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Facebook users attempting to purchase opioids or seeking out addiction treatment will be instead be redirected to information about a federal crisis help line, the company announced Tuesday, a major step for an industry leader facing pressure to more aggressively police illicit drug sales on its platform. The announcement comes a week before an “opioids summit” convened by the Food and Drug Administration to get Facebook and other tech companies, including Twitter and Google, to take additional measures to help curb the nation’s opioid crisis....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Whether we prefer water sports or relaxing with a good book, the humble sandcastle is often a seaside must. But what’s the secret to building a majestic sandcastle that will withstand the tide of time? Luckily, there’s a scientific formula for that. It all started back in 2004, when a holiday company asked us to investigate the question....

The scientists collaborated with 76 Indigenous communities, 36 of which participated in using these alerts to watch over the forest. Three people from each of the latter communities received training to use an early-alert system on a smartphone app and to patrol forests and document damage. Over the next two years these trained participants were paid to work as forest monitors and received monthly alerts via the app when satellite data indicated local forest losses....

When tens of thousands of 15-year-olds worldwide sit down at computers to take the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) examination this fall, they will be tested on reading, math and science. They will also tackle a new and controversial series of questions designed to measure “collaborative problem solving skills.” Instead of short-answer questions or lengthier explanations, the test taker will record outcomes of games, solve jigsaw puzzles and perform experiments with the help of a virtual partner that the test taker can communicate with by typing in a chat box....

In 2023 every U.S. land surveyor will finally be on equal footing. One kind of foot, specifically: the “international foot.” These engineers have long measured land with two versions of the unit, depending on which state they are in and whom they work for. To eliminate the resulting confusion, surveyors will soon stop using what is called the “U.S. survey foot” and use only the international version. The two are nearly identical—dividing one by the other provides a ratio of 0....

The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Every year, major earthquakes, floods and hurricanes occur. These natural disasters disrupt daily life and, in the worst cases, cause devastation. Events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy killed thousands of people and generated billions of dollars in losses. There is also concern that global climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of weather–related disasters. Our research team wanted to know how disasters affect people’s decisions to move in or out of particular areas....

Where do rainbows come from, Daddy? What about flying cars—and LSD? In the beginning, there was always the toddler’s query, which led to the schoolchild’s raised hand and, still later, the engineer’s back-of-the envelope sketch of a new invention. Everything started somewhere—and someone had to ask. Think of what you are about to read as a collection of queries rooted in childlike curiosity about the world around us and the still larger universe that stretches beyond....

“Some biologists have wondered if it might someday be possible to alter the genetic material of a human being, for example, to remedy some metabolic deficiency. How would one introduce the desired genetic information? One possibility would be to administer a harmless virus that bears the required gene. The Shope papilloma virus, which causes tumors in rabbits, also induces the synthesis of a distinctive form of the enzyme arginase. The question arose whether the same effect might be obtained in human beings....

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) instructed drugmakers yesterday to update the warning labels that have been required on antidepressant medications since 2005. The warning, which previously applied to those under the age of 18, states that antidepressants have been found to double the risk of suicidal thoughts or behaviors. The new “black box” warning—the FDA’s strongest possible label—will alert people younger than 25 to a similar risk. And in an unusual move, it will state that depression and some other psychiatric disorders “are themselves associated with increases in the risk of suicide....

Equipped with scuba-diving gear off the coast of Motobu Peninsula in Okinawa, Japan, scientists from the United States and Japan carried parts of a machine that is one of the first to serve as an underwater observatory that monitors temperature, salinity, and other chemical, physical and biological data in the Pacific Ocean. As expeditions that traverse hundreds of miles of ocean become increasingly difficult to fund, scientists are turning to innovations in technology and data storage to monitor and project changes in the ocean....

IN THE MID-1840s Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis saw with alarm that 15 percent of new mothers in his Vienna General Hospital were dying of an illness called puerperal fever. Semmelweis was desperate to prevent the illnesses, but he didn’t know how. As he pondered the problem, he learned that his friend, forensic pathologist Jakob Kolletschka, had died from what sounded like the same illness. It happened only a few days after a student accidentally pricked Kolletschka with a scalpel that had been used to dissect a cadaver....

FLORENCE, TEX.—“Look at that—isn’t it gorgeous?” Sandy Peck asks as she rinses dirt from a flaked stone about the length and width of a pinky finger. Peck runs a hose over soil on a fine-mesh screen, prodding at stubborn clods of clay with a muddy glove. “Look, there’s another one.” View Slide Show of the Dig Peck, sorting soil that had been disturbed by a recent thunderstorm, is a volunteer looking for artifacts in the Gault Valley in central Texas, some 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Austin....

“You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility…. I admire its purity. A survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality.” That is how the android Ash famously describes filmmaker Ridley Scott’s extraterrestrial monster in the 1979 blockbuster Alien. The movie provided nightmare fodder for an entire generation of science-fiction fans with its tale of an alien creature that attaches itself to the face of a crew member of the spaceship Nostromo and implants an embryo that later bursts from his chest....

The feat made headlines around the world: “Scientists Say Human Genome is Complete,” the New York Times announced in 2003. “The Human Genome,” the journals Science and Nature said in identical ta-dah cover lines unveiling the historic achievement. There was one little problem. “As a matter of truth in advertising, the ‘finished’ sequence isn’t finished,” said Eric Lander, who led the lab at the Whitehead Institute that deciphered more of the genome for the government-funded Human Genome Project than any other....

Lankasana, a 23-year-old Maasai warrior, sports long, ochre-stained, braided hair extensions and carries a bow and arrow, a short sword and a steel-tipped spear. He spends his days raiding neighboring villages and protecting his own tribe from attacks by wild animals. For fun, he wrestles fellow tribesmen and practices his aim by tossing spears at tree trunks. Lankasana once killed a lion armed with only a sword, but not before the lion clawed his shoulders, leaving huge scars....

I’m sure I wasn’t alone when I breathed a sigh of relief at the much ballyhooed arrival of COVID-19 vaccines at the end of 2020. We’re in the midst of a dark and grief-stricken pandemic winter, and the sooner the vaccine gets us to herd immunity—and, pray, a semblance of normalcy—the better. But the well-worn trope that life is a journey, and not a destination, has an epidemiological application as well....

The development of highly effective COVID vaccines in less than a year is an extraordinary triumph of science. But several coronavirus variants have emerged that could at least partly evade the immune response induced by the vaccines. These variants should serve as a warning against complacency—and encourage us to explore a different type of vaccination, delivered as a spray in the nose. Intranasal vaccines could provide an additional degree of protection, and help reduce the spread of the virus....

Pres. Donald Trump insists he wants clean water. In a speech to Congress last week, he vowed to “promote clean air and clean water.” And in an interview with The New York Times last November, he said, “Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important.” Ironically, though, the president just signed an executive order that could pollute many Americans’ drinking water sources. On February 28, Trump ordered a review of the Clean Water Rule, with the aim of rolling it back....

If you’d asked permafrost researcher Vladimir Romanovsky five years ago if he thought the permafrost of the North Slope of Alaska was in danger of substantial thaw this century because of global warming, he would have said no. The permanently frozen soils of the northern reaches of the state are much colder, and so more stable than the warmer, more vulnerable permafrost of interior Alaska, he would have said. “I cannot say it anymore” he told journalists last month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco....

In this episode, join freelance journalist and radio producer Tasha Lemley and podcast host Lydia Chain as they unravel the story of Pervis Payne, a man with an intellectual disability sentenced to death, and the decades-long court battle to remove him from The Row. Undark Magazine · Ep. 58: When an Intellectual Disability Means Life or Death Below is the full transcript of the podcast, lightly edited for clarity. You can also subscribe to The Undark Podcast at Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, or Spotify....