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Charles Whitman lived a fairly unremarkable life until August 1, 1966, when he murdered 16 people including his wife and mother. What transformed this 25-year-old Eagle Scout and Marine into one of modern America’s first and deadliest school shooters? His autopsy suggests one troubling explanation: Charles Whitman had a brain tumor pressing on his amygdala, a region of the brain crucial for emotion and behavioral control. Can murder really be a symptom of brain disease?...

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Martin Shkreli. Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Mylan. These names have become big news, but just a year ago, most Americans devoted little time and attention to the question of pharmaceutical pricing. Now, a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released Oct. 27 suggests many people care more about the increasing prices of drugs than they do about any other aspect of health care reform....

It’s been a tough two years. I hope you and yours are as safe and healthy as possible at this stage of the COVID pandemic. Like everyone, we at Scientific American have been thinking about this terrible disease constantly and trying to make sense of it. We’ve published hundreds of articles about the coronavirus itself, the immune system response, the astonishingly protective vaccines, the psychological toll on society, the trauma of health-care workers, deadly misinformation and the best ways to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2....

Russia recently attacked Kyiv with a cruise missile in a menacing demonstration of Moscow’s ability to carry out a long-range strike against a metropolitan target. The successful assault exposed vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defenses—and highlighted similar gaps in those of the U.S. Now the Pentagon wants to test technology that it hopes can defend American cities against the very same type of weapon. This experiment, a proposed 2023 event called the Cruise Missile Defense–Homeland Kill Chain Demonstration, would combine existing technologies in an effort to better shield cities and critical infrastructure from cruise missiles....

FRANKFURT, May 22 (Reuters) - Random checks of pilots’ psychological fitness could help reduce risks in the aviation sector, Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said in his first newspaper interview since the crash of a Germanwings plane in March. Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday cited Spohr as saying surprise checks were a possible way to reduce uncertainty over whether pilots suffer from any mental health issues. Voice and data recordings from the Germanwings flight on March 24 show co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit and set the plane on course to crash into the French Alps, killing all 150 on board....

FINALIST YEAR: 1990 HER FINALIST PROJECT: A survey of how teenagers think about their relationships with their parents WHAT LED TO THE PROJECT: As a student at The Bronx High School of Science in New York City in the late 1980’s Laura Ascenzi-Moreno noticed something about her extremely bright friends. Whereas some felt close to their parents, others spent adolescence in a constant state of rebellion that undermined their ability to learn....

Moles are more than a sometimes unsightly skin growth. Most harbor mutations that can trigger deadly skin cancer–melanoma–and most fair-skinned humans have at least 10 such moles. Yet, only one in 65 of such people will develop melanoma in their lifetimes. And research has now pinpointed how a series of mechanisms prevents the cells that produce pigment–known as melanocytes–from fulfilling any cancerous destiny. Daniel Peeper of the National Cancer Institute and his team discovered in previous research that when cells in a mole (or nevus, in scientific terms) begin to show signs of mutation, a genetic program kicks in that prevents them from continuing to divide....

The SUV-sized Perseverance rover due to launch to Mars this week has a sidekick: a svelte four-pound helicopter with four-foot-long rotor blades that weigh as light as feathers. It will attempt to make the first powered flight on another planet, a potential game-changer for deep-space exploration. If all goes as planned, dispatching the helicopter from Perseverance’s belly will be an early first step for the Mars 2020 mission after the rover’s parachute, retro-rocket and sky crane descend onto the flat floor of the planet’s Jezero Crater in early 2021....

On a perfect Southern California morning not long ago, a gaggle of children gathered in the backyard of a million-dollar home in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood to celebrate the birthday of twin four-year-old girls. The host parents had rented a petting zoo for the day, and kids jumped gleefully in a bouncy castle out in the driveway. On the terrace, a few parents chatted beside an alluring spread of bagels, coffee and fruit....

We take them for granted until they are gone or require major repairs. And then the options are grim: do without lost teeth or replace them with inert prosthetic versions. In the Western world, an estimated 85 percent of adults have had some form of dental treatment. Seven percent have lost one or more teeth by age 17. After age 50, an average of 12 teeth stand to have been lost....

In the early 19th century, New England physician Lyman Spalding found himself troubled by the state of medicine in America. Medicines at the time were typically derived from hand-collected plants and minerals. Their preparation was not well regulated. Medicines of the same name often didn’t share the same properties or the same medication had different names in different states. The lack of national standards around medicine concerned him so much that, while living in New York, he began advocating for a national pharmacopeia—a well-defined and clearly described roster of trusted medicinal components that could be universally employed by midwives and medical professionals across the country....

“Sit up straight!” The exhortation rings through many a primary school classroom and across the family dinner table. A large body of research suggests that controlling your position can be a task like any other, drawing on cognitive resources: simple tasks such as counting backward get harder when you must also hold a particular pose, and vice versa. Most of these previous studies of posture, however, focused on standing positions rather than different sitting postures....

By Scott HaggettCALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp on Thursday said it would move ahead with Canada’s largest-ever pipeline, expanding the scale of its $12 billion plan to ship oil sands crude in the West to refiners on its east coast and beyond as its U.S.-bound Keystone XL line stalls in Washington.Canada’s No. 2 pipeline company said “strong market support” convinced it to build the 1.1-million-barrel-per-day Energy East Pipeline, which will stretch 2,700 miles from Alberta to a new deepwater oil terminal on the Atlantic....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the “green cities” movement? – John Moulton, Greenwich, CT Best described as a loose association of cities focused on sustainability, the emerging “green cities movement” encompasses thousands of urban areas around the world all striving to lessen their environmental impacts by reducing waste, expanding recycling, lowering emissions, increasing housing density while expanding open space, and encouraging the development of sustainable local businesses. Perhaps the archetypal green city is Curitiba, Brazil....

Ten years ago President Bill Clinton set a national goal to develop an AIDS vaccine within a decade. At that time, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS had infected some 25 million people worldwide. Clinton established a research center at the National Institutes of Health and pledged to enlist other nations in the effort. “There are no guarantees,” he said in a speech delivered at Morgan State University announcing the initiative....

Dear EarthTalk: What’s the deal with New York City buildings switching over from heating oil to natural gas? Is this a trend in other U.S. cities as well?— Mitchell Branecke, Yonkers, N.Y. Anyone who has lived in New York City knows that particulate matter is omnipresent there. Commonly referred to as soot, such particulate pollution is comprised of fine black particles derived of carbon from coal, oil, wood or other fuels that have not combusted completely....

In her 20s, Diana dreamed of becoming a scientific illustrator. She had not yet attended college, so she was thrilled when she received an acceptance letter from an undergraduate graphic arts program in New York City. But her excitement gave way to anxiety during the first days and weeks at her new school. Fretting about her performance, Diana sought out her professors for comfort and advice. She found them aloof and difficult to contact, however, because none of them posted office hours....

February 1967 Gene Therapy “Some biologists have wondered if it might someday be possible to alter the genetic material of a human being, for example, to supply a deleted gene and thereby remedy some metabolic deficiency. How would one introduce the desired genetic information? One possibility that has now received some preliminary experimental support would be to administer a harmless virus that bears the required gene. The Shope papilloma virus, which causes tumors in rabbits, also induces the synthesis of a distinctive form of the enzyme arginase....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Alaska is on pace for another historic wildfire year, with its fastest start to the fire season on record. By mid-June 2022, over 1 million acres had burned. By early July, that number was well over 2 million acres, more than twice the acreage of a typical Alaska fire season. Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, explains why Alaska is seeing so many large, intense fires this year and how the region’s fire season is changing....

It seemed like a plausible idea: a massive asteroid crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 millions years ago, wiping out dinosaurs and clearing the way for mammals to replace them as Earth’s highest profile life form. The theory was accepted widely enough that even cartoon faves The Simpsons pondered it. But new evidence uncovered during a decadelong study challenges the long-held belief. The finding was part of an effort to explore the evolutionary relationships among all extant (living) mammal species over the past 160 million years....