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Patches of water ice appear to be speckled across the surface of a comet, according to a new study using observations from a European space probe. The Rosetta spacecraft, currently orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, spotted 120 bright, reflective spots on the surface of the comet that were at least a few meters (about 6 feet) in size. While their composition is still being examined, the spots tend to appear in areas that are shaded by the sun, scientists noted....

What makes the sap run? Because he or she wants to serve in Congress. Well, that’s the first answer that springs to mind this autumn day just after the November elections, and we’ll get back to that subject later. But a better answer deals with a better interpretation of the question–regarding maple syrup. That subject was also on my mind, I having recently returned from a trip to the Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill Center, Vt....

Dear EarthTalk: What are some simple low cost improvements I can do to my home to make it greener? – Stefan Lonce, via email According to consumer advocate Remar Sutton, there are many ways to save energy and other resources around the home without spending a lot of money. And taking action sooner rather than later will lead to ongoing savings on utility bills, so a little cash outlay now will more than pay for itself in the long run....

By David Schwartz PHOENIX (Reuters) - Torrential rains drenched much of the U.S. Southwest on Monday, prompting flash-flood warnings across four states and taking the lives of two women washed away in separate incidents in Arizona. The Phoenix area was hit by a record downpour that closed sections of two major freeways, and the National Weather Service issued flash-flood warnings for parts of Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. “This is a life-threatening situation,” the NWS said in an advisory....

WASHINGTON — The White House still doesn’t have a top science adviser, but it has a science fair in the works. A White House official said Friday that the science fair, an annual tradition started by former President Barack Obama in 2010, will continue under President Trump. No date has been finalized. The news, first reported by CBS, comes ahead of a science-centric weekend in Washington. As part of the March for Science, thousands are expected to descend on the National Mall and at satellite marches around the country on Saturday to promote evidence-based policymaking and stress the importance of federally funded basic science research....

Dear EarthTalk: I understand that pet cats prey on lots of birds and other “neighborhood” wildlife, but isn’t it cruel to force felines to live indoors only? And isn’t human encroachment the real issue for bird populations, not a few opportunistic cats?—Jason Braunstein, Taos, N.M. While it is true that habitat loss as a result of human encroachment is a primary threat to birds and wildlife of all kinds, outdoor cats are no doubt exacerbating the loss of biodiversity as their numbers swell and they carry on their instinctual business of hunting....

Joint disorders and low back pain consistently rate among the most common reasons U.S. adults visit their doctors. Physical therapy is an effective treatment for these conditions, but many patients are not able to access the care they need. Demand for physical therapists has long outpaced supply, a trend that is only projected to continue. The shortage is especially acute in rural areas. Insurance coverage of physical therapy varies widely—many plans have high co-pays and strict limits on the number of visits covered for it—or will not cover it at all....

Don’t get too comfortable with the newest federal climate change guidelines, legal experts cautioned yesterday. A number of environmental policy experts warned that the White House recommendation that federal agencies consider climate change when conducting project reviews could be easily dialed back under a new administration. “These are not regulations, not rules and not binding for agencies,” said Raul Garcia, legislative counsel for Earthjustice. “It depends who’s in office like everything else....

It is presumptuous to assume that we are worthy of special attention from advanced species in the Milky Way. We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Our sun formed at the tail end of the star formation history of the universe. Most stars are billions of years older than ours....

Your memories of high school biology class may be a bit hazy nowadays, but there are probably a few things you haven’t forgotten. Like the fact that you are a composite of your parents—your mother and father each provided you with half your genes, and each parent’s contribution was equal. Gregor Mendel, often called the father of modern genetics, came up with this concept in the late 19th century, and it has been the basis for our understanding of genetics ever since....

Black carbon, commonly described as soot, may play a larger role in global warming than previously estimated, according to a new study. Every year in the Northern Hemisphere about 7.5 million metric tons of black carbon, the equivalent of more than 100 times Earth’s total biomass, enters the air from internal combustion engines, forest fires and other sources. The fine material absorbs sunlight almost as well as carbon dioxide—a well-known greenhouse gas—and may contribute to accelerated snowmelts and increased global temperatures....

What is the difference between a computer and a black hole? This question sounds like the start of a Microsoft joke, but it is one of the most profound problems in physics today. Most people think of computers as specialized gizmos: streamlined boxes sitting on a desk or fingernail-size chips embedded in high-tech coffeepots. But to a physicist, all physical systems are computers. Rocks, atom bombs and galaxies may not run Linux, but they, too, register and process information....

Amphibians are going extinct faster than any other group of organisms. Since 1980, 122 species may have disappeared. Of the roughly 6,000 remaining, up to half are threatened; some 500 could go extinct in the next 50 years if not taken into captivity. Now zoos and other institutions worldwide are working together on an “Amphibian Ark” to help save all these species as they vanish in the wild, in the hope of one day returning them home....

Near absolute zero, exotic states of matter can bizarrely flow without friction. Physicists have known that, in principle, everlasting flows are possible in a Bose-Einstein condensate—a pool of ultracold particles that essentially behave as one superparticle—but have failed to see them. Now National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers have created a doughnut-shaped condensate with persistentcircular superfluid flows lasting up to 10 seconds. Unlike past condensates, which have taken ball or cigar shapes, a doughnut stabilizes persistent flows, because it would require too much energy for the central hole to drift about and disturb the rest of the condensate....

When Rachel Stein (not her real name) was a small child, she would pace around in a circle shaking a string for hours at a time, mentally spinning intricate alternative plots for her favorite television shows. Usually she was the star—the imaginary seventh child in The Brady Bunch, for example. “Around the age of eight or nine, my older brother said, ‘You’re doing this on the front lawn, and the neighbors are looking at you....

Sometimes, marine biologist T. Aran Mooney tries to look at things from a squid’s perspective. “We have a squid-centric view of life from my lab,” the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist said. Mooney partly focuses on squids because of the important role they play in ocean ecology. “We view squid as this organism that either eats or is eaten by everything in the ocean at some point,” he said. “When squid populations change, it often impacts other animals such as albatross egg production or fisheries production....

Today an e-mail chain I’m on, where contributors swap wacky physics theories, veered into wacky political theories. Chinese communists, one physicist insisted, are orchestrating protests that have been roiling U.S. cities. China wants to make Donald Trump look bad so he loses the fall election to Joe Biden, who is a Chinese puppet. Others on the chain denounced and cheered this conspiracy theory. Seeking relief from the madness, I shut my laptop and opened The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, by philosopher R....

Self-taught mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan had a brilliant but brief life. In 1920, at the age of 32, he died from a combination of illness and malnutrition. Before he passed, he filled various notebooks and manuscripts with nearly 4,000 results and conjectures. These documents have inspired mathematicians ever since, helping solve various conundrums and inspiring new fields of math (See “The Oracle” by Ariel Bleicher in the May issue of Scientific American)....

By Dan Whitcomb Jan 31 (Reuters) - More than 1,700 residents of Flint, Michigan who say the Environmental Protection Agency mismanaged the water crisis that exposed thousands of children to lead poisoning have sued the U.S. government, seeking class action status for their claims. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Michigan on Monday, asserted that the EPA failed to warn them of the dangers of the toxic water or take steps to ensure that state and local authorities were addressing the crisis....

By Philip Ball of Nature magazineCharles Darwin was not a plagiarist, say two researchers who aim to refute the idea that Darwin revised his own theory of evolution to fit in with one proposed by fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.The accusation has received little support from serious historians of Darwin’s life and work, who say that Darwin and Wallace came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection independently at more or less the same time....