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▪ Neutron stars are born in the violence of a supernova, but one in a binary system may have formed when a white dwarf collapsed without exploding. A gentle birth would explain why the pair moves slowly. Physical Review Letters, February 11 ▪ In mice, inflammation permits prions to enter organs not normally infected. It bolsters the theory that people with an existing illness may be more likely to get infected with mad cow prions when those brain-destroying particles are encountered....

Nearly a half-million people, mostly from the world’s poorest countries, died over the past two decades from conditions associated with climate disasters, according to new findings from the nonprofit Germanwatch. In its annual “Global Climate Risk Index” report released this week, Germanwatch identified Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, as suffering the greatest impacts from such disasters from 2000 to 2019. It was followed by Myanmar in Southeast Asia and Haiti, just 700 nautical miles from the Florida Keys, and where tropical storms and other climate stressors threaten to compound long-standing political, economic, environmental and health crises affecting the country....

Researchers who helped to draft parts of the first United Nations environmental agreements nearly 30 years ago say that that low income countries are being massively let down in the current COP26 climate talks. The 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was attended by scientists and policymakers from rich and poor countries. “I was so hopeful,” says ecologist Zakri Abdul Hamid, who was the scientific adviser to Malaysia’s delegation, as he recalls how he “morphed from a straight-laced young academic” to a scientific policymaker....

The massive shortage and inequitable distribution of skilled mental health providers represents a key barrier to accessing services worldwide. The absence of these providers is one reason that most of the people affected—75 percent in many low-income countries—do not have access to the treatment they need. Research shows that non-mental-health specialists, such as social workers, general practitioners and teachers, can deliver high-quality care and support with appropriate supervision and guidance. Digital platforms may provide one approach to help rectify this crisis through increasing the availability of high-quality training to deliver mental health care....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The historic rainfall dumped by Hurricane Harvey has already led to deaths by drownings and the destruction of many homes. Houston’s drinking water system is being stressed by overflowing water reservoirs and dams, breached levees and possible problems at treatment plants and in the water distribution system. Failure of drinking water systems could lead to water shortages....

All governments lie and distort to advance their agendas. But it’s fair to regard the current moment as a singular age of unreality in recent United States politics. Most members of one party have embraced an explicitly fictional world, one in which the 2020 election was stolen by rampant election fraud by Democrats. Historian Timothy Snyder has called this fabricated conspiracy “the Big Lie.” The rise of such a flagrant mendacity is usually located very recently, in Donald Trump’s first election run or in the dawning of the social media age....

Chemistry World visited the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to meet some of the scientists who study superheavy metals. In this series of vidoes we ask them how they do it, how many more elements do they think they can make, and what led them to this field of study. They also tell us about their latest projects in which they will attempt to measure the masses of single atoms and perform chemistry on these short-lived elements....

U.S. The National Institutes of Health designated $41.5 million to study human placentas and the ways pollution, medications and diet influence how they develop. ANTARCTICA Researchers found traces of siloxane compounds, which are used in cosmetics and deodorants, in soil and plants on islands 75 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Snowfall may have pulled the compounds out of the atmosphere. RUSSIA The Russian Federal Space Agency says it will separate the nation’s modules from the International Space Station when the mega satellite’s mission ends in 2024 to construct a base of its own....

My guest on today’s podcast is Dr. Taylor Wallace. Taylor is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at George Mason University and CEO at the Think Healthy Group, Inc. His research and work focus on how we can use diet as a tool to prevent chronic disease. In this interview, Taylor and I discuss the current state of nutrition research and policy and what we can do to improve it....

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Long-awaited research results suggest methane leakage small. The rise of two particular techniques — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking—to extract natural gas from layers of shale buried deep beneath the earth has engendered broad concern and debate about the environmental damage fracking can bring.Key among these concerns has been the possibility that fracking causes contamination of surface waters and drinking water. From the data I have seen, it seems pretty clear that while not always the case, fracking operations have led to water contamination in many instances....

Medicine Heart Health Research is revealing the causes of heart disease and what can be done to tackle the world’s biggest killer November 3, 2021 — Herb Brody Medicine A Graphical Guide to Ischemic Heart Disease Globally, nine million people die each year from ischemic heart disease. Despite falling rates of heart disease, tackling it is still a stubborn challenge November 3, 2021 — Benjamin Plackett Medicine How a Child’s Heart Health Could Be Decided before Birth Lifestyle is a major contributor to heart disease in adults, but risk factors such as genetics and parental lifestyle can also have an effect...

The benefits of Obama-era rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions would greatly exceed the costs in the coming years, according to a new analysis. Regulations designed to control emissions from power plants, oil production and motor vehicles could together lead to close to $300 billion in net benefits per year by 2030, according to the report by Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. The paper comes as President Trump has sought to roll back any regulations his team says could hinder domestic energy development and is part of a broader shift in focus away from action on climate change throughout the administration....

What does it mean to be “open-minded?” Are some people genuinely more inclusive in their thinking, more expansive in how they process information? Experiments in personality psychology show that open-minded people do indeed process information in different ways and may literally see the world differently from the average person. The personality trait that best reflects the lay concept of open-mindedness is called “openness to experience,” or simply “openness.” Open people tend to be intellectually curious, creative and imaginative....

Voracious pests may be foes of individual plants, but they can benefit forests. A study in the humid rainforests of Belize shows that plant-killing fungi can help preserve diversity in such ecosystems. The study, published today by Nature, provides experimental support for a leading ecological hypothesis on why any given plant species does not take over in species-rich forests. That proposal — the ‘Janzen–Connell hypothesis’ — posits that as the population of a plant species grows, so does the rate at which specialized pests dine on it....

THE NONDIET PLAN Regarding Charlotte N. Markey’s article “Don’t Diet!” I would like to say, simply, “Exactly!” In December 2012 I weighed 200 pounds and was huffing and puffing when walking my steeply sloped property. My significant other recommended I monitor what I ate, so I set up a spreadsheet and recorded everything, changing nothing intentionally: snacking, eating out whenever I felt the urge, having a big steak now and then....

“Is what you’re doing going to change the world?” asked Larry Page, Google’s co-founder. “If not, maybe you should do something else.” I was at the annual Sci Foo Camp hosted by Nature Publishing Group (Scientific American’s parent), the O’Reilly Media Group and Google on its Mountain View, Calif., campus. At this “unconference,” attendees—scien­tists and those with connections to science—created sessions on the spot, making for an energizing and free­wheeling exchange over a weekend....

Ian Rockett has spent much of his career working closely with coroners and medical examiners researching the epidemiology of suicide. One of the questions the West Virginia University investigator has pondered over many years in the field is why the rate of suicide among Black people in the U.S. is recorded as a third of that among white people. In recent years, Rockett’s research has started to provide some answers, and it illustrates the extent to which medical examiners and coroners have lacked sufficient data to accurately determine causes of death....

Hour after hour, year after year, Santiago Ramón y Cajal sat alone in his home laboratory, head bowed and back hunched, his black eyes staring down the barrel of a microscope, the sole object tethering him to the outside world. His wide forehead and aquiline nose gave him the look of a distinguished, almost regal, gentleman, although the crown of his head was as bald as a monk’s. He had only a crowd of glass bottles for an audience, some short and stout, some tall and thin, stopped with cork and filled with white powders and colored liquids; the other chairs, piled high with journals and textbooks, left no room for anyone else to sit....

Our minds are built to wander, according to a new study that argues we have a network of brain regions dedicated to meandering thoughts that turns off and on depending on how focused we need to be to complete different tasks. Previous studies have shown that this “default” network, which is composed of at least seven separate brain regions, kicks in anytime we are at rest—say, passively taking in a TV show or a sunset....