The Schiaparelli Mars lander remains silent since its attempted landing October 19 on the Red Planet. All data transmitted by the lander during its descent have been relayed to Earth, and mission scientists are now in the thick of trying to figure out what went wrong. “I am extremely confident that we’ll be able to ... Read more
Clever chemistry could take the salt out of water softening. Aluminum ions can strip minerals from water without the need for sodium, researchers report online October 4 in Environmental Science & Technology. The new technique could sidestep health and environmental concerns raised about the salt released by existing sodium-based water softening systems, says study coauthor ... Read more
This forlorn-looking face of a 4-day-old zebrafish embryo represents “a whole new avenue of research” for geneticist Oscar Ruiz, who studies how faces and facial abnormalities develop at the cellular level. The research is possible thanks to a new method, developed by Ruiz and colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in ... Read more
More vaccines promised — “The decline of poliomyelitis among more than 350 million people of the world … (offers) a promise of vaccines that will soon be used against other diseases considered hopeless or untreatable until recently. Vaccines against some of the many viruses causing the common cold, as well as those causing rubella, mumps ... Read more
El Niño’s meteorological sister, La Niña, has officially taken over. This year’s relatively weak La Niña is marked by unusually cool sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. That cold water causes shifts in weather patterns that can cause torrential downpours in western Pacific countries, droughts in parts of the Americas ... Read more
Picture a learning curve. Most of us imagine a smooth upward slope that rises with steady mastery. It is the ultimate image of progress.But that image, as behavioral sciences writer Bruce Bower reports in “Kids learning curve not so smooth” (SN: 11/26/16, p. 6), may well be an illusion of statistics, created when people look ... Read more
That past-its-prime bag of spinach buried in the back of your fridge should probably hit the compost heap instead of your dinner plate. The watery gunk that accumulates at the bottom of bagged salad mix is the perfect breeding ground for Salmonella bacteria that could make people sick, researchers report November 18 in Applied and ... Read more
Clearing tropical forests may raise the risk of people being exposed to a gruesome disease called Buruli ulcer, a new study suggests. Mycobacterium ulcerans, the bacteria that cause Buruli skin lesions and bone deformities, can thrive in a wide range of wild creatures, especially tiny insects grazing on freshwater algae, says Aaron Morris, now at ... Read more
In a hotel ballroom in Seoul, South Korea, early in 2016, a centuries-old strategy game offered a glimpse into the fantastic future of computing. The computer program AlphaGo bested a world champion player at the Chinese board game Go, four games to one (SN Online: 3/15/16). The victory shocked Go players and computer gurus alike. ... Read more
Drug use continued to threaten the health and safety of the American public in 2016, while a hidden menace in drinking water remained a major worry for the people of Flint, Mich. Teen vapingVaping has surpassed cigarette smoking among U.S. high school students, according to a report released in 2016 from the National Youth Tobacco ... Read more