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Pizza has a proud history of fueling late-night lab work, and scientists in Naples—an Italian city famous for its slice—have easy access to some of the world’s tastiest take-out. But what inspires engineer Bruno Siciliano is not just that first bite so much as how the dish is made. “Preparing a pizza involves an extraordinary level of agility and dexterity,” says Siciliano, who directs a robotics research group at the University of Naples Federico II....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. If you want to understand why some sandcastles are tall and have intricate structures while others are nearly shapeless lumps of sand, it helps to have a background in geotechnical engineering. As a geotechnical engineering educator myself, I use sandcastles in the classroom to explain how interactions of soil, water and air make it possible to rebuild landscapes after mining metals critical to the energy transition....

One unanticipated consequence of the current pandemic is that many scientists are cutting one another some slack. Journal editors have become more relaxed about deadlines, funding agencies are granting extensions with little or no explanation needed, and universities have given graduate students more time—and in some cases even more funding—to finish their Ph.D.s. And many scholars are working productively from home relieved of the pressure to appear in person when the work does not actually require it....

‘This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.’ So ended the agents’ instructions in the long-running TV series Mission: impossible. While the idea of self-destructing tape was pure fantasy then, now researchers in China and the US have produced electronic devices that gradually decompose through reactions with water in the air. The researchers believe the device could have important applications not just in security but in environmental protection and potentially medicine too....

The next time you go to the drugstore to pick up shampoo or paper towels, you might get that cough checked out, too. More than a quarter of the U.S. population lives within a 10-minute drive from a retail walk-in medical clinic (or convenient care clinic) that can provide appointment-free screenings and examinations of minor afflictions right inside the store. Staffed mostly by nurse practitioners, these clinics offer lower costs and longer hours than a standard physician’s office....

From produce that rots in delivery trucks to oversized portions on restaurant plates, we waste vast amounts of food. In fact, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany recently found that the average amount of food wasted per person per day has increased from 310 kilocalories in 1965 to 510 kilocalories in 2010. That is roughly the equivalent of going from dumping six apples in the trash to tossing 10 of them—every single day....

“When you’re dealing with an institutional structure like global science, one of its core features is that it has been a racial structure,” says sociologist Anthony Ryan Hatch, an associate professor and chair of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University. “To dismantle and chip away at that system requires concerted effort, concerted resources, clear thinking, and a concern for equity and making things right.” But Hatch believes that even the effort to diversify institutions of higher learning, in terms of students and administration, has a potentially fraught set of challenges:...

By Alla KatsnelsonA combination gene therapy that endows human stem cells with three ways to resist HIV has passed its first safety test in humans. Four patients with AIDS who were infused with these cells tolerated the treatment, and the cells produced their anti-HIV weapons for up to two years. The study was published June 16 in Science Translational Medicine.Not enough cells were transplanted in the trial to cure the patients or even reduce their viral load....

California is enjoying fewer extreme wildfires than it has in years, which experts attribute to a combination of summer rain, calm weather and increased forest management. As of Thursday, fires had blackened less than 363,000 acres throughout the Golden State. That’s far less than last year, when 2.5 million acres burned, and 2020, when fires torched a record 4 million acres. “We are throwing absolutely everything we have at the fire conditions to try to keep people safe,” said Brian Ferguson, spokesperson at the California Office of Emergency Services....

In this episode of NBC Learn’s “The Science of NFL Football,” you see how Newton’s second law of motion is in effect when a placekicker boots the ball. The more force he can apply to the ball, the farther it will go. You may have noticed in the video that kicker Morten Andersen approached the ball from the side, as all National Football League kickers do today. But that was not always the case....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Sex, income, religion and politics—these are some of the biggies on the list of taboo topics during polite discussion. Even a conciliatory tone doesn’t always protect you if the subjects are spicy. When singer Katy Perry tweeted post-election encouragement to reach out to family members who supported the other candidate, she was skewered online....

April 1964 LSD and Psilocybin “The hallucinogens are currently a subject of intense debate and concern in medical and psychological circles. At issue is the degree of danger they present to the psychological health of the person who uses them. This has become an important question because of a rapidly increasing interest in the drugs among laymen. The recent controversy at Harvard University, stemming at first from methodological disagreements among investigators but subsequently involving the issue of protection of the mental health of the student body, indicated the scope of popular interest in taking the drugs and the consequent public concern over their possible misuse....

In a boon to cancer treatment and regenerative medicine, scientists have discovered that a trick used by tumor cells that allows them to migrate around the body can cause normal, adult cells to revert into stem cell–like cells. Large quantities of these reverted cells could be used to treat anything from spinal cord injury to liver damage without the risk of tissue rejection, said Robert Weinberg, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and co-author of a study appearing in Cell....

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found new evidence that a subsurface ocean within Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may be intermittently venting plumes of water vapor into outer space, the scientists announced at a NASA press conference Monday. The finding suggests Europa’s ocean, thought to be buried beneath perhaps 100 kilometers of ice, may be more amenable to life—and accessible to curious astrobiologists—than previously believed. The findings will be presented in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal....

Key concepts Chemistry Gas Surface tension Human body Introduction Has your stomach ever ached so bad you felt as if it was blown up like a balloon—maybe after the big Thanksgiving meal? You may have had a large amount of gas trapped in your stomach and intestines. But where does the gas come from that makes you feel so uncomfortable? And how does it disappear again? In this activity you will blow some bubbles to investigate how a specific compound can help battle those pockets of air....

Detroit’s Big Three automakers posted supercharged performances in the second quarter, sales fueled significantly by strong sport utility vehicle and truck sales in North America. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ net profit jumped 69 percent from the same time last year. Ford Motor Co. notched record income for North America and its Asia-Pacific market, totaling a 44 percent jump in income year over year. And General Motors Co. netted $1.1 billion in income, five times more than its $190 million profit from the March-June period in 2014....

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson Scribner, 2014 “Your family is radioactive; your friends are radioactive; your pets are radioactive; and the earth itself throws off a gaseous froth of radon,” writes journalist Nelson in this history of the atomic age. The book begins with the 1890s discovery of the first known radioactive elements and traces humankind’s manipulation of radiation through to the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan....

Found in cuisines worldwide, chilies and peppers—name them as you wish—all belong to the Capsicum genus, which is native to America. And recent genetic studies confirm that they have a single common ancestor that emerged about 16.8 million years ago. “Their origin is recent within the Solanaceae family, to which potatoes and tomatoes also belong,” says Mauro Grabiele, author of several genetic and chromosomal studies of 22 Capsicum species in preparation for his doctoral thesis....

Although outpatient treatment of psychiatric problems can be cost-efficient, a new study indicates that suicidal individuals treated for addiction as inpatients are significantly more likely to abstain from alcohol and drugs. Mark Ilgen and his colleagues at the Veterans Administration Palo Alto Health Care System in California compared outcomes for addiction patients who had and had not reported suicide attempts and who were treated either as outpatients or during an extended hospital stay....

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Iceland’s civil protection agency has decided to evacuate an area north of the country’s Bardarbunga volcano, saying it could not rule out an eruption. The move came after authorities on Monday warned airlines about increased seismic activity at Iceland’s largest volcanic system. Ash from the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010 shut down much of Europe’s airspace for six days. “This decision is a safety measure,” the agency said on its website late on Tuesday....