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Mountain glaciers around the world, from the Himalayas to the Andes, are shrinking in the face of climate change—and that could pose a major threat to water resources for nearby communities. Greenland and Antarctica house the world’s largest ice sheets, but ice can be found in high-altitude locations around the world, from Asia to Europe to South America. These mountain glaciers are important resources for human settlements. Glacial runoff, especially during the spring and summer, can provide a critical source of fresh water downstream....

When it comes to parental inquiries about school, children generally respond with a shrug and, if they’re lucky, an obligatory “nothing.” Parents, of course, know better, and will soon be able to track their kids’ abilities and smarts thanks to LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., the Emeryville, Calif., manufacturer of technology-based learning aids. LeapFrog this week announced its new “Learning Path” strategy, which includes Web-based programs designed to guide children through the company’s extensive lineup of devices for developing reading, math and other skills....

By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh a second major case targeting President Barack Obama’s healthcare law on Wednesday when it considers a conservative challenge to tax subsidies critical to the measure’s implementation. The case is set for a one-hour oral argument starting just after 10 a.m. (1500 GMT), with a ruling due by the end of June. If a majority of the nine justices rules against the administration, up to 7....

When Arizona Sen. John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he vowed to cut America’s reliance on foreign oil by opening up the nation’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling—drawing cheers from GOP delegates on hand for his party’s national convention. “We will drill new oil wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now,” McCain pledged to his faithful, who gushed with enthusiastic chants of “drill, baby, drill!” The ultimate goal, the candidate said: to “stop sending $700 billion a year (for oil) to countries that don’t like us very much....

First of a four-part series. “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” President Obama said at the top of his State of the Union address to Congress last week. He was expressing a vision of his administration’s high-stakes campaign to help American companies claim leadership in future clean energy technologies. Behind the rhetoric is a thrust by the administration to target federal investments in technology on ways to dramatically change energy use across the economy – in transportation, electricity generation, industrial processes and building design....

Watery eyes, runny noses and puffy faces will abound this year as a warm winter, human development and climate change converge to create a brutal allergy season that will likely get worse for years to come, according to experts. Plants like ragweed are in pollen overdrive from very favorable weather, while stinging insects like yellow jackets and hornets are findings new homes farther north. More people are becoming susceptible to allergies over time as pollen seasons are getting longer....

Even though it is already the most endangered primate in the world, the greater bamboo lemur just can’t catch a break. Climate change is starving out this Madagascar native, a study published Thursday reports in Current Biology. These critically endangered lemurs nibble almost entirely on the tender shoots of one bamboo species. But during the dry season, which is normally from August to November, the lemurs switch to the bamboo’s culm–the more readily available but nutrition-less woody trunk....

A popular but controversial cholesterol drug reduces the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and stroke, researchers say. The drug, called ezetimibe, had been shower to lower cholesterol levels, but its ability to combat heart disease was in dispute. But now ezetimibe, made by Merck of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, has been found to lower the number of cardiovascular events by 6.4% when given with another cholesterol drug. The effect is significant but small; still, some scientists say that the results affirm the ‘lower is better’ hypothesis: that reducing levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (often called ‘bad’ cholesterol) lowers the risk of cardiovascular events....

An international team of researchers has developed miniscule, self-propelled devices that mimic the way cells move. These “nanoswimmers” cross the blood–brain barrier highly efficiently, and could lead to the development of drug delivery systems that navigate through tissues and organs to target specific sites precisely. The submicron-size swimmers borrow a page from larger microorganisms that can detect nutrients and toxins in their environment, and move toward or away from them by a process called chemotaxis....

Sometimes the greatest scientific discoveries come from research that seems simplistic, esoteric or flat-out bizarre. The weirder the better for the organizers of the Golden Goose Awards. Sponsored by a number of leading scientific societies, the awards were launched last year to celebrate the importance of federally funded basic research projects that may sound quirky but sometimes deliver tremendous payoffs. “When you call somebody and tell them you’d like to present them with a Golden Goose Award, their first question is often, Is this a joke?...

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Because of advances in drug design and precision medicine, researchers have been able to target certain molecules within a cell at the root of a particular disease and to develop specific therapies to undo their damages. Today, precision targeting combines therapy decisions with molecular insights to offer hope after a life-changing cancer diagnosis. But there’s a dark side to cancer-killing drugs designed to match distinct cancer mutations like a key into a lock....

The state of privacy in the 21st century is a worldwide concern, given the Internet’s global reach. Although several key themes emerge when examining the impact of technology on privacy and security—including cyber crime (and crime fighting), the application of old privacy laws to new technologies, and whether companies can share customer data without consent—different countries find themselves grappling with distinct problems. China: “Human Search” Invades Privacy Over the past year or more, a concept known as “human search” (also referred to as an “Internet mob”) has grown in popularity in China....

On July 20, 2019, a half-century will have passed since Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. More than just an excuse to celebrate an epochal achievement, the 50th anniversary is also an opportunity to reflect on the Apollo program’s complex origins and legacy—and on how lunar exploration in general has changed our understanding not only of the moon, but also of Earth and ourselves....

Using the light of distant, dying galaxies, astronomers have produced the largest, three-dimensional map of the universe yet. Encompassing roughly 600,000 so-called luminous red galaxies–ancient galaxies with only old, red stars left that are uniquely brilliant–the map extends 5.6 billion light-years out into space, or 40 percent of the way to the edge of the visible universe. Astrophysicists Nikhil Padmanabhan of Princeton University and David Schlegel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories led a team of international colleagues that painstakingly surveyed the color and redshift of 10,000 of these unique galaxies....

The image above contains one actual mirror and three empty frames. Can you work out which is which? The visual riddle is the creation of Matt Pritchard, a magician from the U.K., who won second prize in the 2020 Best Illusion of the Year Contest with a related puzzle. The conundrum highlights our perceptual limitations regarding mirrors. Despite our seemingly unlimited everyday experience with reflecting surfaces, it turns out that most of us understand ordinary mirrors much worse than we think....

In Earth’s earliest days tiny microbial reactions helped shape our planet’s evolution and composition. Certain ancient organisms managed to thrive even before the planet had readily accessible oxygen in the atmosphere, thanks to their ability to tap other substances like arsenic or iron for the electron-transfer reactions crucial for metabolism. Dianne Newman is best known for her work exploring how these ancient microbes obtained their nutrients, and how their metabolic reactions shaped the geochemistry of their environments....

The Enigma of the Owl: An Illustrated Natural History by Mike Unwin and David Tipling. Yale University Press, 2017 ($40) With their straight-on stares and nocturnal habits, owls are among the most intriguing and inscrutable of animals. In this large-format book, more than 200 photographs of owls in the wild and essays by nature writer Unwin help to demystify the creatures. The pictures, taken or selected by Tipling, catch owls on the wing, in the nest and on the hunt, providing a close-up look at dozens of species....

Dear EarthTalk: I haven’t heard much of late about big oil spills like the infamous Exxon Valdez. Has the industry cleaned up its act, or do the media just not report them? – Olivia G., via e-mail In the wake of 1989’s massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, when 11 million gallons of oil befouled some 1,300 miles of formerly pristine and wildlife-rich coastline, much has been done to prevent future spills of such magnitude....

We stand in warm rain on a dirt road and contemplate a cattle pasture. It forms a 100-meter-wide gap, a kilometer long, between two patches of forest. Here, a few hours drive from Rio de Janeiro, our generation will make decisions that will determine whether we can sustain the present variety of life on Earth–its biodiversity. Brazil once had more than one million square kilometers of coastal forest. In the remaining 10 percent lives the largest number of species at immediate risk of extinction in the Americas....

By Lincoln Feast and Maggie Lu YueyangSYDNEY (Reuters) - Passengers and crew aboard a Russian ship trapped for eight days in ice off Antarctica planned to ring in the New Year with dinner, drinks and song as they waited for a break in a blizzard to allow a Chinese helicopter to rescue them.But they can’t party too hard because the rescue could come at any minute.The Akademik Shokalskiy, trapped since December 24 about 100 nautical miles east of a French Antarctic station, Dumont D’Urville, and about 1,500 nautical miles south of Tasmania, welcomes the New Year at 1100 GMT, two hours ahead of Sydney....