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From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). Most of the important discoveries in mathematics take place after decades or centuries of effort. If you want to attack the biggest problems, you’ll need to master a lot of highly technical material before you can even begin to say something new. Such questions don’t interest Richard Schwartz. He likes problems he can read about today and start solving tomorrow—simple problems, fun problems, problems that have the aspect of a carnival game: Step right up and see what you can do with this one!...

By Reuters Staff (Reuters) - The U.S Food and Drug Administration said it is asking drugmakers for data on antimicrobials sold for use in each food animal, such as cows and chickens, as part of efforts to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Currently, drugmakers are required to submit collective data on antimicrobials sold for use in food animals, rather than spell out sales according to their use in just cattle or swine or chicken or turkey....

There was a scientific study that showed vaccines cause autism.” “Actually, the researcher in that study lost his medical license, and overwhelming research since then has shown no link between vaccines and autism.” “Well, regardless, it’s still my personal right as a parent to make decisions for my child.” Does that exchange sound familiar? A debate that starts with testable factual statements, but then, when the truth becomes inconvenient, the person takes a flight from facts....

Sports fans pack stadiums and bars to support their favorite teams. Similarly, comedy lovers get a kick out of going to comedy clubs and theaters. These sorts of activities–sharing a laugh or in a game victory–are classic bonding experiences. Previous research has shown that mirror neurons in our brains react to visual and verbal cues by trying to copy facial gestures and movements observed in others. A new study, published in this week’s Journal of Neuroscience, shows that our brains are also wired to react to nonverbal sounds–especially positive ones....

Climate change, with its associated droughts, storms, food shortages and wildfires, puts humans at physical risk. Yet global warming also imperils what is less tangible but still valuable: our national identity. In May the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report detailing more than 30 iconic sites in the U.S. that are at risk of damage. Write the authors: “If future generations of Americans are to experience the joy and wonder that these extraordinary places engender, we must act now to protect them from the impacts of climate change....

An academic, a bald guy and a barber traveling together stop to make camp for the night. They arrange to each take a watch while the other two sleep, with the barber on first watch and the academic to follow. The barber gets bored as the bald guy and the egghead sleep, so he shaves the academic’s head to pass the time. At the end of his watch, the barber wakes up the academic, who rubs his now hairless head and says, “This barber is an idiot—he woke up the bald guy instead of me....

The world could burn nearly 8,000 million metric tons of coal by 2035 – most of it in China – unless countries radically change their energy policies, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA’s World Energy Outlook released this week found that China almost singlehandedly fueled the rise in coal use throughout the first decade of the 21st century. The Asian economic giant was responsible for 80 percent of the global increase in coal demand, which itself accounted for nearly half the increase in global energy use....

Stain repellents confer easy-to-clean convenience to carpets and clothing thanks to substances called fluorosurfactants. Yet this benefit comes at a price: the processes used to make these surfactants–which are also used to improve paints and polishes–generate chemicals that have become pervasive in the environment. Of particular concern is perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), one of the most common fluorosurfactant breakdown products. Last July the science advisory board of the Environmental Protection Agency recommended that the EPA classify it as a “likely” human carcinogen....

Aiming to reform its policies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has enlisted one of the biggest guns in the federal arsenal to help: The National Academy of Sciences. On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone launched an effort to develop the so-called Green Book, a project to ensure all EPA policies are driven by sustainability. The effort is reminiscent of the 1983 Red Book, written by the National Research Council to develop a strategy of risk assessment to guide the agency’s policies....

Scientists have decoded the dog genome. A boxer named Tasha, selected for her high degree of inbreeding, has had her genetic secrets puzzled out and then compared to partial genetic pictures of other breeds of dog and other mammals. It has been a long wait for humanity’s first companion, domesticated from gray wolves at least 15,000 years ago. Researchers first broke up Tasha’s genome into small sections of genetic material, deciphered the makeup of each of those bits, and then pieced them together into a complete genetic map–the so-called whole genome shotgun strategy....

It was a critical move because the world’s thirst for fossil fuels continues unabated even as wind, solar and other low-carbon energy sources are coming into their prime. That message was hammered home a day after the pact was struck in the form of a dire warning from the International Energy Agency in its annual World Energy Outlook, which was released on Wednesday. The IEA said the U.S., China and the rest of the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters are going to have to do a lot to put the brakes on climate change because the globe is still hooked on fossil fuels, and there’s little indication that will change much over the next 25 years....

Prairie voles are role models for monogamy. Unlike most other mammals these adorable, mouselike creatures typically mate for life, raising their young together and spending time cuddling in their home nests. In a series of experiments published this week in Nature researchers report they have pinpointed a particular brain circuit that may drive formation of these social bonds. What’s more, they discovered they could manipulate this affection: When they artificially activated that brain pathway, it spurred prairie voles to form pair-bonds even in the absence of sex—normally a prerequisite....

The first-ever in-depth analysis of Martian dirt reveals a mineralogical makeup similar to that of Hawaiian volcanic soils, researchers announced October 30. The results come from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, which recently studied a scoop of Red Planet dirt with its Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin, for the first time. “This Martian soil that we’ve analyzed on Mars just this past week appears mineralogically similar to some weathered basaltic materials that we see on Earth,” David Bish, a CheMin co-investigator with Indiana University, told reporters....

For much of the past five million to seven million years over which humans have been evolving, multiple species of our forebears co-existed. But eventually the other lineages went extinct, leaving only our own, Homo sapiens, to rule Earth. Scientists long thought that by 40,000 years ago H. sapiens shared the planet with only one other human species, or hominin: the Neandertals. In recent years, however, evidence of a more happening hominin scene at that time has emerged....

Flawlessly accounting for the behavior of matter on scales from the subatomic to the astronomical, quantum mechanics is the most successful theory in all the physical sciences. It is also the weirdest. In the quantum realm, particles seem to be in two places at once, information appears to travel faster than the speed of light, and cats can be dead and alive at the same time. Physicists have grappled with the quantum world’s apparent paradoxes for nine decades, with little to show for their struggles....

Pure mathematics fascinates me, precisely because it is so inaccessible. I envision it as a remote, chilly, perilous realm, like Antarctica’s Sentinel Range. The hardy souls who scale the heights of mathematics seem superhuman. I once asked André Weil, a legendary climber of mathematical peaks, if it bothered him that few people knew of his accomplishments in number theory and algebraic geometry, and fewer still understood them. He seemed puzzled by the question....

When humans go into space, they do not travel alone. They take their microbes with them—and science is just beginning to reveal how spaceflight affects the vast microbial communities that live in and on human bodies, known as the microbiome. In April, as part of its twins study, NASA reported how astronaut Scott Kelly’s microbiome changed during his marathon stay on the International Space Station (ISS). Now scientists who worked on that study have published new research that shows consistent impacts of low-Earth orbit on the gut bacteria of mice that traveled on other missions onboard the ISS and space shuttle....

By Toni Clarke The U.S. Surgeon General issued a call to action on Thursday to end what he said was a public health crisis of drug and alcohol addiction that is both underappreciated and undertreated. Dr. Vivek Murthy issued the first-ever Surgeon General’s report on substance abuse and said he hopes it will galvanize work on the issue the way a similar report 50 years ago sparked decades of effort to combat smoking....

Early in life, I was especially sensitive to the conditions around me. Minor levels of background noise would spoil my concentration. But as I matured, I developed the skill of ignoring distractions and focusing only on substance. During a routine morning jog through the woods near my home last month, I fell down, bumping my forehead on a rock and fracturing my wrist. My consequent visit to Mass General hospital resulted in two stitches on my forehead and a cast over my arm....

At sunrise on a summer day in Australia, about an hour’s drive from Sydney, we clambered northward along the base of a cliff on a mission. We were searching for rocks that we hoped would contain clues to the darkest chapter in our planet’s history. Life on Earth has experienced some terrifyingly close calls in the past four billion years—cataclysmic events in which the species driven to extinction outnumbered the survivors....