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For decades computer scientists have strived to build machines that can calculate faster than the human brain and store more information. The contraptions have won. The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the K from Fujitsu, computes four times faster and holds 10 times as much data. And of course, many more bits are coursing through the Internet at any moment. Yet the Internet’s servers worldwide would fill a small city, and the K sucks up enough electricity to power 10,000 homes....

A massive distributed computing network known as the Einstein@Home project has made its second big celestial find in the past six months—a pulsar 15 kilometers in diameter located more than 30,000 light years from Earth. Not a bad track record for a network that runs on processing power donated from computers worldwide. The finding represents one of many discoveries that Einstein@Home’s creator expects in the coming years. Einstein@Home is a project that allows computer users (whether individuals or organizations) to contribute their PCs’ unused computing power to the greater cause of helping scientists search for pulsars, which are spinning neutron stars (aka collapsed, super-dense stars) that emit pulses of radio waves, x-rays or gamma rays....

A haze of radiation at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy that appears in sky maps taken by two spacecraft at two different wavelengths likely results from a population of high-energy electrons, according to a new analysis of gamma rays in the galaxy. Curiously, some researchers maintain, those electrons are not readily explained by known astrophysical processes—and work is under way to determine if dark matter particles might be responsible....

Hardly anyone has heard of them, but millions of pounds of glymes are used every year to make household products throughout the United States. Now time is running out for glymes – at least when it comes to new uses in consumer products. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in July that it plans to clamp down on these little known ingredients used by a broad array of industries. Used mostly as solvents, glymes are found in lithium batteries, inkjet cartridges, brake fluid, paints and carpet cleaners....

Against the persisting backdrop of COVID-19, the killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests against police brutality, definitions of “health care” have become muddled in crisis and chaos. Coronavirus and state-sanctioned violence have collapsed the role of “physician” to move beyond medicine and include public health, public safety and politics. Lines between medicine and politics have blurred in the past, often in academic medicine and in medical schools, like the American College of Physicians’ paper against gun violence, or the #ThisIsMyLane hashtag, and medical students’ “die-ins” in the 2014 Black Lives Matter demonstrations....

Astronomers are puzzling over how some stars—so-called hypervelocity stars—can surpass the Milky Way’s speed limits, moving fast enough to escape our galaxy entirely. The first such galactic outcast was discovered in 2005, whizzing along at about three million kilometers per hour—fast enough to fly from New York City to Los Angeles in less than five seconds. Its path, like that of many other hypervelocity stars that were subsequently found, traced back to the vicinity of a four-million-solar-mass black hole lurking at the galactic center—a supermassive monster with more than enough heft to hurl a star at such high velocity....

As we experience the world, our brain manages to continually absorb new information even as it calls up memories and thoughts from within. The two processes seem to happen simultaneously. Thus, we are able to drive to the grocery store, recalling a familiar route, while processing fresh input about road conditions and that pedestrian who suddenly darted across the street. Now a team at the University of Texas at Austin has found evidence that in the brain’s spatial system, this balancing act is accomplished via distinct electrical frequencies....

The old adage that “space is hard” is usually said whenever a spacecraft is lost because of a miscalculation, malfunction or fatal encounter with the harsh extremes of an off-world environment. But the villain putting a thorn in NASA’s side right now is nothing more than some seemingly innocuous Martian soil. When the space agency’s InSight mission landed on Mars in November 2018, it carried instruments meant to create a detailed picture of the planet’s innards for the very first time....

New York is 2,000 pages closer to becoming the first fossil fuels-rich state in the U.S. to ban fracking indefinitely because of the climate-changing methane it could emit and the earthquakes, air pollution and water contamination it could cause. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in December that fracking, short for the natural gas extraction process called hydraulic fracturing, would be banned in New York, where the energy-rich Marcellus shale holds up to 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas....

Have you ever noticed that if a teenager has been given $50 to buy a $20 item, no money comes back? Some other item was just so essential… In this puzzle, we provide the teenager with a good excuse. Artiste and street vendor Claude sells beautiful handmade items for $100 or less but refuses to give change. You have no cash, but you have three checks. You will make them out in advance to Claude in whole dollar amounts....

Data from population surveys in the United States challenge public fears that psychedelic drugs such as LSD can lead to psychosis and other mental-health conditions and to increased risk of suicide, two studies have found. In the first study, clinical psychologists Pål-Ørjan Johansen and Teri Suzanne Krebs, both at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, scoured data from the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual random sample of the general population, and analysed answers from more than 135,000 people who took part in surveys from 2008 to 2011....

For years he was tortured by a horrifying image of 9/11: elevator doors at the World Trade Center slide open, and burning people stumble out; screams fill the area. Except, he was not at the World Trade Center that day. A clinical psychologist, he had treated several patients who were there and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result, unable to rid themselves of the terrifying memories. Over the course of long, tortured conversations, these memories etched themselves indelibly into his own mind....

Nature is a master at constructing biological machines and circuits, including the ones that maintain the body’s internal clock, copy genes or help cells move. Now human engineers are learning to design and synthesize novel biochemical devices such as nanoscale factories, biological circuits and even molecular computers. This work has so far relied mostly on using existing cellular components (enzymes, for example), but some researchers prefer to start from scratch. For these “molecular programmers,” DNA is the coding language of choice, and crafting circuits and machines to rival those found in nature is the ultimate goal....

By Alister Doyle and Nina ChestneyWARSAW (Reuters) - Almost 200 nations kept a plan to reach a new U.N. climate pact in 2015 alive on Saturday when rich and poor countries reached a compromise on sharing out the efforts needed to slow global warming.A two-week negotiation in Warsaw had been due to end on Friday, but was blocked over a timetable for the first U.N. climate accord that would set greenhouse gas emissions requirements for all nations....

When Susie Talevski sued the agency that managed her elderly father’s care before he died, she hoped to get justice for her family. She did not expect the case would grow into a national bellwether. A ruling against her could strip millions of vulnerable Americans of their power to hold states accountable when they do not receive benefits allowed by law. “This case has taken on, really, a life of its own way beyond what I could have foreseen,” said Talevski, a resident of Valparaiso, Indiana....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. An estimated 1 in 9 women experience symptoms of postpartum depression. These symptoms—including mood swings, fatigue and reduced interest in activities—can make it difficult for mothers to bond with their newborns. Early relationships between mothers and their infants can influence health across the lifespan, for better or worse. For example, adults who report more household dysfunction and abuse during their childhood are more likely to suffer disease as adults....

An edited transcript of the interview follows. Horgan: Neuroscientist Christof Koch has suggested that we get brain implants to keep up with machines. Does that strike you as a good idea? Schneider: It depends upon the larger social and political setting. Several large research projects are currently trying to put AI inside the brain and peripheral nervous system. They aim to hook you to the cloud without the intermediary of a keyboard....

Around 2 p.m. on a perfect summer afternoon in 2014, the clinicians arrived at Maki Gboro’s home in Denver, Colorado, to test his 18-month-old son Baraka for autism. The family had only recently moved to the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo: Gboro came first, in 2009. His wife Odile Nabunyi arrived in 2013 with their two sons. They later had a third child, but at the time, Baraka was the youngest....

“Devilfish” catfish, also called suckermouths, are native to South America but have spread to four other continents. These freshwater invaders outcompete native species and eat their eggs, even damaging fisheries. But in Scientific Reports, researchers in Mexico showed the pests could be unexpectedly useful: when ground into a paste, they can help filter ceramics industry wastewater. The ceramic tile sector alone produces at least 16 billion square meters of product a year....

It is well known that a high salt diet leads to high blood pressure, a risk factor for an array of health problems, including heart disease and stroke. But over the last decade, studies across human populations have reported the association between salt intake and stroke irrespective of high blood pressure and risk of heart disease, suggesting a missing link between salt intake and brain health. Interestingly, there is a growing body of work showing that there is communication between the gut and brain, now commonly dubbed the gut–brain axis....