much as a 0....

It’s been two weeks since BitTorrent search engine Isohunt agreed to exit the Internet after reaching a $110 million settlement deal over copyright infringement with the Motion Picture Association of America. But, a quick glance at the site Isohunt.to and it seems the search engine appears to be alive. No, Isohunt founder Gary Fung didn’t renege on his settlement – rather, fans of the site decided to make an exact clone of the original Isohunt, according to TorrentFreak....

Dear EarthTalk: I’d like to know the relative electricity cost of utility-scale solar and wind plants versus rooftop residential solar. In other words, how can I know whether to subsidize my utility’s alternative-energy plant or renovate my own home? —Randy Wilson, Flagstaff, AZ Making such a determination is complex, but you could start with “In My Backyard,” a new online tool by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). You first need to know your electricity usage and what size solar photovoltaic (PV) system or wind turbine you could install....

Planetary scientists are getting closer to solving the puzzle of methane on Mars. New calculations could help to explain why NASA’s Curiosity rover detects peaks of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere during the planet’s northern summer. As winter gives way to spring, the idea goes, the Sun’s heat begins to warm the soil—allowing methane to percolate up from the ground and into the atmosphere, said John Moores, a planetary scientist at York University in Toronto, Canada....

Four years ago, when meningitis B, an extremely rare but potentially lethal form of the infection, sickened a small number of college students at Princeton and the University of California-Santa Barbara, there was no vaccine against the disease sold in the U.S. Despite its availability abroad, it had never been licensed in the country due to its limited marketability. Scientific evidence supporting an absolute need to immunize against meningitis B still falls short....

In the milk of 30 genetically modified goats on GTC Biotherapeutics’s farm in Charlton, Mass., is a drug that can literally make your blood flow–the human protein antithrombin, which inhibits clotting. In a dramatic reversal, after European reg-ulators rejected this drug (called ATryn), they now look ready to approve it later this year. The ruling would make ATryn the first human protein made by a transgenic animal for commercial production....

When modeling climate, scientists must account for a large number of variables. One of the most challenging is the effect of small particulates suspended in the atmosphere, which can either reflect or absorb incoming radiation from the sun and thus alter its influence. The most common types of aerosols are soot, ash and other man-made particles as well as naturally derived dust and salt. Until now, plants and animals have been considered a small source of particulate pollution....

When a human donor organ becomes available, transplant surgeons have only about 12 hours to collect and transplant the tissue before it breaks down. But a slow-cooling method that first chills rat livers and then drops the temperature to below freezing — allowing them to be stored in a ‘supercooled’ but non-frozen state — keeps them fresh for three days. If the method works for human organs, it could drastically increase the number that are available for transplantation....

By Mary WisniewskiWASHINGTON, Illinois (Reuters) - When a powerful tornado bore down on the small city of Washington, Illinois, on Sunday, Ryan Bowers took his wife’s advice and sheltered in the basement with their 2-1/2-month-old daughter and their dogs.Winds of up to 200 miles per hour leveled their home, along with a large swath of the city of 15,000 people east of Peoria, but the Bowers survived, as did almost all of their neighbors....

The broiling heat wave that suffocated parts of India with temperatures regularly above 110°F at the end of May—and killed around 2,000 people in just a few days according to estimates—has finally waned. But the deadly episode has focused world attention on the plight of vulnerable populations during such extreme events and raised questions about how to better prepare for such disasters when the climate could be tipping toward more of them....

American Sign Language (ASL) users are no strangers to video chatting. The technology—which has been around since 1927, when AT&T experimented with the first rudimentary videophones—lets deaf and hard-of-hearing people sign via the airwaves. But after the coronavirus pandemic began confining people to their homes early last year, the use of platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet exploded. This increased reliance on videoconferencing is altering some common elements of sign language....

A recipe for fuel: take the carbohydrates like starch and cellulose that make up the majority of plants. Use enzymes to break them down into fructose, the sugar found in fruits and honey. Mix this fructose with salt water and hydrochloric acid. Add a solvent—in this case butanol also derived from plant matter—to protect the resulting hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from reacting with the water, then extract it. This versatile molecule can be used to create plastic polymers or other chemicals....

International climate negotiations have stalled in recent years, offering little hope that the world might keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. But the United Nations’ existing commitment to universal sustainable energy access could get most of the way toward that goal. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the “Sustainable Energy for All” (SE4ALL) initiative in 2011. The program’s three goals were to ensure universal access to modern energy, double the share of global renewable energy and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030....

U.S. and Chinese officials heading up a series of joint advanced coal projects Friday signed an intellectual property agreement meant to ease the sharing of innovative technology while protecting patents and licensing agreements. Companies collaborating on research and development projects tied to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), a program started in 2009, can enter into regular commercial contracts. But energy technology companies participating in the U.S.-China program must negotiate licenses “in good faith” to ensure both nations benefit....

For a long time researchers figured the body had a tidy way of dealing with immune cells that might trigger diabetes, lupus or other autoimmune diseases—it must kill off these rogue cells early in life, before the immune system matures. New research published on May 19 in Immunity challenges this age-old thinking. Instead, the body seems to keep these so-called self-reactive T cells in benign form to fight potential invaders later....

Seven years ago, the approval of the breast cancer drug Herceptin created a stir both in the medical community and the popular press. It helped only about one in five women who took it. But those women turned out to have a mutation in their tumor cells that clearly differentiated them from non-responders. When California-based biotech giant Genentech began selling the drug along with a diagnostic test that could determine which patients would benefit from it, Herceptin became more than just another cancer drug....

Quantum physicist Mario Krenn remembers sitting in a café in Vienna in early 2016, poring over computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had found. MELVIN was a machine-learning algorithm Krenn had built, a kind of artificial intelligence. Its job was to mix and match the building blocks of standard quantum experiments and find solutions to new problems. And it did find many interesting ones. But there was one that made no sense....