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NANTES, France—Asteroids are often considered debris, the scraps and odd lumps that went unused in the forming of the planets. But when it comes to Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in our solar system, Chris Russell hardly considers the rock a mere castoff. “I’ve started calling it the smallest terrestrial planet,” said Russell, the principal investigator for NASA’s Dawn mission, which sent a spacecraft into orbit at Vesta in July....

Old ceremonial masks and knives are popular symbols of pre-Hispanic Peruvian culture. Examples adorn the covers of books on Peru and serve as emblems for some Peruvian institutions. These precious metal artifacts are often attributed, even by knowledgeable persons, to the Incas or to their coastal rivals, the Chimú. Yet many of them are not Incan or Chimú at all: they were created much earlier by the Sicán culture, which was centered in the Lambayeque region of northern Peru and flourished from the ninth to the 14th centuries....

Editor’s Note (12/21/21): This article is being showcased in a special collection about equity in health care that was made possible by the support of Takeda Pharmaceuticals. The article was published independently and without sponsorship. As physicians from three distinct racial minorities, our lives are defined by an innate tension. On one hand, we experience the privilege of being highly educated professionals, often with power dynamics and societal respect on our side....

It afflicts every creature on this planet, and everyone dreams of an antidote. But even after decades of research, aging largely remains a mystery. Now new research findings suggest there is a good reason for this impasse: scientists may have been thinking about the causes of aging all wrong. Instead of being the result of an accumulation of genetic and cellular damage, new evidence suggests that aging may occur when genetic programs for development go awry....

I’m currently getting over a cold. In fact, as I write this I have a warm drink and a box of tissues right beside my laptop. It isn’t a bad cold (or even a man cold), it’s just enough to annoy me, interrupt my sleep, and cause me to miss a few workouts. It’s my off-season (I’m not training for any events or races), so it isn’t a big deal. But when it happens in the spring or mid-summer, I am not so cavalier about missing training sessions....

Everything good in life is illegal, immoral or fattening—or so the saying goes. A few centuries ago religious authorities sought to codify that sentiment into a handy list, which we know today as the seven deadly sins. In this special issue devoted to them, we explore how desires take shape and influence our thoughts, alongside the scientific insights that can help us meet our goals. We often think of temptations as the ruin of diets, oaths and ambitions, yet their pull is a natural part of life....

Editor’s Note (11/4/20): This story is being republished to correspond with the peer-reviewed publication of the research it discusses. In recent weeks, astronomers have been monitoring strange, high-energy emissions from the corpse of a long-dead star some 30,000 light-years away. Within the emissions, they found something surprising: a powerful blast of radio waves that lasted mere milliseconds. The blast was, in fact, the brightest outburst ever seen from this star or any of its kind—immensely magnetic neutron stars known as magnetars....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

For almost a decade, cleaning rituals ruled Kathrine’s life. The middle-aged resident of Bergen, a coastal town in the southern tip of Norway, was consumed by a fear of germs and contamination that led to endless cycles of tidying, vacuuming and washing. “I realized that I was facing a catastrophe,” Kathrine Mydland-aas, now 41, recalls. “I couldn’t help the kids with homework, couldn’t make dinner for them, couldn’t give them hugs....

Fifty years ago Monday (Feb. 20), John Glenn made history by circling the Earth three times. He wasn’t the first person in space, nor the first American. He wasn’t even the first person to orbit the planet. But Glenn’s five-hour flight onboard Friendship 7 set him apart from the space travelers who launched before him and established a lasting legacy that outshone many of those who followed. Not that Glenn understands the fascination or can explain why....

By Hilary Russ(Reuters) - A year after Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc across the eastern United States, only a fraction of the aid money earmarked for recovery has been used, in what some claim is a painfully slow and opaque process.Only $5.2 billion of the pledged $47.9 billion had been tapped by cities and states by the end of August, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And tracking those funds has been complicated, lawmakers said....

By analyzing dog DNA from archaeological remains, researchers last week pinned down the evolutionary history of domesticated dogs in North America. Dogs are thought to have first populated the Americas alongside humans via the Bering Land Bridge more than 10,000 years ago. These early arrivals disappeared following the introduction of European breeds, leaving little genetic trace among modern dogs, according to the new study. But the researchers found a relative of America’s original dogs that persists in a bizarre form: a sexually transmitted cancer descended from the tumor of single dog that lived thousands of years ago....

What if you stopped learning after graduation? It sounds stultifying, but that is how most machine-learning systems are trained. They master a task once and then are deployed. But some computer scientists are now developing artificial intelligence that learns and adapts continuously, much like the human brain. Machine-learning algorithms often take the form of a neural network, a large set of simple computing elements, or neurons, that communicate via connections between them that vary in strength, or “weight....

Lava began to flow today from Chile’s Chaitén volcano, chasing remaining residents out of a nearby town and putting the government of the affected Palena Province on high alert. The country had already been on edge following the volcano’s initial eruption this past weekend, spewing hot ash, gas and smoke into the air for several days, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,200 residents and leading to the death of a 92-year-old woman who suffered a heart attack aboard a navy boat as she was being taken to Puerto Montt, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of the volcano....

Have you ever heard a song when none was playing, clearly seen someone’s face when no one was there or felt the presence of a person, only to turn around to an empty room? If you’ve consumed a lot of caffeine—the equivalent to seven cups of coffee—you are three times more likely to hear voices than if you had kept your caffeine intake to less than a cup of coffee, according to psychologists at the University of Durham in England....

Most people in the poorest countries will need to wait another two years before they are vaccinated against COVID-19, researchers have told Nature. Around 11 billion doses are needed to fully vaccinate 70% of the world’s population against COVID-19. As of 4 July, 3.2 billion doses had been administered. At the current vaccination rate, this will increase to around six billion doses by the end of the year, researchers from the International Monetary Fund, based in Washington DC, project....

An analysis of whole-genome sequences from more than 5,000 people has unearthed 18 new candidate genes for autism. The study, the largest yet of its kind, was published this week in Nature Neuroscience. The new work identified 61 genes associated with autism, 43 of which turned up in previous studies. An independent study published last month looked at several autism genes and made a strong case for three of the new genes2....

BP’s efforts to drill relief wells are generally viewed as the company’s best, and perhaps only, chance to plug the Macondo 252 well gushing thousands of barrels of oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico each day for the past month and a half. With the first relief well nearly two months away, however, BP has wiped a bit of sweat from its collective brow as the lower marine riser package (LMRP) cap installed June 3 has begun collecting an increasing amount of oil each day, according to the company....

The COVID-19 pandemic has been met with an unparalleled response by the global scientific community and its stakeholders, who have developed vaccines and therapeutic antibodies in an unprecedented timescale. These new therapies for preventing and treating COVID-19 have altered the course of the pandemic to an extent that has never before been seen for an infectious disease in terms of the numbers of lives saved, with vaccines alone being estimated to have helped to save 19....

Stories abound about animals who have taken a nip—or 10. In 2004, Reuters reported that a black bear had passed out at the Baker Lake Resort in Washington State after binging on beer. Last October the Associated Press recounted a tale of six Indian elephants stumbling around and uprooting a utility pole, electrocuting themselves, after guzzling a homemade rice brew in the northeastern state of Meghalaya. Even Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man that monkeys have a “strong taste” for “spirituous liquors” and beer....