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By Mo Costandi of Nature magazineFar from expanding your mind, the hallucinogenic chemical found in magic mushrooms induces widespread decreases in brain activity, researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Psilocybin has been revered for centuries for its ability to induce mystical experiences, and has potential therapeutic value for various psychiatric conditions. The drug is known to activate serotonin receptors, but how this produces its effects is little understood....

Dear EarthTalk: I recently saw a reference to “Enertia houses” that require little in the way of external sources for heating or cooling. Do you have any information on this housing design? —Alan Marshfield, via e-mail Enertia is a brand name for homes designed and sold in kits by North Carolina-based Enertia Building Systems (EBS). The idea essentially marries the concepts of geothermal and passive solar heating/cooling into what amounts to a highly energy efficient hybrid system....

A patient who receives a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has only a 5 percent chance of surviving for five years, a harrowing prognosis that scientists have long struggled to understand. Part of the problem, new research suggests, is that the disease is not typically diagnosed until 15 years after the first cancer-causing mutations appear, by which point the cancer has spread and become highly aggressive. The findings indicate that there may be plenty of time for doctors to intervene before pancreatic cancer becomes lethal—an exciting prospect given recent advances in diagnosing the disease early, when it can be successfully removed with surgery and chemotherapy....

The oldest known shipwreck in the Indian Ocean has been sitting on the seafloor off the southern coast of Sri Lanka for some 2,000 years. In just a couple of weeks, scuba-diving archaeologists will embark on a months-long excavation at the site, looking for clues about trade between Rome and Asia during antiquity. The wreck lies 110 feet (33 meters) below the ocean’s surface, just off the fishing village of Godavaya, where German archaeologists in the 1990s found a harbor that was an important port along the maritime Silk Road during the second century A....

Currently deforestation and land use change accounts for 11 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually. That’s nearly equivalent to the emissions from the entire European Union. A new report from World Resources Institute (WRI) shows that rates of deforestation could be reduced even further and tropical forests’ capacity to sequester carbon could become even more pronounced with a seemingly simple fix: preserving rights of local and indigenous communities. Indigenous communities currently have legal rights to about 1....

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - A radiation leak that indefinitely shut down a nuclear waste dump in New Mexico was likely caused by a container of radioactive materials improperly packaged with a lead-lined glove at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a state lawmaker said on Friday. The glove is the latest clue in the mysterious accident in February at the Waste Isolation Plant near Carlsbad, where drums of radioactive debris from federal nuclear weapons sites and laboratories such as Los Alamos are entombed in salt caverns 2,100 feet (640 meters) underground....

There is a mystery on Tiwai Island. A large wildlife sanctuary in Sierra Leone, the island is home to pygmy hippopotamuses, hundreds of bird species and several species of primates, including Campbell’s monkeys. These monkeys communicate via an advanced language that primatologists and linguists have been studying for decades. Over time, experts nearly cracked the code behind monkey vocabulary. And then came krak. In the Ivory Coast’s Tai Forest Campbell’s monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli) use the term krak to indicate that a leopard is nearby and the term hok to warn of an eagle circling overheard....

You’ve probably heard the news: Measles, once banished, is back in a big way. The reason, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): children are increasingly not being vaccinated against the highly contagious virus because of fears that ingredients in the injection may cause autism, a mysterious neurological disorder that affects one out of 150 children born each year in the U.S. But new research by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health did not find a connection....

Imagine yourself as a child, standing on the tops of your dad’s loafers as he shuffles across the living room. It is exhilarating—being maneuvered like a marionette, his feet moving your feet, his hips swinging your hips. But here is the upshot of walking on someone else’s shoes: eventually you would rather do it on your own. For people who have lost some or all control of their legs, robotic exoskeletons are engineering marvels....

For more than 50 years deep-sea exploration has been a continuous fount of discoveries that change how we think about life in the ocean, on dry land and even beyond our planet. Consider the following three events. On October 16, 1968, a cable tethering the submersible Alvin to a research ship located 100 miles off Nantucket broke. The sub sank to the seafloor more than 5,000 feet below; the crew of three escaped safely....

For decades neuroscientists have been building theories of brain function despite a near total lack of data on the most numerous neurons of all: cerebellar granule cells. Making up 70 billion of the nearly 86 billion neurons in the human brain, these relatively simple cells are tightly packed into the cerebellum, a broccoli-shaped structure tucked under the back of our brain. Cerebellar granule cells form part of a brain circuit with a strikingly regular, almost crystalline, structure....

Numerous studies have linked heart disease and air pollution, particularly smog. Smog–a toxic brew of chemicals and molecules such as ozone–seems to exacerbate heart disease, leading to an increase in heart attacks and fatalities. But researchers have yet to discover the pathway by which smog impacts the cardiovascular system. Now a new study shows how ozone’s byproducts in the body can harden arteries and cause heart disease. Chemist Paul Wentworth, Jr....

The company SpaceX has already launched hundreds of its Starlink satellites, with plans to put as many as 42,000 of them in Earth orbit. Its goal is to provide high-speed Internet to billions of people. Moving toward that kind of access is laudable and important, but it comes at a cost. Glittering with reflected sunlight, these first orbiters, sent up in the past year, are brighter than 99 percent of the 5,000 or so other satellites now circling Earth, and obviously there are going to be a lot more [see “Satellite Surge”]....

Originally posted on Nature news blog. Scientists may be able to protect humans from avian influenza viruses – before they have even evolved to spread among people. An experimental flu vaccine designed for a bird-specific H5N1 influenza virus can protect humans from a lab-made H5N1 strain engineered to pass among mammals. The finding is published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The vaccine was made the same way as seasonal flu shots....

In January the United Kingdom appointed a Minister for Loneliness to address the finding that nine million British people often or always feel lonely. To some, this may come as a surprise. It should not. Loneliness and social isolation are on the rise, leading many to call it an epidemic. In recent decades the number of people with zero confidants has tripled, and most adults do not belong to a local community group....

ALMATY (Reuters) - An American astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space landed safely and on time on Tuesday in Kazakhstan, defying bad weather and ending their 166-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). “We have landing!” read a huge TV screen at Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow as the descent capsule hit the frozen ground at 0924 (0324 GMT) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan....

Every decade fishers looking to catch tuna, shrimp, snapper and other marine creatures unintentionally pull millions of sea turtles out of the oceans, according to one recent estimate, most of them vulnerable to extinction. This kind of accidental capture, researchers believe, is a leading cause of sea turtle mortality. Because banning fishing altogether would do serious harm to local economies, conservationists have instead sought ways to warn sea turtles away from fishing nets....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. Science has two important yields: increased understanding of the world within and around us (“knowledge for knowledge’s sake”) and solutions to specific problems. But even the most profound scientific knowledge won’t solve world problems such as hunger, poverty and environmental damage if we fail to respect, understand and engage cultural differences. The resistance to vaccine use is a prime example....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ellora (also known as Elura and, in ancient times, as Elapura) is a sacred site in Maharastra, central India. The Ellora Caves are listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and is celebrated for its Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples and monuments which were carved from the local cliff rock in the 6th to 8th century CE....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The jewellery of the Minoan civilization based on Bronze Age Crete demonstrates, as with other Minoan visual art forms, not only a sophisticated technological knowledge (in this case of metalwork) and an ingenuity of design but also a joy in vibrantly representing nature and a love of flowing, expressive, shapes and forms....