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Deadly accidents involving nuclear reactors, oil rigs and coal mines in recent months remind us that all forms of energy generation carry risks. In developed countries, coal is the most hazardous (bottom left), according to the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, which studied more than 1,800 accidents worldwide over nearly 30 years. For coal, mining tends to be the most dangerous step; for oil and gas, most accidents occur during distribution; and for nuclear, generating plants are on the hot seat (orange bars)....

For millennia humans have created art with pigment-based paints, inks and dyes. Now researchers have produced tiny plastic paintings whose colors come from variations in microscopic surface features instead. Pigments are chemicals that absorb certain light wavelengths and reflect others to produce specific colors. But some materials—such as those on morpho butterflies’ iridescent blue wings and the striking feathers of some hummingbirds—produce colors based on the size and spacing of microstructures on their surfaces, which interact with light wavelengths of different sizes....

Whatever the particular imagery, it’s undoubtedly more picturesque that that conveyed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition: An area greater than 1.25 acres, populated by trees 16 feet or taller, with more than 10 percent canopy cover. While this simple and straightforward list of attributes might make it easy to classify land, it gives little insight into what a forest can and should look like, which is important because recent research suggests that not all are created equal....

The work of the eminent physicist, Dr Sheldon Cooper of hit TV show The Big Bang Theory, has served as the springboard for the creation of a new chemical compound—BaZnGa! Those familiar with Dr Cooper will know that his use of the phrase ‘bazinga!’ tends to be associated with a jest or jape. Despite this, Paul Canfield, a researcher at Iowa State University, and his team decided that Dr Cooper’s fearsome scientific reputation merited the thorough investigation of the compound he so frequently proposes....

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazineThe perennial grass Miscanthus × giganteushas all the makings of a biofuel superstar. It grows rapidly, converts sunlight into biomass ten times more efficiently than the average plant and has little need for fertilizer.But M. × giganteus is a headache in the lab. Its genome has few markers to help would-be breeders keep track of desirable genes, and little is known about how it regulates important traits such as cold tolerance and water efficiency....

Climate change is one of the most monumental challenges of our time. But even as it draws increasing calls for action, one of the most important steps we can take still gets far too little attention: we need more women in the energy sector. Only 15 percent of employees in the oil and gas industry are women, and that number is even smaller when you look at higher-paying technical jobs. Despite popular belief to the contrary, most leaders in oil and gas do recognize the reality of climate change....

Researchers have developed a high-tech method to rid the body of infections — even those caused by unknown pathogens. A device inspired by the spleen can quickly clean blood of everything from Escherichia coli to Ebola, researchers report on September 14 in Nature Medicine. Blood infections can be very difficult to treat, and can lead to sepsis, an often-fatal immune response. More than 50% of the time, physicians cannot diagnose the cause of an infection that has prompted sepsis, and so they resort to antibiotics that attack a broad range of bacteria....

Last Tuesday the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize for physics: half went to David J. Thouless at the University of Washington, Seattle and half to F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University and J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University for, in the Academy’s words, “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” Their work uses mathematical insights from the field of topology to describe and explain properties such as superfluidity and superconductivity in thin layers of fluid....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. As hurricanes barrel through some of the most impoverished communities in the Western Hemisphere, and as floods ravage Yemen, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and India, now is the time to rethink and prioritize cholera epidemic prevention and response. In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in 2016, a surge of cholera in Haiti increased the death toll from the disease....

With an impish smile, the professor announced that he was about to carry out a little experiment. He asked his class to watch a short video of two basketball teams and to count how many times the players in white T-shirts passed the ball. The students found that it wasn’t easy to keep their eyes on the moving ball, but most of them believed they counted correctly. After the show, the teacher turned to face everyone again: “What did you think about the gorilla?...

Trudy, a 34-year-old bank employee, had been suffering from epilepsy for more than 18 years. She had tried all the usual medications, with little success. Typically she would feel nauseated before an oncoming seizure, then lose consciousness. A few minutes later she would wake up, exhausted. According to her husband, she would smack her lips during her seizures and fumble with her hands. When it got to the point that Trudy was experiencing two to three seizures a week, she decided to contact the Epilepsy Clinic at Bonn University, Germany, which she had heard about in a television report....

The day that Joe Biden takes the oath of office as president of the U.S. will also mark another, less auspicious milestone. It was on the same day a year earlier that the nation’s first known COVID case was diagnosed in Washington State. January 20, 2020, set off a public health crisis that extended its reach to every U.S. citizen—and ultimately every member of the human species. The U.S. death toll reached more than 370,000 by January 9, 2021—a number greater than the population of Honolulu and nearly as big as that of Cleveland....

Although it has long been debated whether the proto-bird Archaeopteryx was able to actually fly or merely evolving toward that ability, to date nobody had yet seriously suggested that it could have been instead in the midst of losing its ability to fly. But that is precisely what Michael Habib, a biologist at the University of Southern California proposed last week to a packed hall at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Los Angeles....

As a male surgeon, I am mortified that the profession allows my female colleagues to be treated like second-class citizens. I have watched women surgeons get bullied, harassed and discriminated against by their male counterparts. I have seen a countless number of their careers crumble in front of my eyes. I have seen their tears. I have seen them go into a deep hole of depression and never come back. And I’m embarrassed to say that for a long time, I did nothing about it....

The seizures of around one-third of people with epilepsy are resistant to available medicines — a statistic that haunts neurology. It has been this way for decades. The medicines have got better by becoming safer and causing fewer side effects. But still there are people for whom the drugs simply don’t work — and for them, epilepsy can be ruinous. “There’s stigma; they can’t drive; they have difficulty holding down jobs; they have difficulty maintaining relationships,” says Dimitri Kullmann, a neurologist and neuroscientist at University College London (UCL)....

On February 5, an unknown cyberattacker tried to poison the water supply of Oldsmar, Fla. City officials say the targeted water-treatment facility had a software remote-access system that let staff control the plant’s computers from a distance. The hacker entered the system and set it to massively increase sodium hydroxide levels in the water. This chemical (better known as lye) was originally set at 100 parts per million, an innocuous amount that helps control the water’s pH levels....

Dear EarthTalk: I understand there is good news about the recovery of bird species like the peregrine falcon, bald eagle and others owed to the 1972 ban on DDT. Can you explain?— Mildred Eastover, Bath, Maine Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book, Silent Spring, told the real-life story of how bird populations across the country were suffering as a result of the widespread application of the synthetic pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which was being used widely to control mosquitoes and others insects....

Deon, a fictional engineer in the 2015 sci-fi film Chappie, wants to create a machine that can think and feel. To this end, he writes an artificial-intelligence program that can learn like a child. Deon’s test subject, Chappie, starts off with a relatively blank mental slate. By simply observing and experimenting with his surroundings, he acquires general knowledge, language and complex skills—a task that eludes even the most advanced AI systems we have today....

I recently got a note from Diane, who was upset with me for supporting the consumption of dairy products. “No human should be consuming milk after they’ve been weaned from their mother’s breast,” she wrote. “It is completely unnatural. Cow’s milk is intended only for baby cows—and it’s cruel to take the milk away from the calves for whom it is clearly intended. Need calcium? Milk, which may contribute to osteoporosis and numerous other health issues, is the last place you should be getting it....

The flight is scheduled for July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The New Shepard capsule, which operates autonomously and does not need a pilot, will launch from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility. The flight will last approximately 11 minutes. Bezos’ brother, Mark, will join the crew as well, the Instagram post noted. “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space,” Bezos wrote....