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BOULDER, Colo. – For western Colorado ranchers, the decision to sell cattle during tough times can hinge on a flower. Local cattle have developed immunity against the poisonous larkspur that live among more edible grasses. So a rancher culling a herd he can’t afford to feed faces a problem restocking once economics improve: The replacements may die if they binge on the purple and pink larkspur. That’s the problem confronting Carlyle Currier, who owns a 4,000-acre ranch in Molina, Colo....

Just like trees, people and stars, galaxies have life cycles. A galaxy is born when enough gas and stars coalesce to form a coherent structure—perhaps it starts as one cloud of gas and slowly gathers mass, or maybe it builds up from the collision of two or more clouds. Either way, once formed, a galaxy spends its lifetime making stars, using its reservoirs of gas to create tiny furnaces where nuclear fusion burns elements to release light and energy....

Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier holds a dubious honor—it is currently the largest Antarctic contributor to global sea-level rise, thanks to the enormous amount of ice it has lost in recent decades. Now scientists have identified the likely cause of some of the glacier’s most spectacular calving events, which have birthed icebergs several times the size of Manhattan. The culprit: submerged rock ridges that poke up high enough to occasionally hit the bottom of the glacier....

The much-anticipated second volume of the National Climate Assessment presents a stark warning about the country’s future if climate change progresses unchecked: dwindling water supplies, agricultural declines, infectious disease outbreaks, destructive sea-level rise, an increase in certain natural disasters and billions of dollars in economic losses, to name just a few consequences. But just as striking is the federal report’s description of the climate impacts that have already occurred in the United States....

Homicide is a leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 45, and there are there are dozens of nonfatal assaults for every single homicide. While guns are not the only vector accounting for these deaths and injuries, they are among the most harmful. There are more than 300 gun-related incidents each day. The disparate burden of violence is carried by communities of color. Black Americans between the age of 15 and 45 are more likely to die from homicide than any other cause....

For several decades, the multibillion-dollar antidepressant industry has pointed to imbalances in the neurochemical serotonin as the cause of depression. But research has yet to find convincing evidence that serotonin imbalances represent the indisputable cause of depression, and despite the unprecedented number of pharmacological treatment options available today, depression rates are higher than ever. If Big Pharma does not have a cure for depression, shouldn’t we pursue a fresh approach to this vexing problem?...

Avoiding people is the top priority of wildebeests and zebras making their annual migration across Africa’s Serengeti-Mara, finds a new study that aims to understand how animals make decisions as they travel across the ecosystem. With the help of 40 GPS and cellphone-outfitted animals over the past decade, researchers discovered that herds are willing to avoid food if it means escaping the detection of humans. Wildebeests and zebras alike went farther out of their way to dodge people than to avoid even animal predators like hyenas or lions—decisions that appear to be profoundly affecting their migration patterns....

Dear EarthTalk: A fisherman friend of mine told me that trout populations in the interior West of the U.S. are already shrinking due to global warming. Is this true? And what is the long term prognosis for the trout? —Jon Klein, Portsmouth, N.H. Most scientists agree that the effects of global warming are starting to show up all around the world in many forms. Throughout America’s Rocky Mountain West, rivers and streams are getting hotter and drier, presenting new challenges for trout already struggling with habitat fragmentation and pollution....

“The man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of this sentence?” These were the words of Sherlock Holmes in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” analyzing a note from a client, unmasking the King of Bohemia incognito, and incidentally, establishing himself as a brilliant literary analyst. It is impossible to keep a secret from the legendary Sherlock Holmes, who can read an ocean from a drop of water....

A vast body of research suggests that sugar substitutes, despite having far fewer calories than sugar itself, can wreak various forms of metabolic havoc such as upping diabetes risk and—perhaps paradoxically—causing weight gain in the long term. A new study published Tuesday in Cell Metabolism suggests that artificial sweeteners mimic a starvation state in the brain, causing some organisms to seek energy by eating more food. In the study—a collaboration between researchers from the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Center and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research—fruit flies were fed either a diet of yeast and sucrose or one with the synthetic sweetener sucralose, used in a variety of low-calorie foods....

In animal studies in several different species, we have produced irreversible nerve damage in the ear with two hours of continuous exposure to noise at 100 to 104 decibels (dB). There is every reason to believe that human ears are just as sensitive. Most daily exposures in our lives do not continue for that long. Nevertheless, it is prudent to avoid unprotected exposure to any sounds in excess of 100 dB....

In the United States, 2011 was a year when weather seemed to ping-pong between extremes. A historic drought struck Texas while floods devastated communities along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and Hurricane Irene swamped the East Coast. Swarms of tornadoes rolled through the center of the country, and record-setting wildfires blazed in the Southwest. But while 2011’s litany of extreme weather was notable, it was “not unique” – at least not in recent experience, according to a new analysis published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change....

The chorus of the theme song for the movie Fame, performed by actress Irene Cara, includes the line “I’m gonna live forever.” Cara was, of course, singing about the posthumous longevity that fame can confer. But a literal expression of this hubris resonates in some corners of the world—especially in the technology industry. In Silicon Valley, immortality is sometimes elevated to the status of a corporeal goal. Plenty of big names in big tech have sunk funding into ventures to solve the problem of death as if it were just an upgrade to your smartphone’s operating system....

For most creatures, procreation is an emotionally uncomplicated affair. In humans, however, it has a tricky accomplice: romantic love, capable of catapulting us to bliss or consigning us to utmost despair. Yet capricious though it may seem, love is likely to be an adaptive trait, one that arose early in the evolution of our lineage. Two of the hallmarks of human evolution—upright walking and large brains—may have favored the emergence of love, according to a theory advanced by anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University....

Hidden within the world we see are many others we cannot. Every year scientists, photographers and hobbyists capture enchanting stories that secretly unfold among seemingly mundane objects in the “microenvironment” for the annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition. Out of this year’s 2,000-plus photo entries from 88 countries, Nikon recently announced the top 20 winners, along with 10 honorable mentions and 58 images of distinction. Participants could submit photographs of anything from green algae to credit cards, as long as they were taken with some form of light microscope such as phase contrast, confocal or fluorescence....

Could a seemingly simple clear plastic bag—the kind that you load your fruits and vegetables into at the supermarket—actually be as strong as steel? It could if it was made from a new composite plastic that blends the strength of nanoparticles with the pliancy of a water-soluble polymer. Although it is no secret that nanotubes, nanosheets and nanorods are incredibly strong when combined in small numbers, larger materials made out of these microscopic building blocks cannot utilize much of that strength because the links between them are weak....

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow.” So wrote Ursula K. Le Guin in her 1968 young-adult fantasy, A Wizard of Earthsea. Le Guin’s poetic observation concerned the moral ambiguities of magic but it also eloquently describes the centuries-old technological quest to banish darkness and one of its greatest advances: the invention of the electric lightbulb. There are undeniable bright sides to electric lighting. It is hard to work, travel or read in the dark, but with the flip of a switch the problem disappears....

ORION BASICS NASA and Lockheed Martin are developing a space transport system that, by the year 2020, will convey humans to and from the moon. The Orion vehicle—which contains a pressurized capsule, life-support systems and a propulsion engine—serves as one of the linchpins of the Constellation program, which also includes launch boosters and support modules. Although the Constellation-Orion program in some ways resembles the 1960s-era Apollo moon program, it will be capable of conducting other manned and unmanned missions besides lunar excursions, including servicing the space station and perhaps traveling to the planet Mars....

If the first six Star Wars movies only whetted your appetite for whirling lightsaber duels and thickets of blaster fire, then you’re in for a treat starting Friday, August 15. That’s when Star Wars: The Clone Wars—the first animated installment of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars saga—opens in theaters. Watch as Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu and their other Jedi pals, backed by an army of cloned soldiers, takes on a droid army led by General Grievous and Sith Lord Count Dooku....

Researchers have offered a new explanation for an unprecedented stellar explosion caught in the act earlier this year. A team of astronomers announced in May that they had witnessed the initial flash of x-rays of supernova 2008D, spotted in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770 some 90 million light-years away. Their take: that it confirmed the long-standing x-ray breakout model of supernovae, in which the shock wave sent out from the core of a collapsing star sheds x-rays when it reaches the star’s surface....