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There are some signs that the algae-based fuel industry might be ready to bloom. One of the nascent industry’s biggest and most well-heeled players, Sapphire Energy, announced last week that it would be producing 1 million gallons of diesel and jet fuel a year by 2011, double its initial estimates. The La Jolla, Calif.-based company – with big-name backers like Bill Gates and the Rockefeller family – says it will be producing more than 100 million gallons a year by 2018 and 1 billion gallons a year by 2020 – enough to meet almost 3 percent of the U....

Many colonoscopies performed for adults over age 70 may beunlikely to benefit them, according to a new study. Such procedures expose people to the risks of a colonoscopy without evidence that they are likely to benefit from them, according to the study. For example, the colon cancer screening test may be considered inappropriate if it is done more often than recommended, or performed on patients who are older than 75....

It’s so tiresome when you’ve had enough of your lover, isn’t it? You have to make up some reason why you don’t want to be with them anymore. Then you have to decide how to deliver the news. Do you at least face them in person, look into their eyes and watch the hurt course right through them? Or are you the modern type who just sends a text and has done with it?...

Part 2 of 2 A 1-year-old boy starts vomiting and experiencing diarrhea. Later, ripped-up remains of a container that held rat poison are found behind the family’s television. A mother puts out two green blocks of rat poison and they disappear. Her 2-year-old son breaks out in a fever. His stool is colored bright green. A 2-year-old boy walks into a room carrying rat poison. Seeing blisters, his parents whisk him to the hospital emergency room, where he is hooked up to a cardiac monitor for several hours....

Think of a playing card. Got one in mind? Although it may have felt like a free choice, think again: Most people choose one of only four cards, out of a deck of 52. For now, remember your card — we’ll return to it later. For thousands of years, magicians have amazed audiences by developing and applying intuitions about the mind. Skilled magicians can manipulate memories, control attention, and influence choices....

If aliens could live on the star Alpha Andromedae in the Andromeda constellation, they might have a ready source of small talk: the weather. A seven-year study turned up shifting blotches of mercury vapor encircling the star, suggesting that its atmosphere churns the element up and down in great clouds. If correct, the discoverers say, the result marks the first example of stellar surface features that depend solely on atmospheric effects and not on magnetic fields—or in other words, weather....

By Monya BakerThe failure of late-stage clinical trials that used a stem-cell therapy to treat a rare condition has dealt a setback to stem-cell research. The two studies looked at graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), a potentially fatal complication of bone-marrow transplantation in which immune cells from the donated marrow attack the recipient. The trial sponsor, Maryland-based Osiris Therapeutics, announced on 8 September that its Prochymal drug performed no more effectively overall than a placebo....

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazineWhen stem-cell clinics are asked for documentation about the treatments they offer, some are quick to produce letters from lawyers instead. In the face of legal threats from clinics, the Inter­national Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has suspended a service intended to help patients wade through claims about therapies. It is now pondering its next move.For stem-cell researchers, the worldwide proliferation of clinics offering regenerative medicine is frustrating....

In 2007 Nobel laureate James Watson eyed his genome for the very first time. Through more than 50 years of scientific and technological advancement, Watson saw the chemical structure he once helped to unravel now pieced into a personal genetic landscape that lay before him. There was one small stretch of DNA on chromosome 19, however, that he chose to leave under wraps. That region coded for the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene....

It’s craggy, powdery, mysterious, and even holds the building blocks of life. Scientists are now getting an up-close-and-personal view of a comet flying through deep space, thanks to Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission has now found that Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s is even stranger than initially expected. A series of new findings beamed back to Earth by the spacecraft since its arrival at the comet in 2014 could help scientists learn more about how comets evolved through time....

Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia based in part on his anti–critical race theory platform. His 2021 campaign and others like it continue a long-standing conservative disinformation campaign of falsehoods, half-truths and exaggerations designed to create, mobilize and exploit anxiety around white status to secure political power. The problem is, these lies work, and that shows that liberals have a lot of work to do if they want to come up with a successful countermessage....

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California governor Jerry Brown said on Thursday he plans to sign an agreement to formally align the state’s climate and clean energy policies with those of Oregon, Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia.Brown will host the governors of the northwestern states and British Columbia’s environment minister in San Francisco on Monday to announce the partnership and details of an agreement aligning their climate strategies....

Editor’s Note: This story is part of an In-Depth Report on the science of beauty. Read more about the series here. At-home treatment for wrinkles has come a long way since grandma slathered on Pond’s. The old standby is still around, but it’s now just part of the mix of over-the-counter and Rx beauty salves as researchers worldwide race against the (biological) clock—to find ways to slow the march of time and the tracks it leaves on the skin....

With the global population of humans currently approaching seven billion, it is difficult to imagine that Homo sapiens was once an endangered species. Yet studies of the DNA of modern-day people indicate that, once upon a time, our ancestors did in fact undergo a dramatic population decline. Although scientists lack a precise timeline for the origin and near extinction of our species, we can surmise from the fossil record that our forebears arose throughout Africa shortly before 195,000 years ago....

For the first time ever, the World Health Organization has drawn up a list of the highest priority needs for new antibiotics — marching orders, it hopes, for the pharmaceutical industry. The list, which was released Monday, enumerates 12 bacterial threats, grouping them into three categories: critical, high, and medium. “Antibiotic resistance is growing and we are running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time,” said Dr....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Dress and appearance in Bronze Age Greece (c. 3100 BCE - c. 1100 BCE) played a part in defining gender roles and emphasising idealized beauty that planted the seed for modern-day standards. The Minoans turned the island of Crete into a Mediterranean powerhouse and dominated Aegean culture until around 1450 BCE when the Mycenaean civilization from the Greek mainland peaked and wrested control....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Marian Reforms were a set of the reforms introduced to the Roman army in the late 2nd century BCE by Roman general and politician Gaius Marius (157-86 BCE). Through these reforms, the Roman army was transformed from a semi-professional militia to a professional fighting force. The maniple system of the earlier Polybian legion was abolished and replaced with the cohort....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Protagoras of Abdera (l.c. 485-415 BCE) is most famous for his claim that “Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not” (DK 80B1) usually rendered simply as “Man is the Measure of All Things”....

OCTOBER 1958 FUSION WORK— “Last month, at the second Geneva conference on atomic power, the fusion reactions were at the center of the stage. The knotty and often profound questions encountered in the research engaged a substantial portion of the formal and informal discussions. The elaborate experimental gear exhibited by the United Kingdom, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. testified to the huge scale of the programs the major nuclear powers have been conducting, until recently in secret....

Cowrie shells, strips of leather, huge stone discs, decorated rectangles of paper. They all share something in common: at one time, people used them as currency. In 2009, when Bitcoin went live, ones and zeros were added to the list. And like each new format that preceded it, this digital currency has changed a few of money’s core concepts, including who controls it and how and where it gets spent....