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In December 2014, virologist Hon Ip received a shipment from a biologist in Washington state. It was a package containing nine dead birds. Ip’s job at the US Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, was to work out what had killed the birds. He was worried that it might be avian influenza. There had been an outbreak in South Korea earlier that year, and in December a novel version of avian influenza was detected in Canada, just 70 kilometres north of where the birds now in Ip’s possession had been found....

Research into a genetic engineering technology that can permanently change the traits of a population or even an entire species is progressing rapidly. The approach uses gene drives—genetic elements that pass from parents to unusually high numbers of their offspring, thereby spreading through populations rather quickly. Gene drives occur naturally but can also be engineered, and doing so could be a boon to humanity in many ways. The technology has the potential to stop insects from transmitting malaria and other terrible infections, enhance crop yields by altering pests that attack plants, render corals resistant to environmental stress, and keep invasive plants and animals from destroying ecosystems....

A teacher watches a fourth-grade student try to solve the equation 4 + 3 + 6 = _ + 6. The child pencils 13 in the blank. “How did you get that answer?” the teacher asks. “I added the 4 and the 3 and the 6 and got 13,” the child replies. But as the child is talking, he holds one hand under the 6 on the left and the other hand under the 6 on the right, indicating that the child has, at least implicitly, noticed the 6s on both sides of the equation....

According to eminent psychologist and emotion researcher Dr. Paul Ekman, lying comes in two flavors. First are “low stakes lies,” which almost all of us engage in; these are lies like, “Oh no, I never got your message,” or “So sorry I’ll be out today—it must have been something I ate.” By contrast, “high stakes lies”—”I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” or “I’m not in love with David Patraeus"—are, thankfully, less common....

Munch on fruits and vegetables, health officials implore–they will reduce the risk of chronic ills such as heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer. But large, long-term studies have mostly failed to corroborate initial signs of the cancer-fighting powers of produce. Recent studies suggest that any protective effect, especially for breast cancer, is weak or confined to subgroups of people. The 1970s and 1980s saw hundreds of reports documenting dips in cancer rates of relatively voracious veggie eaters....

Key Concepts Physics Liquids Geometry Engineering Introduction Can you think of a way to make water run uphill—without using electricity? The ancient Greeks discovered how to do just this! They developed a device called the Archimedes screw to lift water from one location to another. This tool is so useful that it is still in widespread use today. In this activity you will build your own hand-powered Archimedes screw from simple materials....

The sex hormones that bathe a fetus in the womb are some of the earliest and most potent determinates of gender differences in brain structure and social behavior. But other chemicals produced by the human body more subtly tweak the neural pathways underlying these distinctions. Endocannabinoids, natural compounds in the brain that excite the same receptors as marijuana, influence gender-specific behaviors, according to a study published in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA....

From Quanta Magazine (Find original story here) It starts like a textbook physics experiment, with a ball attached to a spring. If a photon strikes the ball, the impact sets it oscillating very gently. But there’s a catch. Before reaching the ball, the photon encounters a half-silvered mirror, which reflects half of the light that strikes it and allows the other half to pass through. What happens next depends on which of two extremely well-tested but conflicting theories is correct: quantum mechanics or Einstein’s theory of general relativity; these describe the small- and large-scale properties of the universe, respectively....

School nurses offer far more than just Band-Aids these days. As the prevalence of childhood conditions like asthma and diabetes have risen, nurses treat a wide range of problems. Still, only an estimated 40 percent of U.S. schools have a full-time nurse, according to the National Association of School Nurses. But now telemedicine — virtual doctor visits over video — is increasingly helping nurses do their jobs. Telemedicine programs are making inroads in schools, where a student referred to the nurse can be plopped in front of a screen and connected with a physician....

Museums/Exhibitions 1 The Cult of Saints From the Middle Ages to today, religious devotion to saints has had a profound impact on the culture of Europe and its intellectual descendants. The Getty looks back and around at this cult “through images created in its service.” Getty Center, Los Angeles April 25–July 16 www.getty.edu/ Snapshot Chronicles: Inventing the American Photo Album Snapshots became the visual cornerstone of countless personal narratives after the Kodak Brownie went on sale in 1900....

A new experimental processor combines many of the attributes needed for practical quantum computing, but a full-scale implementation of the powerful technology remains far off on the horizon. The demonstration quantum processor, described in a paper published online today in Science, was devised by a group of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colo. The device allows for the reliable application of multiple logic operations on a small set of quantum bits, or qubits, as well as the transport of information nearly a millimeter across the device by physically moving the qubits....

A new exploration of a legendary blue hole in the South China Sea has found that the underwater feature is the deepest known on Earth. According to Xinhua News, Dragon Hole, or Longdong, is 987 feet (300.89 meters) deep, far deeper than the previous record holder, Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas. (That blue hole measures about 663 feet, or 202 m, deep.) According to Xinhua, local legend holds that Dragon Hole is mentioned in the Ming dynasty novel “Journey to the West,” in which a supernatural monkey character gets a magical cudgel from an undersea kingdom ruled by a dragon....

Fossilized remains of a boa constrictor cousin that stretched 13 meters long and tipped the scales at more than a ton represent the largest snake ever found. The creature, dubbed Titanoboa cerrejonensis, lived some 60 million years ago in a neotropical rain forest in what is now northeastern Colombia. Identified on the basis of vertebrae recovered from an open-pit coal mine, Titanoboa is believed to have dined on crocodiles, among other creatures....

By Ann MooreCHARLESTON, W., Virginia (Reuters) - Tap water in Charleston, West Virginia, and nearby communities will remain unsafe in the coming days, an official said on Saturday as residents spent a third day unable to bathe, shower or drink from the faucet due to a chemical spill tainting the Elk River.As much as 5,000 gallons (18,927 liters) of industrial chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or Crude MCHM, leaked into the river on Thursday, state officials said....

Many of us may know the pleasures of binging Netflix comedies with a romantic partner or cuddling up to watch Game of Thrones every Sunday night. If you’ve ever been in a long-distance relationship, you and your sweetie may have even synced up a movie to watch “together” while chatting on the phone. Recent research suggests that watching TV shows and movies with a significant other is more than a fun and relaxing way to pass the time — it may have important benefits for your relationship....

The International Space Station (ISS) is taking a big step toward increased commercial use. NASA has picked Houston-based company Axiom Space to build at least one habitable private module that will be attached to the orbiting lab, the space agency announced Monday (Jan. 27). NASA hopes the Axiom module helps spur the growth of an off-Earth economy, one that eventually extends far beyond the ISS in both time and space. “Axiom’s work to develop a commercial destination in space is a critical step for NASA to meet its long-term needs for astronaut training, scientific research and technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement....

“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). ‘Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-by, feet!… Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears?’” The smart money says that it won’t be the folks from the Transportation Security Administration, who make two million travelers take their shoes off every day at airports in the U....

Most plans to tackle climate change revolve around cutting down on carbon dioxide, usually by reducing human emissions. But an unconventional new idea could actually slow the progress of global warming by putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—while removing a more potent planet-warming gas in the process. In a comment published Monday in the journal Nature Sustainability, a group of climate and chemistry experts said methane should be focused on more in the fight against climate change....

Voice recognition has started to feature prominently in intelligence investigations. Examples abound: When ISIS released the video of journalist James Foley being beheaded, experts from all over the world tried to identify the masked terrorist known as Jihadi John by analyzing the sound of his voice. Documents disclosed by Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency has analyzed and extracted the content of millions of phone conversations. Call centers at banks are using voice biometrics to authenticate users and to identify potential fraud....

Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. What doesn’t gotta happen is what an Alsatian man named Rémy Bricka likes to do—walk on water. In March [2000] Bricka began what he hoped would be a walk, on buoyant ski-length footgear, across the Pacific Ocean. Because it is there, presumably. Bricka already holds a place in the Guinness World Records by virtue of a previous tromp across the Atlantic in 1988. Normal journalistic practice would include an attempt to reach Bricka for a first-person account....