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Our ancestors’ big break came 66 million years ago, on the worst day in Earth’s history. An asteroid slammed into our planet, set off tsunamis and volcanoes and wildfires, and darkened the skies for years. The disaster was the end of the dinosaurs (aside from birds) but a new beginning for mammals—or at least the mammals that survived. In our cover article, paleontologist Steve Brusatte fills out this origin story with fascinating new details about the mammals that thrived in the Before Times and a deeper understanding of how some survived into the After....

New mothers who eat their babies’ placentas soon after childbirth are part of a growing fad. Web sites offer recipes and services, such as turning the placenta into a pill, to make the experience more palatable. Proponents claim the practice, known as placentophagy, increases their energy and can even ward off postpartum depression. Although the placenta is packed with nutrients and hormones that help the baby develop and survive in the womb, it can also harbor potentially harmful bacteria and waste products....

Deal—or no deal? Lobby offers GOPers $10,000 to prove anti–medical pot claims The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) next week plans to offer GOP presidential wannabes $10,000 if they can back up their claims that medical marijuana is either unnecessary or “too dangerous” for medical use. According to an MPP official, the Washington, D.C.–based group and two medical marijuana– using patients will hold a news conference in Manchester, N.H., on Thursday (Dec....

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - On any given day, a large proportion of kids eat pizza - and on those days, they tend to eat more calories, saturated fat and sodium than they do on other days, according to U.S. data collected over the past decade. On pizza eating days, kids ate an average of 83 more calories, and teens had an average of 230 more calories, than on non-pizza days....

By Erik KirschbaumBERLIN (Reuters) - Sea levels could rise by 2.3 meters for each degree Celsius that global temperatures increase and they will remain high for centuries to come, according to a new study by the leading climate research institute, released on Monday.Anders Levermann said his study for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research was the first to examine evidence from climate history and combine it with computer simulations of contributing factors to long-term sea-level increases: thermal expansion of oceans, the melting of mountain glaciers and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets....

It’s a given of climate change that greenhouse gases emitted today will shape the world for future generations. But new research underscores just how long those effects will last. A striking new study published yesterday in the journal Nature Communications suggests that sea-level rise—one of the biggest consequences of global warming—will still be happening 300 years from now, even if humans stop emitting greenhouse gases before the end of the current century....

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea has warned of serious power shortages this week amid an expected rise in summer temperatures and as the resources-starved country struggles to keep up with demand after six nuclear plants have gone off-line.The energy ministry said it may take emergency measures such as rolling power cuts to avoid a repeat of 2011 blackouts which cut electricity to businesses and homes across the country.Separately, the ministry said some major companies, including Kia Motors Corp and Hyundai Motor Co, had not complied with energy saving regulations such as cutting power consumption during peak hours....

Heart disease and depression often go hand in hand. Long-term studies have found that people with depression have a significantly higher risk of subsequent heart disease, and vice versa. Recent research has revealed that the link begins at an early age and is probably caused by chronic inflammation. A new study in the November 2014 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine by researchers in the U.S., Australia and China examined data from an ongoing study of health among Australians....

Officials from President Donald Trump’s administration are currently reviewing the content of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website, but have no immediate plans to remove the website content on climate change, The Hill quoted an EPA spokesman as saying on Wednesday. Sources at the EPA had told Reuters on Tuesday that administration officials asked the agency to take down the climate change page on its website, and that EPA staff had pushed back in an effort to convince the administration to preserve it....

Pres. Donald Trump was swept into office largely due to campaign promises that he would dismantle a number of his predecessor’s signature programs. Although his efforts to reverse Obama-era reforms to health care and immigration policy remain a very gradual work in progress, Trump recently revoked a 2015 executive order limiting the availability of surplus military gear—tracked vehicles, grenade launchers, bayonets and certain other equipment—to state and local law enforcement agencies....

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Bitter cold conditions expected to move through the U.S. Plains wheat belt next week will put the young crop at risk of winterkill if the region does not see snow before then, an agricultural meteorologist said on Friday.World Weather Inc meteorologist Drew Lerner said a Canadian cold front is heading to the Plains wheat country, Kansas to Colorado, mid- to late next week. Temperatures could dip to below zero Fahrenheit (-18 C) by next Friday....

The climate catastrophes of 2020—wildfires, hurricanes, oppressive heat—left no doubt that climate change threatens health. And the COVID-19 pandemic left no doubt that preparing for predictable health challenges is essential to preventing needless suffering and dying. The two lessons are linked. We know climate change will increasingly affect health. Research shows, for example, that global temperature changes could lead to more heat-related deaths and deaths from diseases such as dengue fever and cholera that spread via insects and water....

Consider almost everything you know about heart disease, particularly the garden-variety type involving high cholesterol levels, clogged coronary arteries, stents and bypass surgeries. Now I want you to rebrand all that as “male-pattern” cardiovascular disease. That’s how some researchers are reframing it after taking a closer look at heart disease in women. For years cardiologists were baffled as to why up to half of women with classic symptoms of blocked vessels—chest pain, shortness of breath and an abnormal cardiac stress test—turn out to have open arteries....

Editor’s Note (3/30/21): This story has been updated with new questions and information. More than 50 million people in the U.S. are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. In mid-March President Joe Biden said his administration “may be able to double” its initial target of administering 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office. Biden has also set May 1 as a goal for all American adults to be eligible for vaccination....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Fifty years ago, on Jan. 21, 1968, the Cold War grew significantly colder. It was on this day that an American B-52G Stratofortress bomber, carrying four nuclear bombs, crashed onto the sea ice of Wolstenholme Fjord in the northwest corner of Greenland, one of the coldest places on Earth. Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and the Danes were not pleased....

Just a few years ago a 15-month-old girl—her stomach, arms and legs swollen and her hands and feet crusted in weeping, yellow scales—was rushed to the emergency room at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Laboratory tests indicated a host of nutrition problems. The child’s mother, during the previous year, had told doctors that standard infant formula seemed to provoke vomiting and a rash. The mother and her pediatrician assumed the girl was allergic to the formula and switched her to goat’s milk....

A panel of top scientists is urging the Obama administration to bet big on tumor profiling and immunotherapy treatments in its cancer moonshot—two areas that are viewed with great promise, but still face unanswered questions about their ultimate effectiveness. The experts are recommending the creation of a new national network that would allow cancer patients across the country to have their tumors genetically profiled and included in a new national database—one of several recommended steps that they say would significantly speed the progress of cancer research in the United States....

Adorf, Germany—After a five-hour drive south from the University of Bremen that got them in at half-past midnight, the two researchers visiting this small village were happy to sit and talk with tavern patrons about the volcano just up the street. Gathered around a map, they listened intently as geobiologists Joern Peckmann and Benjamin Eickmann pointed to the extinct volcano, Arnstein Hill, and explained that the forested region had been underwater 400 million years ago, during the Devonian....

Researchers have long been studying the connection between health and the five major personality traits: agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness. A large body of research links neuroticism with poorer health and conscientiousness with superior health. Now openness, which measures cognitive flexibility and the willingness to entertain novel ideas, has emerged as a lifelong protective factor. The linchpin seems to be the creativity associated with the personality trait—creative thinking reduces stress and keeps the brain healthy....

A new report charges that several oil and gas companies have been illegally using diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing operations, and then doctoring records to hide violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The report, published this week by the Environmental Integrity Project, found that between 2010 and July 2014 at least 351 wells were fracked by 33 different companies using diesel fuels without a permit. The Integrity Project, an environmental organization based in Washington, D....