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A persistent chemical formerly used in Scotchgard still contaminates most fish in U.S. rivers and the Great Lakes despite a phase-out a dozen years ago, a new federal study shows. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency researchers found perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in all of the 157 fish sampled from nearshore waters in the five Great Lakes and in 73 percent from 162 rivers. The study, the largest of its kind in freshwater fish, suggests that eating bass, trout, walleye and catfish could be a major source of exposure for anglers and their families....

Ever since fossils of the behemoth, long-necked dinosaurs known as sauropods surfaced in England more than 170 years ago, they have awed and confused scientists. Even when the great English anatomist Sir Richard Owen recognized in 1842 that dinosaurs constituted a group of their own, apart from reptiles, he excluded the gigantic bones later classified as sauropods. Instead he interpreted them as belonging to a type of aquatic crocodile, which he had named Cetiosaurus, or “whale lizard,” for the enormous size of its bones....

In the dense jungles of Cameroon and nearby countries, the population of the iconic and critically endangered western lowland gorilla declined by nearly 20 percent between 2005 and 2013 to about 360,000 individuals—and their number is expected to plunge by another 80 percent over about the next 65 years. Raw materials extracted from their habitat and used for goods manufactured in China and then sold in the U.S. and elsewhere have contributed to that decline....

Hurricane Michael is expected to make landfall later today in one of Florida’s least populated corners, a rural expanse of the Panhandle known more for pine forests and oyster beds than oceanfront towers. But given the storm’s immense size and growing strength, experts say it will still likely have a multibillion-dollar impact on the state. Early projections have put private property damages at between $13 billion and $19 billion, depending on whether the storm makes landfall as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane....

That question will face a panel to be assembled by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) in Amsterdam, a composite board of many of the world’s national scientific bodies, including the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. “This will be an independent review,” says physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf, president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and IAC co-chair, about the evaluation requested by the U.N. and the IPCC. “We are ready to take on the important task of assuring nations around the world that they will receive sound climate advice....

Coral reefs, kelp forests and other marine ecosystems may be tougher than we give them credit for, a new study suggests. While countless scientific reports have documented the ravages of climate change on oceanic life, a survey of the researchers who wrote them provides a silver lining: An overwhelming majority noticed examples of sea life withstanding climate change. “There are instances where sensitive ecosystems have shown remarkable resilience after climatic events....

National and international health authorities have brought to the world’s attention the need to mitigate threats to mental health posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crises that ensued in its wake. This recognition comes at a pivotal moment for the field of mental health epidemiology. There is growing acknowledgement that the mental health (along with what may be called mental wealth) of nations relies on dynamic interrelationships among physical, social, economic and health systems, giving rise to a complex web of variables that challenge traditional analytic methods....

In the last several years, growing popularity of anti-immigration policies—ranging from public support for building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to the outcome of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom—has been largely attributed to native-born Whites feeling threatened by a rise in ethnic diversity across the Western world. But to what extent does research on diversity as a whole support the idea that more diversity leads to backlash from Whites?...

In the days after a heart attack, surviving patients and their loved ones can breathe a sigh of relief that the immediate danger is over—but the scar tissue that forms during the long healing process can inflict lasting damage. Too often it restricts the heart’s ability to fill properly between beats, disrupting rhythm and ultimately leading to heart failure. Yet a new possible treatment may help to revitalize an injured ticker....

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote English poet John Donne. Nearly four centuries later science is gaining a fuller appreciation of just how literally true that is. In addition to the bacteria that can make us sick, researchers have known for a few decades that we play host to friendly microbes as well. They help our body by performing important tasks such as breaking down food components to make them digestible or processing nutrients so we can make use of them....

March 1967 Eat the Whales “A proposal to raise plankton-eating whales in captivity for the dual purpose of providing food for the expanding human population and saving the whales from extinction has been advanced by Gifford B. Pinchot of Johns Hopkins University. He suggests that the corrals for domesticated whales could be coral: the atolls of the Pacific. An important feature of the scheme would be to fertilize the water in the atolls artificially to increase the production of plankton....

“The face is the index of the mind,” according to an ancient proverb. People with autism, however, are often unable to judge when a face conveys emotions such as happiness or sadness, and many researchers take this as evidence that autism involves serious deficits in processing social information. Yet the voice, too, can provide emotional cues, and several recent studies indicate that when listening to voices, people with autism can actually recognize feelings and other traits of humanness as well as—or even better than—neurotypical people do....

The world’s top emitters will convene tomorrow—and the setting might as well be a virtual chess board. President Biden’s climate summit will gather three dozen leaders from countries with their own motivations related to domestic politics, international trade and, sometimes, altruistic intentions toward global warming. The United States is not the knight. At least not yet. Central to the agenda will be whether the United States commits to the type of aggressive emissions cuts that it’s pushing for from other countries—and then whether it can fulfill those promises....

Many people with psychosis suffer from persecutory delusions—beliefs that terrible things will happen to them in everyday situations, such as people trying to harm them. The disorder causes social anxiety, which can be exacerbated by other symptoms, such as hearing voices. All of this makes ordinary activities such as shopping or going to the doctor challenging. Often a person just withdraws entirely from social contact. In a vicious cycle, the ensuing isolation and rumination can exacerbate other symptoms, including those causing the withdrawal....

These are the days of fever dreams, whether induced by an actual virus or by the slow-motion stresses of a world dealing with a pandemic. One kind of dream in particular that I know I’ve had has to do with discovering that this was all, well, a dream. Except, when I really do wake up, I remember that there are ideas about the nature of reality that go beyond even this....

There’s some good news related to an Ebola crisis that has offered very little up until now. The World Health Organization now predicts there are adequate supplies of an experimental Ebola vaccine to control the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “I believe we will have enough vaccine to stop this outbreak unless something very dramatic changes,” Dr. Peter Salama, WHO’s deputy director-general of emergency preparedness and response, told STAT....

By Amy Caren Daniel Facebook plans to use artificial intelligence and update its tools and services to help prevent suicides among its users. The world’s largest social media network said it plans to integrate its existing suicide prevention tools for Facebook posts into its live-streaming feature, Facebook Live, and its Messenger service. Artificial intelligence will be used to help spot users with suicidal tendencies, the company said in a blogpost on Wednesday....

When Luke Skywalker jumps into an X-wing fighter and flies off into space in the Star Wars movies, he’s performing a feat that is impossible today. Current orbital launchers are large, multistage affairs that combine the thrust of a series of throwaway rocket stages to escape Earth’s gravitational clutches and send a small payload into the void above. How much simpler and cheaper it would be if one vehicle could accomplish the same task and return intact, again and again....

Where, an old joke asks, does a 400-pound gorilla sleep? Anywhere it wants to, the superannuated gag answers. In keeping with that line of reasoning, a 400-pound gorilla should similarly hum anytime it wants to. The scientifically verified answer, however, is that the gorilla in question actually hums when he’s eating—if the gorilla in question is a socially prominent male, anyway, according to a study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE....

Is the existence of life on Earth a lucky fluke or an inevitable consequence of the laws of nature? Is it simple for life to emerge on a newly formed planet, or is it the virtually impossible product of a long series of unlikely events? Advances in fields as disparate as astronomy, planetary science and chemistry now hold promise that answers to such profound questions may be around the corner. If life turns out to have emerged multiple times in our galaxy, as scientists are hoping to discover, the path to it cannot be so hard....