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Marion Browning of North Providence, R.I., was at her wit’s end. The 79-year-old retired nurse had suffered from chronic diarrhea for almost a year. It began after doctors prescribed antibiotics to treat her diverticulitis, a painful infection of small pouches in the wall of the colon. The regimen also killed friendly bacteria that lived in Browning’s intestines, allowing a toxin-producing organism known as Clostridium difficile to take over and begin eating away at the entire lining of her gut....

Our noses are loaded with bitter taste receptors, but they’re not helping us taste or smell lunch. Ever since researchers at the University of Iowa came to this conclusion in 2009, scientists have been looking for an explanation for why the receptors are there. One speculation is that they warn us of noxious substances. But they may play another role too: helping to fight infections. In addition to common bitter compounds, the nose’s bitter receptors also react to chemicals that bacteria use to communicate....

Dear EarthTalk: What do organizers hope to accomplish at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen (December 7 to 18, 2009)? —F. Rojas, Oakland, Calif. The upcoming COP15 meeting in Denmark—so named because it is the 15th such international gathering of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—is the world’s next big chance to take decisive multi-lateral action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough to ward off cataclysmic climate change....

Our brain cells are chattier than previously thought, according to a new study. Cells in white matter, once believed to passively relay information between neurons, were found to eavesdrop on the messages they carried and to receive chemical signals from other cells. Until now, researchers believed our brain had a basic division of labor between gray matter and white matter. In gray matter, neurons form dense networks and process information by sending signals along fingerlike projections called axons....

Many research groups are testing “ink” made from silk proteins to print human tissues, implants and perhaps even organs. The process is a less costly alternative to conventional 3-D printing with collagen, a key protein in the body’s natural scaffolding. Researchers in Assam, a state in India, are investigating using local silkworm species for the task—they recently submitted a patent for bioinks using a combination of proteins extracted from local species Antheraea assamensis and Samia ricini, as well as the commonly used Bombyx mori....

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck a historic climate change agreement in Beijing last night, vowing that the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases will each undertake steep cuts in the coming decade and will work together toward a new global deal. The United States will cut emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, a target the White House declared can be met “under existing law”—that is, without the need for Congress to pass legislation....

Wednesday, November 9, dawned gray and raw in Berlin. I was there to moderate a couple of panels at an annual meeting called Falling Walls. The name and timing celebrate the anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall, as well as the free exchange of ideas if only we can knock down barriers. I looked forward to a series of inspiring talks about how science, which I have often called the “engine of human prosperity,” could help us solve some of our greatest challenges....

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - You think your nose likes flowers? Well, certainly not as much as the tobacco hornworn moth. In fact, its life depends on it. These moths, whose olfactory abilities are as good as a bloodhound’s and vastly better than a human’s, can fly up to 80 miles (130 km) a night searching for their favorite flowers such as the Sacred Datura. The nectar of these fragrant white, trumpet-shaped flowers that bloom only once at night is an important food source for the moths, which pollinate the flowers....

Jupiter’s active moon Io has a collapsible atmosphere: New views show the satellite’s shroud of sulfur dioxide freezing when Io enters its planet’s shadow each day and converting back to gas when the moon emerges. Io, Jupiter’s fifth moon, is the solar system’s most volcanically active body; plumes of the sulfur dioxide gas bursts from multiple active volcanoes, reaching up to 300 miles (480 kilometers) above the moon’s surface at a scalding 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius)....

The best science and engineering are no match for the whims of lawmakers, so policy and innovation need to work hand in hand, Obama administration officials said. Even the best energy inventions in the world won’t make a difference to the climate unless nations acknowledge the problem and spend the resources to deploy the solutions, whether it’s cleaner energy production or pricing carbon in order to keep global warming below a 2-degree-Celsius threshold....

How could a starship—or any technology designed to detect natural forces and objects—discover a supernatural God, who by definition would be beyond any such sensors? Any detectable entity would have to be a natural being, no matter how advanced, and as I have argued in this column [see “Shermer’s Last Law”; January 2002], “any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence [ETI] is indistinguishable from God.” Thus, Shatner’s plot theme of looking for God could only turn up an ETI sufficiently advanced to appear God-like....

Puffy clouds contain a breathtaking amount of water. The volume of even a small one can top 750 cubic kilometers, and if you figure a half gram of water per cubic meter, those wispy balls of atmospheric fluff start looking like flying lakes.* Now imagine you are a farmer watching them glide over drought-parched fields, carrying more than enough water to save your crops and pull you out of debt yet yielding only a few tantalizing drops before disappearing over the horizon....

Diamonds are rarities not just on earth but also mathematically. The crystal structure of diamond has two key distinguishing properties, notes mathematician Toshikazu Sunada of Meiji University in Japan. It has maximal symmetry, which means that its components cannot be rearranged to make it any more symmetrical than it is, and a strong isotropic property, which means that it looks the same when viewed from the direction of any edge. In the February Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Sunada finds that out of an infinite universe of crystals that can exist mathematically, just one other shares these properties with diamond....

By Michael Avok PILGER Neb. (Reuters) - Hundreds of residents driven from a Nebraska village leveled by a deadly tornado were expected to be allowed back into their community Tuesday to salvage the remains of their belongings. “Pilger is gone,” said Sanford Goshorn, director of emergency management for Stanton County. Just several blocks wide and home to roughly 350 people, Pilger took a direct hit from one of an estimated four tornadoes that the U....

A type of land mine called the “butterfly” has a particularly insidious reputation for two reasons: It is known for killing or crippling children who may pick up what looks a lot like a green plastic toy, and its mostly nonmetallic construction means it often evades traditional mine detectors. Butterfly mines’ light-touch detonators go off easily if stepped on by a fighter—or farmer—and their relatively small charge often maims people without immediately killing them....

Electroceuticals—devices that treat ailments with electrical impulses—have a long history in medicine. Think pacemakers for the heart, cochlear implants for the ears and deep-brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease. One of these approaches is poised to become more versatile, dramatically improving care for a host of conditions. It involves delivering signals to the vagus nerve, which sends impulses from the brain stem to most organs and back again. New uses of vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) have become possible in part because of research by Kevin J....

By Laura SpinneyAs the White House prepares its response to a damning report into the state of forensic science in the United States, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory, Chris Hassell, says that forensic scientists need to invest more in the validation of new technologies and work more closely with the crime labs that implement those technologies, if forensics is to shake off its poor public image.Speaking at the 4th International Crime Science Conference in London last week, Hassell described the gap between basic research and its application in solving crimes as the “valley of death” because “nobody wants to pay for it, nobody really wants to do it....

It is a border-control agent’s nightmare: a terrorist sneaks uranium or plutonium through a seaport and into an urban center, and uses it to set off a dirty bomb or a nuclear weapon. On April 13 at the American Physical Society meeting in Baltimore, Md., physicists will present research on a cargo-screening technology that could foil such a plot. The researchers say that a device involving the approach, which would scan shipping containers with beams of precisely tuned γ-rays, would be safer and more effective than current technology....

With the price of oil cresting over $130 per barrel, the timing of Chevrolet’s “Project Driveway” field market research could not be better. The program is an opportunity for consumers in California, New York State and the District of Columbia to test about 100 of the company’s Equinox sports utility vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. In addition to letting drivers take a spin, the project is also a trial for prototype hydrogen stations....

This story is a supplement to the feature “Hands On Computing: How Multi-touch Screens Could Change The Way We Interact With Computers and Each Other” which was printed in the July 2008 issue of Scientific American. Tracking Fingers: The most advanced multi-touch screens respond to the motion and pressure of numerous fingers. In the Perceptive Pixel design (below), projectors send images through an acrylic screen onto the surface facing the viewer....