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Experts remain perplexed about what is causing the nationwide outbreak of mysterious vaping-related lung disease that has affected hundreds and killed at least six people. And even the nature of the disease itself is confounding clinicians and public health officials. The only certainty, they say, is that people should not be vaping anything until they figure it out. The sigh of relief was almost audible after news emerged in early September of a named culprit: vitamin E acetate....

Millions are without power in Florida after Irma—one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record—swept through the state this weekend before weakening to a tropical storm. It caused its fair share of damage, but Florida’s most ominous fears did not play out; extremely vulnerable eastern coastal areas, including Miami, were spared the worst. But meteorologist and disaster risk expert Stephen Strader says the state is still in a very dangerous position, due to intense population growth and overdevelopment of its low-lying coastal zones....

He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter,” 1844 Sherlock Holmes’s predecessor and Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration, detective C. Auguste Dupin, conjured by Poe, used his powers of ratiocination to retrieve a stolen letter after two exhaustive police searches had failed....

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazineThe China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) in Beijing has taken the lead among the country’s publishers in trying to clamp down on academic misconduct. This month, it issued a declaration from the 1,050 journals it oversees – part of increasingly aggressive nationwide efforts to purge China’s corpulent scientific publishing industry and bring its home-grown journals, in both English and Chinese, up to international standards....

Key Concepts Physics Materials Compression Geology Introduction Summer is a nice time to take a stroll at the beach and walk barefoot along the shoreline. While doing that, have you ever looked at your footprints in the wet sand? If so, you might have noticed that with every step it looks like the sand around your feet dries out. Why is that? These dry footprints are caused by the pressure of your feet....

One of the most infamous near-Earth asteroids is held together by forces other than just gravity and friction. Researchers have found that asteroid (29075) 1950 DA is a loose blob of particles that clot together much as Moon dust collects on astronauts’ spacesuits. Any mission to divert an asteroid on a collision course with Earth would need to take these newfound cohesive forces into account, suggest the findings, published in Nature on August 14....

Dear EarthTalk: Are there natural headache remedies that can get me off of Tylenol, Advil and other medicines whose side effects can be as bad as or worse than the pain that led me to use them? – Jan Levinson, Portland, ME Many of us may be too dependent on over-the-counter painkillers to treat the occasional headache, especially given the side effects of such drugs. Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) can increase the risk of heart and circulation problems—including heart attack and stroke—and is also tough on the digestive tract....

By Toru Hanai and Elaine Lies KORIYAMA, Japan (Reuters) - Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, barely know what it’s like to play outside – fear of radiation has kept them in doors for much of their short lives. Though the strict safety limits for outdoor activity set after multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011 have now been eased, parental worries and ingrained habit mean many children still stay inside....

People with ovarian cancer who receive high-dose vitamin C injections are less likely to report toxic side effects from chemotherapy than people who had chemotherapy alone, according to the results of a small clinical trial. The study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, was too small to assess whether the combination of chemotherapy and vitamin C combats cancer better than chemotherapy alone. But accompanying work in mice suggests that the two treatments could be complementary....

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazineSeventeen and a half billion kilometers from Earth, mankind’s most distant probe seems to be on the edge of interstellar space.The Voyager 1 spacecraft is at the limit of the ‘heliosheath’, where particles streaming from the Sun clash with the gases of the galaxy. Contrary to scientists’ expectation of a sharp, violent edge, the boundary seems to be a tepid place, where the solar wind mingles with extrasolar particles....

You’re out to dinner at a restaurant that just recently opened. Steamed mussels or steamed calamari? Three cheese ravioli or eggplant parmesan? Strawberry cheesecake or chocolate mousse? With so many good choices, how to decide? A series of studies led by psychologist Daniel Casasanto suggests that one thing that may shape our choice is the side of the menu an item appears on. Specifically, Casasanto and his team have shown that for left-handers, the left side of any space connotes positive qualities such as goodness, niceness, and smartness....

Something is disturbing the famed, majestic rings of Saturn as well as the lesser-known rings around Jupiter. The ring systems, which appear at first glance to be planar, wafer-thin bands of ice and dust, have on closer examination been found to be rippled, like a corrugated tin roof. The culprit in both cases appears to be cometary debris strikes that tilted the rings, a tilt that over the years became twisted up into a spiral pattern of ripples within the rings....

Under a slate-gray sky, Mono Lake in eastern California seems to be dying as it gradually evaporates to reveal strange, towering rock formations hidden for hundreds, even thousands of years. The structures, called tufa, are spires of calcium carbonate formed long ago when calcium-bearing fresh water bubbled up into the alkaline lake rich in carbonates. Scientists think this evaporating basin paints a picture akin to what may have existed on Mars about four billion years ago, as some planet-wide catastrophe began desiccating Martian lakes, rivers and streams—perhaps leaving behind calcium carbonate formations similar to those at Mono Lake....

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spends roughly $6 million per year to sample carbon dioxide, methane and nearly 20 other gases using a global network of ground stations, tall towers and aircraft. But faced with shrinking budgets and an uncertain fiscal future, NOAA has stopped measuring greenhouse gas levels at a dozen ground stations, eliminated some aircraft monitoring and cut the frequency of remaining measurements in half. The agency scrapped plans to expand its network of tall towers and is now moving to shut down some of the seven existing sites....

For a decade, neurologists have produced studies that suggest that adults who regularly challenge their brains in later life succumb to dementia less often, less severely and at older ages than seniors who are intellectually lazy. The mature brain can grow new neural connections and strengthen weak ones, if exercised. As with muscles, “use it or lose it” applies. A new study, however, suggests that mental activity in young adulthood also helps keep dementia at bay later....

By Daniel CresseyGuidelines for medical teams responding to catastrophes such as the Haiti earthquake may be causing doctors to miss a crucial set of deadly bacteria.According to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) rapid-response team, a large proportion of the wounds treated at their field hospital in Haiti were infected with Gram-negative pathogens. These bacteria are largely ignored in current recommendations on drug treatment for disaster victims.Staining with the dye crystal violet is widely used to differentiate bacteria into two types – Gram-positive and Gram-negative – in a procedure developed in the nineteenth century by Hans Christian Gram....

For Africa, the epicenter of the world’s malaria scourge, a historic break­through in health and economic development is now within reach. A combination of new technologies, new methods of disease control and rising public awareness is poised to bring malaria deaths down by 90 percent or more—if we follow through. Efforts at malaria control in the 1950s and 1960s successfully used the insecticide DDT and the medicine chloroquine to eliminate the disease in many temperate and subtropical regions....

The vast majority of microbes that live in and on our bodies do not put our health at risk, but many can cause problems if their populations grow out of control. So the immune system keeps their numbers in check, culling resident bacteria here and there. A few microbial species have found ways to sabotage the immune system and skew the balance of power in their favor. Take Porphyromonas gingivalis, a mouth-dwelling bacterium that has long been the prime suspect behind gum disease....

Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space. “This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible,” said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. “From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension....

A diamond that formed deep in the earth’s mantle contains a mineral never seen before in nature. The discovery is a rare glimpse into the deep mantle and may help reveal new information about the structure of the planet at depths of more than 660 kilometers. This, in turn, can help geologists better understand how the mantle controls the earth’s plate tectonics. The mineral, calcium silicate perovskite, only forms under the incredibly high pressures that occur deep in the earth....