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By Morag MacKinnonPERTH, Australia (Reuters) - Ice that has trapped a Russian ship with 74 people on board in Antarctica appeared to be cracking up on Sunday, raising hopes for a rescue as a powerful Australian icebreaker approached the stranded vessel.The ice-bound ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, left New Zealand on November 28 on a privately funded expedition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of an Antarctic journey led by famed Australian explorer Douglas Mawson....

Taking a blood-thinning drug in addition to aspirin daily after a heart attack significantly reduced the risk of death, follow-up heart attacks and strokes, according to a six-year study of nearly 46,000 patients in China. Researchers found that the drug, clopidogrel, increased overall survival by 9 percent. “If early clopidogrel therapy was given in hospital to just 1 million of the 10 million patients who have a heart attack every year then it would, on present evidence, prevent about 5,000 deaths and 5,000 nonfatal reinfarctions and strokes,” writes Zhengming Chen of the University of Oxford in a report published in the current issue of the Lancet....

In 2019 a disturbing report ran in Science that global bird populations have plummeted by 29 percent—some three billion birds lost—since 1970. That birds provide vital services to hold most ecosystems together is undoubtable; their decline is either the canary of coming ecosystem disaster or evidence that it might be too late to save many of Earth’s diverse biomes. Photographer Magnusson and nature writers Ottosson and Ottosson teamed up to create this striking collection of bird portraits paired with intimate, lesser-known details about the subjects....

Geneticist Michael Snyder has long been a fan of studying himself. Looking into his own genetics, he realized five years ago that he was at high risk of developing diabetes despite his slim build and running habit. So he was already inclined to use wearable fitness tracking devices—the high-tech wristbands that can transmit data about activity level, heart rate and sleep patterns to one’s phone or computer, which records the information....

One day in early 2007 undergraduate student David Narkevic came to us with some news. He was a physics major at West Virginia University, where the two of us had just begun our first year as assistant professors. We had tasked him with inspecting archival observations of the Magellanic Clouds—small satellite galaxies of the Milky Way about 200,000 light-years away from Earth. Narkevic had an understated manner, and that day was no exception....

When chemistry graduate student Abby Gatmaitan first visited the University of Texas at Austin on a recruiting tour, she learned about the MasSpec Pen—a handheld device that scientists there were developing to diagnose tumors on contact. “I knew that was where I wanted to do my research,” she says. Shortly after joining the lab, she realized that if the pen could categorize human tissue, it would probably also work on other animals....

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics will be awarded to two research pioneers working on graphene, a material that could have myriad high-tech applications, which they first produced by decidedly low-tech means. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both of the University of Manchester in England, shared the prize for their work producing and characterizing the material, which is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon resembling a nanoscale chicken wire. The new physics laureates were announced October 5 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm....

A network of inexpensive seismometers, installed in people’s living rooms, gardens and workplaces across Haiti, is helping scientists to unravel the inner workings of the magnitude-7.2 earthquake that devastated the southwestern part of the Caribbean nation this month. The community-science effort launched after the country’s last major earthquake — a magnitude-7 tremor in 2010 that killed more than 100,000 people — and has since helped to reveal details about Haiti’s seismic activity....

Climate change promises to bring with it longer, hotter summers to many places on the planet. This June turned out to be the fourth-hottest month ever recorded—globally—scientists are reporting. With more heat waves on the horizon, and a big one currently sweeping much of the U.S., the risk of heat-related health problems has also been on the rise. Heat exhaustion is a relatively common reaction to severe heat and can include symptoms such as dizziness, headache and fainting....

If you have ever found yourself cursing a noisy upstairs neighbor, take solace in the fact that he or she is aging faster than you are. Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that clocks at different gravitational potentials will tick at different rates—a clock at higher elevation will tick faster than will a clock closer to Earth’s center. In other words, time passes more quickly in your neighbor’s upstairs apartment than it does in your apartment....

EL HIGUERON, Peru – Carlos Cruz Chanta lives just off a rutted dirt road, almost lost in the mist, outside this village on a steep ridge of jungle-covered mountains. Like his neighbors, he makes his living raising livestock and growing corn, fruit, beans, and coffee. But the bean harvests have failed recently, and cattle have come down with strange illnesses. Ice has ruined the oranges and avocados. Most worryingly, the cold has taken its toll on his children....

When cosmetic surgeon Allan Wu first heard the woman’s complaint, he wondered if she was imagining things or making it up. A resident of Los Angeles in her late sixties, she explained that she could not open her right eye without considerable pain and that every time she forced it open, she heard a strange click—a sharp sound, like a tiny castanet snapping shut. After examining her in person at The Morrow Institute in Rancho Mirage, Calif....

A tiny lizard that lives on Caribbean cays just might demonstrate evolution in action, if hurricanes would stop cleaning the slate. Jonathan Losos of Harvard University and his colleagues have attempted three times to watch natural selection at work, only to have hurricane surges submerge the low-lying islands and wipe out the studied population, most recently Hurricane Frances in 2004. But even preliminary results from the last go-round–just one year–have revealed some startling proof that natural selection works quickly and can even turn on a dime....

When a dog gazes deeply into the eyes of its human, a powerful bond forms. The extended eye contact triggers the same hormone response that helps human mothers bond with their babies. As the dog stares, the hormone oxytocin floods the owner’s brain, causing him or her to lavish attention on the canine, which experiences a similar spike in the hormone and proceeds to stare even harder—and on it goes in a seemingly endless loop of love....

WHY CRIME DROPPED In “How New York Beat Crime,” Franklin E. Zimring refers only incidentally to a decline since 1990 in the “percentage of the population in the most arrest-prone bracket, between 15 and 29,” in both New York and the nation. The nationwide decline in that age group must be a contributing factor to the crime drop in that city and the U.S. as a whole. The book Freakonomics, by Steven D....

His finalist year: 1965 His finalist project: Figuring out potential crystal structures What led to the project: As a kid growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in Louisville, Ky., J. Richard Gott loved studying geometry. In those early post-Sputnik days, there was “great energy and great excitement” about math and science in the schools, and his teachers encouraged his interests. So for an independent research project, he decided to look at metallic crystal structures....

Vast underwater meadows of gently waving sea grass stand sentinel for hundreds of miles up and down the West Coast. These blue-green fields perform a variety of important services: They protect the shoreline from erosion, clear pollutants from the water and provide habitat for all kinds of marine animals. New research suggests sea grass meadows may also mitigate a serious consequence of greenhouse gas emissions: the steady acidification of ocean waters....

Some things never change. physicists call them the constants of nature. Such quantities as the velocity of light, c, Newton’s constant of gravitation, G, and the mass of the electron, me, are assumed to be the same at all places and times in the universe. They form the scaffolding around which the theories of physics are erected, and they define the fabric of our universe. Physics has progressed by making ever more accurate measurements of their values....

Insomnia is one of the most frustrating experiences in our modern existence. You stare up at the ceiling (or worse, at the red numbers on a clock), mind buzzing with random thoughts, tossing and turning while everyone else snores away blissfully. It can really drive a person crazy! Everyone has insomnia sometimes. Even though I’m a sleep expert (and I was lucky enough to be born with good sleep genes), I still sometimes toss and turn all night....

By Matthias Inverardi DUESSELDORF Germany (Reuters) - At least six people were killed in storms that swept Germany’s most populous state late on Monday, forcing Duesseldorf airport to shut down, felling trees and leaving some roads impassable. After a scorchingly hot three-day holiday weekend, thunderstorms, strong winds and heavy rain pounded the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, causing Germany’s third-largest airport in Duesseldorf to close for about an hour. Three people were reported to have died in the state capital when a tree fell onto a garden shed in which they were seeking shelter....