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Six Italian scientists and one government official are set to go to trial today in Italy (Sept. 20) on charges of manslaughter for not warning the public aggressively enough of an impending earthquake that killed more than 300 people in 2009. While such a trial is unlikely on U.S. soil, experts say, American geologists and seismologists are watching closely, surprised at a legal system that would attempt to criminalize something as uncertain as earthquake prediction....

Scientists have designed short peptides that self-assemble with DNA to form viruslike capsules (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/ja507833x). These nanococoons could offer a new route to transport genes or small-molecule drugs into cells, the researchers say. When developing the new particles, Ying Chau and Rong Ni of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology tried to mimic how virus proteins encapsulate their genomic DNA. Viruses use simple protein units that assemble along their DNA, like a stack of Legos, she says....

The lives of stars like the sun follow a predictable course: billions of years spent pumping out energy as hydrogen fuses into helium in a superhot core followed by an expansive phase when the fuel runs out. Such older sunlike stars become red giants, swelling to consume the hydrogen in the outer reaches of their atmospheres until that too is consumed and the swollen star’s outer layer is expelled as a nebula....

Just about every dog owner is convinced their dog is a genius. For a long time, scientists did not take their pronouncements particularly seriously, but new research suggests that canines are indeed quite bright, and in some ways unique. Brian Hare, an associate professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, is one of the leading figures in the quest to understand what dogs know....

Adding to its already long roster of firsts, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has found the three smallest extrasolar planets ever detected — all of them smaller than Earth, and the most diminutive no larger than Mars. The newly discovered trio forms a miniature planetary system orbiting a cool, dim red dwarf star called KOI-961. Because they are so close to their star, the three exoplanets are too hot to support life. But unlike most previously known exoplanets, the vast majority of which are Jupiter-scale gas giants, all three are thought to be rocky worlds like Earth and the other worlds of the inner Solar System....

It’s a good time to be a particle physicist. The long-sought Higgs boson particle seems finally to have been found at an accelerator in Geneva, and scientists are now hot on the trail of another tiny piece of the universe, this one tied to a new fundamental force of nature. An experiment using the Earth itself as a source of electrons has narrowed down the search for a new force-bearing particle, placing tighter limits on how big the force it carries can be....

The astute reader may have noticed that in the main article we assiduously—and somewhat sneakily—avoided saying that the interfering quantum particle was actually in two places at once (using such phrases as “seemingly” and “as if”). The reason for using such legalistic-sounding verbiage is that we simply don’t know what the particle “really” did. If we measure which of two ways the particle went, we will only ever measure that it went exactly one of those ways....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Battle of Alesia was a decisive Roman victory in Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars in September 52 BCE. Roman commander Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) and his legions faced a united Gallic army under the command of Vercingetorix (82-46 BCE), chief of the Arverni, at the hilltop fort or oppidum of Alesia, in modern-day eastern France....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Elephants were thought of as fierce and frightful monsters in antiquity, very real though rarely seen until the Hellenistic period. They were deployed on the battlefield to strike terror into the enemy, however, since fear was considered divinely inspired, elephants can be interpreted as religious symbols even in warfare....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Vindication and Refutation of Thomas Müntzer (l. c. 1489-1525) is a 1524 open letter to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546), and the Christian community charging Luther with hypocrisy, betraying his original vision to win support from the nobility, and ignoring the legitimate complaints of the peasants....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Tizoc Stone is a huge stone cylinder from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan which depicts a sun-disk on its flat upper surface and carries a frieze around its outer edge showing Aztec warriors and the Aztec king Tizoc, whose reign from 1481 to 1486 CE was troubled by rebellions across the empire....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

The first genetically engineered (GE) animal for human consumption—a fast-growing salmon—has come a step closer to the dinner table, with a piece of paperwork posted online on December 22 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA’s draft environmental assessment concludes that the fish poses no foreseeable risk to nature. After 60 days of public comment, the FDA may issue a final assessment and approval—at which time AquaBounty, of Maynard, Mass....

The dream of the flying car could come down to earth before it gets off the ground. Rising in its place: a network of self-flying drones big enough to ferry individual commuters around town. That’s the future envisioned by several start-ups that are developing so-called “passenger drones,” which could shrink commute times from hours to minutes. At first blush, human-carrying drones sound no more realistic than flying cars. Until recently inventors had never been able to marry automobiles and aircraft in a practical way....

New plots of coca between 2002 and 2007 accounted for the direct destruction of 890 square kilometers of rainforest. That’s roughly 6 percent of total rainforest lost in that period, which totaled to 14,000 square kilometers, or an area slightly larger than Jamaica. Most of the loss is linked to agriculture. But the study, led by Liliana Dávalos, an assistant professor of evolution and ecology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, concludes that the closer the jungle is to newly developed coca plots, the more susceptible it is to destruction....

“Learn from your mistakes.” It’s a familiar adage but people still tend to highlight their successes and sweep their failures under the rug, as a professor at Princeton University pointed out last week when he published his “CV of Failures” (pdf), which has since gone viral. Now, in a study published this week in Nature, a team of researchers at Haverford College in Pennsylvania have taken this idea to the next level—by applying it to the scientific community....

More than four million Americans currently suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and the number is expected to balloon as the population ages. The results of a new mouse study offer fresh hope that the damage inflicted by the disease could be at least partially reversible. Karen SantaCruz of the University of Minnesota and her colleagues genetically engineered mice to experience symptoms similar to those seen in humans with Alzheimer’s disease–notably brain atrophy and associated memory loss that worsened over time....

Over the last few decades, researchers tinkering with molecules that turn an immune cell on and off have created a revolutionary approach to fighting cancer. Instead of taking aim at the tumor directly, this new class of medicines harnesses the patient’s own immune cells to tackle the disease. Immune-based cancer therapies are saving thousands of lives, and the science behind them earned the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. These drugs, called checkpoint blockers, appeared after scientists discovered molecules that help cancer cells block immune processes that would otherwise attack a tumor....

When hackers unleashed the WannaCry “ransomware” in mid-May, not only did they wreak havoc on European hospitals, telecoms and railways, they also made off with a profit. The malicious software locked up thousands of computers’ files and demanded $300 ransom payments in order to decrypt them. Victims have so far ponied up more than $140,000 in bitcoin, the digital currency whose reputation for anonymity attracts the libertarian-leaning, the privacy-minded—and the criminally inclined....

You or someone you know has probably had an internal malady examined with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. Lying in the claustrophobic confines of the room-size magnetic doughnuts that make MRI possible can be stressful, but the diagnostic value of the resulting high-contrast pictures of the various soft tissues inside the body makes up for any angst. A more generalized version of the technique, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), also offers enormous benefits, enabling scientists to characterize the chemical compositions of materials as well as the structures of proteins and other important biomolecules without having to penetrate the objects under study physically....