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Key concepts Chemistry Physics Reaction rate Color Introduction Have you ever wondered why your dirty clothes come out of the washing machine white and clean? What makes all the stains disappear? The answer to that question is bleach—an ingredient that is present in most laundry detergents. Bleach is responsible for the whitening effect that occurs during washing and removes most of the stains. But how does it work? In this science activity you will find out by making food coloring disappear with the power of bleach!...

Cats may have beaten dogs on the Internet but felines have been a rare breed in genetics labs compared with their canine counterparts. Now, at last, cats are clawing their way into genomics. At a meeting this week in San Diego, California, a close-knit group of geneticists unveiled the first results from an effort to sequence the genomes of 99 domestic cats. The work will benefit both humans and felines, the researchers say, by mapping the mutations underlying conditions that afflict the two species, such as kidney disease....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Computing professionals are on the front lines of almost every aspect of the modern world. They’re involved in the response when hackers steal the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people from a large corporation. Their work can protect—or jeopardize—critical infrastructure like electrical grids and transportation lines. And the algorithms they write may determine who gets a job, who is approved for a bank loan or who gets released on bail....

Dear EarthTalk: Hunting seems to be a real controversy among environmental advocates. Can you set the record straight: Is hunting good or bad for the environment? —Bill Davis, New York, NY Like so many hot button issues, the answer to this question depends upon who you ask. On the one hand, some say, nothing could be more natural than hunting, and indeed just about every animal species—including humans—has been either predator or prey at some point in its evolution....

Cut back on the beef, dairy, sweets and savory snacks, but feel free to munch away on more fruits, vegetables and cereals, if you’d like a more climate-friendly and healthy diet, according to recent research conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The changes—which the authors note are ultimately “relatively minor” and “realistic”—could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent. It should be noted the studies were focused in the United Kingdom....

By Zoë Corbyn of Nature magazineBabies inoculated with a commonly used five-in-one vaccine to protect against a range of potentially lethal childhood diseases face up to a six-fold increased risk of fever-associated seizures on the day they are vaccinated, according to a study of nearly 380,000 Danish children.But both the authors of the study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association and experts in the field stress that parents shouldn’t be concerned....

It’s been more than four years since leaders tried and failed to craft a binding new global climate change treaty in Copenhagen, and as nations head toward a new deal in 2015, the aftershocks of that Danish summit continue to reverberate. From climate campaigners to high-level diplomats, those who are committed to fighting global warming say making a strong agreement in Paris next year that radically reduces levels of greenhouse gas emissions is critical....

Summarizing the history of a 175-year-old magazine—that’s 5,107 editions with 199,694 pages containing 110,292,327 words!—into a series of graphics was a daunting assignment. When the hard drive with 64 gigabytes of .pdf files arrived at my home in Germany, I was curious to dig in but also a bit scared: as a data-visualization consultant with a background in cognitive science, I am well aware that the nuance of language and its semantic contents can only be approximated with computational methods....

College students learn in Economics 101 that no one leaves $20 bills lying on the street. It is a rubric used to fortify the theory that big economic markets are sophisticated and that items of great value are prized and not often wasted. But when it comes to industries that leak natural gas—a powerful global warmer—into the atmosphere, the theory remains a matter that leads to scientific and political disputes. A new scientific study, a summary of which appeared in the journal Nature yesterday, used ancient and new atmospheric samples and gives a boost to the gas industry’s side of the argument....

EVOLVED TASTES How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom. W. W. Norton, 2010 ($27.95) What sets humans apart from other animals? Psychologist Paul Bloom thinks it’s the fact that we like Tabasco sauce. Actually, not just Tabasco but any food that is, at least at first, “aversive.” In How Pleasure Works, Bloom tries to get to the bottom of why humans enjoy such weird pleasures as uncomfortably spicy food and owning an unwashed sweater once worn by George Clooney....

Symptoms come and go in most cases of multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease in which the immune system attacks myelin, the nonconductive sheath that surrounds neurons’ axons. Yet 10 to 15 percent of cases are progressive rather than relapsing. This more severe version appears later in life and is marked by steadily worsening symptoms. No treatments are currently available, but that might be about to change. In September pharmaceutical company Hoffmann–La Roche announced positive results from three large clinical trials of ocrelizumab, an injectable antibody medication that targets B cells, for both relapsing and progressive MS....

Steven Chu was meeting with the president for his “exit interview” when the outgoing Energy secretary told his boss that the best way to attack climate change is with a carbon tax. That marked a shift in thinking for the physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in 1997. Chu supported President Obama’s earliest efforts to apply a cap-and-trade system to the economy nationwide. But the program’s use of carbon credits, and the way they could be given to favored industries, made him realize that cap and trade is “easier to game....

Who could argue with happiness? Count the journalist Emily Esfahani Smith as one. Happiness is not itself a problem, of course, but she worries that its relentless pursuit—and the self-help industry that’s grown up around that mission—has left us feeling empty, dislocated and, well, unhappy. Instead she it would be wiser to pursue “meaning,” a thesis she lays out in her new book, The Power of Meaning. She answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook....

As the computer-controlled sliding doors suddenly opened, revealing a pitch-dark but already familiar chamber, Eshe did exactly what was expected of her after all those demanding weeks of training. Without hesitation–and most likely counting on the reward she was certain to receive given her superb performance of late–she lunged into the narrow room moving at full speed toward the opposite wall. She was ready to show off her skills. The trial started the moment Eshe crossed an infrared light beam in front of an aperture positioned directly in her running path....

One of the joys of being a science journalist is that it’s your job to talk with people who are doing mind-bending and world-changing research and to ask them goofy questions. We ask them serious questions, too, of course, but we also encourage scientists to share the funny, tense, disappointing, surprising, human sides of their work. The goal is not to make an expert seem ridiculous but to demonstrate that we’re all just people trying to figure out how to make sense of the world....

Seamlessly integrating powerful, 3-D computer circuits into soft materials such as rubber has been an elusive goal in engineering. Now researchers say they have developed a type of circuit that is soft and porous—more like a net than a chip. Manufacturers could weave these circuits into an extraordinary range of materials to create “smart matter” that scans and reacts to its surroundings or even “cyborg tissues”—human skin and organs that could report on their own health....

Just as humans are different genetically, so are they diverse linguistically, speaking at least 6,800 known tongues worldwide. New findings suggest genetics could explain some of the variety seen in language by, at times, leading to preferences for tones. The means by which this link works remains unclear, and some researchers dispute whether it exists. For the most part, languages are either unambiguously tonal or not. In tone languages, such as Mandarin in China or Yoruba in West Africa, the pitch of a spoken word affects its meaning....

One carefree summer day in California, a few college students went for a joy ride. It was the perfect day to don the shades, roll down the windows, and crank up the tunes. But then someone noticed all the bumps in the road. These were engineering students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the group got to thinking: Isn’t there energy in that? So they rigged up a bunch of small sensors....

By Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an effort to help Americans prepare for the effects of global warming, the White House on Wednesday unveiled a new initiative to make climate data widely available to citizens, companies and local governments. The move is part of President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, a broad strategy to meet U.S. commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that are blamed for heating the earth....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....