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A new form of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been found in dairy cows and humans in the U.K. and Denmark, providing more evidence that animals could be passing this superbug on to people—not just the other way around. The new methicillin-resistant bacterial strain was found in tests of raw milk by a team looking for another infection among the herds. Pasteurization kills off the bacteria, making milk products—even from a cow infected with this antibiotic-resistant strain—safe for consumers, the researchers explain....

Human embryonic stem cells offer great medical hope, because of their ability to develop into almost any kind of adult cell. But harvesting the pluripotent cells from stored embryos has raised ethical concerns, due to the necessity of destroying potential humans to derive these cells. Now new research has shown that stem cells can be cultivated from cells split off from developing embryos without impacting the embryo itself. In previous research, Robert Lanza and his colleagues at Advanced Cell Technology had shown that single-cell biopsies done on mouse embryos–similar to those used for genetic diagnosis prior to a human embryo’s implantation–might allow for the cultivation of stem cell lines without discernible impact....

Cave geckos exemplify evolution at its most fantastic. Some have bloodred eyes and sport bright yellow bands down their dark body. Others are Popsicle blue or bear camouflagelike patterns of fiery orange and brown. Many species of these lizards are only found over a tiny range, such as a single limestone hill in China. More than a dozen are listed as threatened with extinction, some of them critically so, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)....

Writer’s block is not an affliction that I have ever suffered. So I was a little surprised at myself when I put off writing this column several times. I mulled a few options, but nothing seemed good enough to merit typing. Then it hit me: I was letting my unacknowledged fears and negativity squash my thinking. Why? Because the topic was how to tap the sources of inspiration itself—the subject of our cover story, “Let Your Creativity Soar....

Happy days are here again for the embryonic stem cell (ESC) research community, or at least they should be. The day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president in January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration green-lighted an application from Geron Corporation to pursue the first phase I clinical trial of an ESC-based therapy (in this case, for spinal cord injury). President Obama, who ran on a pro-ESC research platform, cannot take credit for that regulatory first, which was largely a coincidence of timing....

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian film crew docked at the International Space Station today (Oct. 5) after a short flight from Earth to begin a 12-day movie shoot in orbit. The Soyuz linked up with the space station at 8:22 am EDT after a four-hour trip that began with a successful launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz ferried Russian actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko to the station alongside veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who commanded the capsule....

Is the cosmos filled with chatty alien civilizations or is Earth a lonely spark of life in a sterile universe? Russian billionaire Yuri Milner wants to know, and has committed to spending at least $100 million to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Efforts to listen for interstellar messages date back to the 1960s but funding has often proved as elusive as the aliens themselves. NASA’s SETI efforts, which ran from the 1970s to the 1990s, consumed about $110 million across 20 years, according to the agency’s former chief historian, the astronomer Steven Dick, who calls today’s announcement a “sea change” in SETI funding....

TEMPE, Ariz.—The two-liter bottle of sewage sitting in a lab at Arizona State University is the yellow-brown color of smog. It was shipped overnight from one of a half dozen cities that have recently asked A.S.U. to begin studying their waste for chemical signatures that may help save lives. Such slurries of poop and urine have become one of the latest—and most pungent—ways communities are now trying to address the opioid crisis....

The spiraling cost of satellite programs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has lawmakers from both parties sniffing around for a strategy to trim the agency’s budget. But there are no easy options to cut satellite spending and ensure the quality of weather forecasts and warnings to which Americans are accustomed, Obama administration officials said yesterday. The White House’s fiscal 2013 budget request seeks $5.1 billion for NOAA – a request that amounts to a slight increase over current spending, but one that balances growing satellite costs with cuts to weather, oceans, fisheries and research programs....

Standard Vaccines Can Offer Protection against H5N1 Pandemic Avian Flu A test vaccine has been found to be protective against a synthetic version of the H5N1 virus, but the result might not predict performance on real pandemic H5N1 Teenager creates new flu drugs Eric Chen, 17, of San Diego became the third Grand Prize winner in Google Science Fair history Pandemic Flu Plan Predicts 30 Percent of U.S. Could Fall Ill A newly declassified government plan for a flu pandemic suggests a challenging scenario, as vaccine production could take months and basic services could be disrupted...

Indoor plants tend to grow toward the light, so why do trees outdoors grow straight instead of leaning toward the equator? —W. Anderson, Sacramento, Calif. Edgar Spalding, a botany professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, sprouts off: A plant on a windowsill experiences a stronger light gradient than does a tree outdoors, where gravitational cues can overpower more subtle light-direction cues. Indoor plants get a lot more light on one side than on the other, which activates photoreceptor molecules to a much greater extent on the lit side....

Tanguy Chouard, an editor with Nature, saw Google-DeepMind’s AI system AlphaGo defeat a human professional for the first time last year at the ancient board game Go. This week, he is watching top professional Lee Sedol take on AlphaGo, in Seoul, for a $1 million prize. As I’m sure you’ve heard, one of humanity’s best Go players, Lee Sedol, just lost his first game in a best-of-five series against AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence system created by Google DeepMind....

Artificial intelligence thinkers seem to emerge from two communities. One is what I call blue-sky visionaries who speculate about the future possibilities of the technology, invoking utopian fantasies to generate excitement. Blue-sky ideas are compelling but are often clouded over by unrealistic visions and the ethical challenges of what can and should be built. In contrast, what I call muddy-boots pragmatists are problem- and solution-focused. They want to reduce the harms that widely used AI-infused systems can create....

By Barbara LewisBRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to a British government paper, likely to fuel debate on whether deeper cuts are affordable.Energy costs have shot up the political agenda across Europe, where power prices are around double those in the United States.Some EU states and industry have blamed green energy subsidies for stoking prices and say competitiveness is a more pressing concern in fragile economic times than emissions cuts....

An Austrian daredevil plummeted into the record books today (October 14), breaking the mark for highest-ever skydive after leaping from a balloon more than 24 miles above Earth’s surface. Add one more feat: Going supersonic. Felix Baumgartner stepped into the void nearly 128,000 feet (39,000 meters) above southeastern New Mexico Sunday at just after 12 p.m. MT (2 p.m. ET, 1800 GMT), then landed safely on the desert floor about 20 minutes later....

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: We all know that the White House has a Facebook page. Beyond that, what ways can the government use technology to better serve taxpayers? KUNDRA: The power of information technology is in far more than just setting up a Web site or serving up content on Facebook or Twitter. I look at Government 2.0 as a fundamental reengineering of how the American people interact with their government. Part of what we’re trying to do is fundamentally reengineer the back-end systems, the processes, to make sure that the experience the American people have with the government looks much more like the experience they have when they interact with a private-sector company....

Governments have wasted billions of dollars stockpiling antiviral drugs for use in seasonal and pandemic flu, a non-profit group of medical experts said this week, after analyzing the results of previously unpublished clinical trials. The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization headquartered in Oxford, UK, has been arguing its case against the efficacy of the antiviral Tamiflu (oseltamivir) for more than four years, initially on the basis of a previous analysis of the limited published data available....

(Reuters) - Spark Therapeutics Inc’s experimental gene therapy for a rare inherited form of blindness is effective, though it is unclear whether the benefit lasts over time, according to a preliminary review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The therapy, Luxturna, or voretigene neparvovec, would be the first-ever gene therapy for any inherited disease to be approved in the United States. The FDA’s review, posted on Tuesday on the agency’s website, comes two days ahead of a meeting of outside advisers who will discuss the treatment and recommend whether it should be approved....

Hundreds of years after humans mastered the art of chimney venting so they could heat their houses, scientists have undertaken a major research project to better understand how Earth’s atmosphere uses its very own version of a chimney. More than 40 researchers recently visited a sparsely populated part of the western tropical Pacific Ocean—near the island of Guam—known as the “global chimney.” The area boasts the world’s warmest ocean temperatures and vents massive volumes of warm gases from the surface high into the atmosphere, which may shape global climate and air chemistry enough to impact billions of people worldwide....

Worry makes us miserable and uncomfortable, but many worriers claim it keeps them prepared and safe from harm. And in a way, it does, but not in the way you’d think. Is it possible to stop worrying? What if worry is part of who you are? You know you’re a worrier if you live by Mad Eye Moody’s exhortation for “constant vigilance!” Or if you identify with the heroes of Disney’s oddly recurring theme of anxious fish: Flounder from The Little Mermaid or Marlin from Finding Nemo....