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Patients paralyzed by a spinal cord injury can face a grim and grueling recovery process—one in which regaining function is far from a sure thing. But a new study published last week in Scientific Reports may provide some hope to those suffering from paraplegia. Using what are called brain–machine interfaces (BMIs)—essentially cyborg connections between prosthetic devices and the nervous system—researchers for the first time were able to show that the process of learning to use a BMI-controlled device can trigger significant neurological recovery in patients with chronic spinal cord injuries....

Climate change is testing Earth’s limits. It’s altering weather patterns, intensifying natural disasters and breaking temperature records left and right. Eventually, many parts of the world may settle into a “new normal” as climate conditions shift beyond anything the planet has experienced in human history. That could be devastating for the planet’s ecosystems. A grave study warns that plants and animals all over the world may soon be living with temperatures they’ve never experienced before....

During most of my teenage years, I was plagued by acne—serious acne. Those scarlet interlopers, and my acute awareness of them, crippled my self-esteem. Only later did I wonder why in the midst of all this anxiety, the main thing I still thought about was me. The problem, as it turns out, was an inability to turn my focus outward. In fact, you should just get over yourself, psychologists Jennifer Crocker and Jessica J....

By Timothy Gardner and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backers of the Keystone XL oil pipeline hope a vote in the U.S. Senate late on Tuesday will send a bill to the desk of President Barack Obama. With the chamber apparently stuck at 59 votes in favor of Keystone XL, Senator Mary Landrieu worked hard on Monday to gather one last vote. Late in the day it seemed the Louisiana Democrat would come up just short, likely hurting her chances of winning a new six-year term in a December run-off election....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Occasionally in science there are theories that refuse to die despite the overwhelming evidence against them. The “aquatic ape hypothesis” is one of these, now championed by Sir David Attenborough in his recent BBC Radio 4 series The Waterside Ape. The hypothesis suggests that everything from walking upright to our lack of hair, from holding our breath to eating shellfish could be because an aquatic phase in our ancestry....

For the past two weeks, much of the world has watched, transfixed, as Olympic gymnasts flip, leap and vault for the gold. Under the glare of the spotlight, a lifetime of practice and physical mastery has come to fruition as these athletes perform superhuman tricks the average human could never fathom executing. But outside the stadiums of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, a different kind of acrobatic feat is performed every day....

In a popularity contest, the homely little catfish known as the chucky madtom stands no chance against majestic, endangered sport fishes such as the Chinook salmon. Yet the catfish’s plight is far more dire: none have been seen in the wild since 2004. Conservation groups are putting the spotlight on lowly species such as the chucky madtom in a bid to bring attention to the plight of aquatic creatures in the southeastern U....

When powerful street drugs collectively known as synthetic pot are smoked, the resulting high mimics the effects of marijuana. Yet these man-made cannabinoids are not marijuana at all. The drugs, more commonly called spice, fake weed or K2, are made up of any number of dried, shredded plants sprayed with chemicals that live in a murky legality zone. They are highly dangerous—and their use is on the rise. Synthetic pot, which first hit the market in the early 2000s, has especially caught the attention of public health officials in the past couple of years, stemming from a surge in hospitalizations and violent episodes....

Here are several things you can check if you are having trouble getting this experiment to work and produce results similar to those in the photos in the main article. Can’t see good interference, even with just the laser and the wire. Your observation screen might be too close to the wire. If the screen were just after the wire, you would just see the shadow of the wire and no interference....

Scientists have just documented an unexpected process occurring in the air over the Antarctic ice sheet: The wind is causing snowflakes to vaporize — literally — before they hit the ground. This means less snow may be accumulating on the continent’s surface than scientists thought. And that could change researchers’ understanding of the way climate change affects the ice sheet, including their estimates of future sea-level rise. “If there is warming over Antarctica, which is likely to happen, then the classical view is to say, well, warmer air, you can have more moisture in the air, so we should expect an increase in precipitation,” said Alexis Berne, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and senior author of the new study, which was published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

Astronomers say they have discovered a handful of relatively small galaxies that date to 500 million years after the big bang, or several hundred million years earlier than the previous oldest galaxies. The ancient objects may have initiated a key event called reionization that led to the clumping of small galaxies into larger ones. Confirming the finding will take additional work, but if true, “it’s scratching the edge of the universe,” says astronomer Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who took part in the research....

What makes some tasks harder than others to tackle? It turns out the time allotted for the work matters less than how our mind perceives the deadline. When a deadline feels like it is part of the present—say, falling within the current calendar month—we are more likely to begin the task. In one experiment, researchers asked 100 undergraduates when they would start a data-entry task that they had five days to complete....

The courthouse in L’Aquila, Italy, on February 15 hosted a highly anticipated hearing in the trial of six seismologists and one government official indicted for manslaughter over their reassurances to the public ahead of a deadly earthquake in 2009 (see “Scientists face trial over earthquake deaths” and “Scientists on trial: At fault?”). During the hearing, the former head of the Italian Department of Civil Protection turned from key witness into defendant, and a seismologist from California criticized Italy’s top earthquake experts....

The unbridled success of wireless networks for Internet access and beyond has brought mobile telecommunications to remote areas of Africa, safety to many a driver stranded roadside, and worldwide mobility to professionals who were once deskbound. Yet all of this has come at a steep environmental cost: The global network and technology required to run it produce 250 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, roughly the same as is produced yearly by 50 million automobiles (20 percent of all the autos in the U....

State laws that require homebuyers to be told about a property’s flood risk can help mitigate some effects of climate change by reducing the value of flood-prone properties and discouraging development in floodplains, a new study finds. An analysis by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research shows the more that prospective buyers know about flood risk, the less they are willing to pay for a property. “By incorporating climate risk into asset prices, markets can discourage excessive development in hazardous areas,” the study concludes....

By Michele Catanzaro of Nature magazine The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is set to decide whether Costa Rica, the only country that completely prohibits in vitro fertilization (IVF), has infringed basic rights with its ban. The tribunal — which is based in the Costa Rican capital of San José but rules on human-rights violations throughout Central and South America — met last week to hear a case brought by affected couples against Costa Rica....

Wind was the second-largest source of power generation in the country on March 29, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported yesterday, marking the first time wind output had ever simultaneously exceeded coal and nuclear over a 24-hour period. The milestone at once showed how far U.S. renewable energy has come even as it underscored the lengths the country must go to reach President Joe Biden’s climate goals. It comes after two strong years of new wind installations....

When J. Langdon Down first described savant syndrome in 1887, coining its name and noting its association with astounding powers of memory, he cited a patient who could recite Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire verbatim. Since then, in almost all cases, savant memory has been linked to a specific domain, such as music, art or mathematics. But phenomenal memory is itself the skill in a 54-year-old man named Kim Peek....

Scott Pruitt’s proposed “secret science” rule could be one of the most consequential actions taken by the EPA administrator since sweeping into the agency with a stunning agenda to deconstruct key safeguards on the environment, according to his critics and supporters. The rule announced Tuesday could require agency officials to omit credible studies that scientists say justify limits on air pollution. As Pruitt’s adversaries gaped at what they described as an audacious attack on environmental rulemaking, some of his ardent supporters applauded the administrator for boldly addressing what they see as liberal bias in scientific circles....

You take the same route to work every day, driving the same car, crossing the same intersection with the same median strip. Same old, same old. But this morning something new catches your eye: a cow grazing in the median. It takes a couple of honks to remind you that the light has turned green. If you are like most people, you will remember this moment in your morning commute for a long time—the sun was shining, daffodils had just pushed up in the median, and “We Are the Champions” was playing on the radio....