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The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. It is still not clear how the experience of being bullied in childhood translates into long-lasting health problems. A new US study has found that victims of bullying have high levels of a protein in their bloodstream that is associated with fighting off an infection – even into early adulthood. This finding may help understand further the association between childhood bullying victimisation and poor health outcomes later....

Hundreds of Californians who were forcibly sterilized based on eugenics laws in the last century might still be alive and deserve an apology and financial reparations, a new study concludes. In a Sacramento government office, historian and lead author Alexandra Minna Stern stumbled across a filing cabinet containing about 20,000 recommendations for eugenics-motivated sterilizations dating from 1919 through 1952. Stern, a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her colleagues used the documents and actuarial tables to calculate that as many as 831 men, women and children slated for sterilization could still be alive and would be on average almost 88 years old....

Measles has been all but eradicated in the developed world, but it still claims more than 160,000 lives in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, has been hit hard in the past few years. A 2009 outbreak in Zimbabwe, for instance, afflicted 8,000 people and killed 517. Some public health workers blame lax vaccination efforts, but the real culprit may be HIV. Studies show that infants with HIV do not respond well to the measles vaccine even when given a second dose at nine months, as the World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends....

If you’re reading this at a desk, do me a favor. Grab a pen or pencil and hold the end between your teeth so it doesn’t touch your lips. As you read on, stay that way—science suggests you’ll find this article more amusing if you do. Why? Notice that holding a pencil in this manner puts your face in the shape of a smile. And research in psychology says that the things we do—smiling at a joke, giving a gift to a friend, or even running from a bear—influence how we feel....

Melissa and J.J. met on the finish line of an obstacle course race. “We were both winded and covered in mud yet we still managed to flirt. It felt weirdly authentic,” Melissa told me in our first psychotherapy session. “He was into triathlons and obstacle courses like I was. We had very similar lifestyles.” Melissa and J.J. moved in together after eight months. A year and a half into the relationship, Melissa began raising the issue of marriage....

John Holdren has heard the old joke a million times: fusion energy is 30 years away—and always will be. Despite the broken promises, Holdren, who early in his career worked as a physicist on fusion power, believes passionately that fusion research has been worth the billions spent over the past few decades—and that the work should continue. In December, Scientific American talked with Holdren, outgoing director of the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy, to discuss the Obama administration’s science legacy....

When a forest loses resilience, it means it’s gradually losing its ability to bounce back after fires, droughts, logging and other disruptive events, said the study, published on July 13 in Nature. Past a certain point, some forests may approach a kind of tipping point — a threshold that launches them into a rapid decline. And beyond that, some studies suggest, a forest may not be able to fully recover at all....

By Amber Dance of Nature magazineThose wanting to raise awareness about a rare disease will be able to take advantage of an initiative being launched later this year: a website that connects research projects with members of the public who can donate just a few dollars to help to develop cures.The plan, called the Global Genes Fund, will “democratize the research proposal game”, says Irwin Feller, an emeritus professor of the economics of science and technology at Pennsylvania State University in University Park....

Two new papers point to eventual complete loss of glaciers, but it will take centuries or more to occur. Many news outlets have covered the two new papers on the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet: see for examplehere, here, here, here and here. I think the papers will prove to be important, but a good deal of the media coverage leaves something to be desired. Destabilization of the Ice Sheet in West Antarctica The two papers both provide evidence of the environmental costs — in this case in the form of melting glaciers — wrought by the slow rise in global temperatures over the past century....

With the invention of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, it is no longer far-fetched to imagine robots helping us carry out daily chores—not to mention more complex tasks such as assisting surgery. But nobody wants an unpleasant robot in his or her life—any more than one wants to be saddled with a disgruntled human helper. Enter robots with personality, capable of developing emotional relationships with humans. Sound futuristic? Well, the future could be here sooner than you think....

In an era when everyone seems to be tracking their daily 10,000 steps with a Fitbit, measuring calories with MyFitnessPal and monitoring fertility with apps like Glow, it’s easy to get hung up on numbers. Is my body mass index sitting nicely below 25? Is my blood pressure normal for my age? Is my blood level of that nasty LDL cholesterol in check—say, below 100 mg/dL? But this health-by-the-numbers approach has its limits and might even lead you astray....

When science teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution, in 1925, evolution was already recognized by science as the explanation for all of life on Earth. That knowledge was kept from students, however, by laws, misinformation, antiscience bias and fear. A survey of high school biology teachers conducted in 1939–1940 found that only half taught evolution. A similar survey, conducted in 2007, decades after state laws banning evolution in schools had been overturned and almost 150 years after On the Origin of Species, found the same proportion....

Diseases don’t respect borders, laws or walls. And efforts to combat them rely on networks of scientists to detect outbreaks early, understand how the diseases operate and then intervene. Researchers say that President Donald Trump’s travel ban challenges that process, putting the United States at risk. The policy, enacted on January 27, bars refugees from entering the country for 120 days, except those from Syria, who are banned indefinitely. Citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are banned for 90 days....

Polarized America agrees on one thing: that the current round of protests against racist police violence may indeed force real reform. Former president Donald Trump said that protesters want to “overthrow the American Revolution” and that the National Guard and regular military must act decisively to “dominate the streets.” Black Lives Matter activists worry that these protests, like so many over the past few decades, will eventually subside, leaving temporary concessions, symbolic victories and an unaltered regime of systemic racism, along with unabated police violence....

In the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, city officials and Wall Street executives are talking about turning the battered U.S. financial center into a global hub of green finance and environmental commodities trading. The spark: draft energy and climate legislation unveiled by two senior House Democrats in Washington this week. The cap-and-trade proposal from Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts has been the talk of the Wall Street Green Trading Summit, which wraps up today....

America continues to be afflicted by violence. In the aftermath of terrorist attacks and mass shootings, the focus is often on trauma. And for good reason. Exposure to such extreme harm ruptures the lives of individuals in the surrounding community and broader society. Yet within the tragedy exists a glimmer of hope: Viewing how others respond in the wake of a violent attack can inspire us to help others. Our research shows that the way people remember past altruistic acts in the aftermath of trauma can actually influence their willingness to act altruistically in the future....

Astronauts may be able to walk on the moon faster than previously thought, a new study reports. The findings could help scientists design better spacesuits that could aid astronauts’ exploration of the moon, Mars or asteroids, the researchers added. Movies of NASA’s Apollo astronauts on the moon typically show them hopping instead of walking. However, contrary to popular belief, the astronauts employed this form of movement not because of low lunar gravity, but because spacesuits of the era were not designed for walking....

MIKE (not his real name) had always been an unusual child. Even as a toddler, he had difficulties relating to others and making friends, and he seemed strikingly suspicious of other people. After he entered high school, Mike became increasingly angry, paranoid and detached. He worried that people were searching his room and his locker when he was not around. His grades plummeted as he turned inward during class, sketching outlandish scenes in his notebooks and muttering to himself rather than listening to the instructor....

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes—often characterized as “helper” cells—may contribute to damage caused by brain injury and disease by turning toxic and destroying neurons, according to study results published Wednesday in Nature. Astrocytes are one of the three types of glial, or non-neuronal, cells, the most abundant kind found in the brain. They are widely regarded as support cells that nourish neurons and pack the spaces between them, but it is becoming increasingly clear that they play other important roles in normal, healthy brain function....

Once again California is ablaze. A combination of hot, dry weather and a relatively rare lightning storm sparked hundreds of fires in the northern half of the state in recent weeks. Several of them exploded into major conflagrations—the kinds of intense, destructive fires that some research suggests will become more likely as temperatures rise and create more conducive conditions for a longer portion of the year. The current fires, which include the second- and third-largest in the state’s history, have collectively burned more than one million acres....