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I wish I could write that a global pandemic was our only problem at the moment. While the U.S. approaches the sad milestone of one million citizens dead from COVID-19, a devastating land war in Europe is displacing millions, and a rapidly warming planet has caused another Antarctic glacier collapse. Bad news seems to dominate headlines and Twitter feeds. As reporter Francine Russo writes in this issue, the uncertainty of our times has hit some individuals particularly hard (see “The Personality Trait ‘Intolerance of Uncertainty’ Causes Anguish during COVID”)....

Dave Cleaves wasn’t raised to fight for the trees. The 62-year-old economist grew up in the cornfields of northwestern Ohio at a time when the state’s forests were routinely felled to make way for farmland. But for Cleaves, an outdoor enthusiast, identifying trees always held more appeal than milking cows. Now Cleaves is charged with charting the course for the Forest Service’s response to climate change, helping America’s forests and grasslands cope with ongoing threats exacerbated by global warming – wildfires, diseases and pests....

People who eat a high-protein diet during middle age are more likely to die of cancer than those who eat less protein, a new study finds. However, for people older than 65, a moderate protein intake may actually be beneficial, and protect against frailty, the researchers said. The researchers looked at more than 6,000 people ages 50 and older, and followed them for 18 years. They found that people ages 50 to 65 who ate a diet rich in animal proteins during middle age were more than four times as likely to die of cancer during the study period than those who ate a low-protein diet, according to the study published today (March 4) in the journal Cell Metabolism....

It made big headlines two years ago, even though it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. Now researchers say they have made good on the promise of generating stem cells from embryos without destroying the latter in the process. A team led by researchers from Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., reports in Cell Stem Cell that it created five new stem cell lines by plucking single cells from embryos in the early blastocyst stage, a grapelike cluster of eight cells called blastomeres....

The blowflies and flesh flies that settle on dead animals aren’t just feasting on the carrion — they’re sampling their DNA. Scientists in Germany have now shown that this DNA persists for long enough to be sequenced, providing a quick and cost-effective snapshot of mammal diversity in otherwise inaccessible rainforests. Researchers stumbled on the grisly cataloguing technique while studying a form of anthrax that kills chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire. They started sampling flies to see whether the insects could harbor the anthrax bacterium after feasting on infected bodies, but soon realized “that detecting mammal DNA from flies could also be an extremely cool tool for assessing biodiversity”, says team leader Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer, an evolutionary biologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin....

Stem cells have moved from biological obscurity to the forefront of political and technological debate in the US and around the world. Investigators are confident that someday stem cells will be the foundation for fantastic cures and therapies. Yet critics argue that stem cell research raises ethical questions no less profound than the pursuit of the nuclear bomb more than 60 years ago. The complexity of the science and the rapid proliferation of business, ethical and political issues pose a challenge for anyone wishing to stay well informed on this vital subject....

When a virus invades your cells, it changes your body. But in the process, the pathogen changes its shape, too. A new mathematical model predicts the points on the virus that allow this shape-shifting to occur, revealing a new way to find potential drug and vaccine targets. The unique math-based approach has already identified potential targets in the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Outlined in April in the Journal of Computational Biology, the strategy predicts protein sites on viruses that stash energy—important spots that drugs could disable....

By Carey Gillam (Reuters) - Home Depot and other U.S. companies are working to eliminate or limit use of a type of pesticide suspected of helping cause dramatic declines in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, officials said on Wednesday. The moves include requiring suppliers to label any plants treated with neonicotinoid, or neonic, pesticides sold through home and garden stores. Atlanta-based Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, is requiring its suppliers to start such labeling by the fourth quarter of this year, said Ron Jarvis, the company’s vice president of merchandising/sustainability....

Despite their best efforts to stabilize abdominal wounds sustained on the battlefield, military first-responders have few options when it comes to stanching internal bleeding caused by, for example, gunshots or explosive fragments. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) says it is studying a new type of injectable foam that molds to organs and slows hemorrhaging. This could provide field medics with a way to buy more time for soldiers en route to medical treatment facilities....

When a mosquito-borne disease first arrived in the Western Hemisphere last year, humans were relatively lucky. The disease, which causes crippling joint pain persisting for weeks or even months and for which there is no known therapy or vaccine, hopscotched from the Caribbean islands to eventually land in the U.S. and the rest of the Americas. But the type of chikungunya creeping across the region then was one that could only readily spread via Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that is uncommon in the U....

Among the winners in Pres. Barack Obama’s 2014 federal budget: the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Education and National Science Foundation (NSF). The losers include agribusiness and the Environmental Protection Agency. Obama’s plan, announced April 11, is less a vision for a progressive science agenda than a reflection of political reality—specifically, the fact that he still must work with a conservative Congress. The budget gives a boost to science education and research, long-standing administration priorities....

Three of Pluto’s small moons are locked together in a mutual orbital dance, planetary scientists have found. The discovery provides important context for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which is hunting for undiscovered moons as it hurtles towards a July 14 fly-by of the dwarf planet. The finding is also a step towards understanding Pluto’s peculiar assortment of at least five moons. “This is telling us some piece of the story of how the system formed,” says Mark Showalter, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and lead author of a paper appearing in the June 4 issue of Nature....

Here’s what she said: “If China were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that don’t have lead in them or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up, and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up, too.” That was CNBC’s Erin Burnett, apparently a graduate of the Milo Minderbinder School of Business, speaking on the air on August 10....

The Fate of Greenland: Lessons from Abrupt Climate Change by Philip W. Conkling, Richard Alley, Wallace Broecker and George Denton. MIT Press, 2011 Spanning more than 600,000 square miles, Greenland’s ice sheet is the largest outside Antarctica. But it is melting fast, with the thunderous sounds of icebergs calving off glaciers filling the air. This is not the first time Greenland has undergone abrupt climate change. Comparatively balmy temperatures in the 10th century allowed Norse settlers to colonize the area; the ensuing Little Ice Age coincided with their disappearance....

A toxin secreted by one of the nastiest flesh-eating bacteria around packs an uncommon one-two punch on unsuspecting host cells. Related to a snake venom toxin, an enzyme called phospholipase A2 allows the deadly M3 strain of Streptococcus to take residence more easily in the throat and produce a more severe disease, researchers report. “This toxin takes a pretty darn good pathogen and makes it a much better pathogen,” says James Musser of the Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, who led the research....

Maciej Maselko has made wild sex deadly—for genetically modified organisms. A synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis–St Paul, Maselko and his colleagues have used gene-editing tools to create genetically modified yeasts that cannot breed successfully with their wild counterparts. In so doing, they say they have engineered synthetic species. “We want something that’s going to be identical to the original in every way, except it’s just genetically incompatible,” says Maselko, who is due to present his work on January 16 at the annual Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, California....

Interview by Kate Wong Are cats less domesticated than dogs? Are they becoming more domesticated over time? Cats are far more similar to their wild ancestors than dogs are to wolves, so dogs are in that sense the more domesticated of the two species. As they adapted to living alongside humans, cats became more sociable with one another and much more accepting of people, but there is no evidence that they have changed much more than that over the past few thousand years....

Fights over salmon have raged for decades in the Pacific Northwest. Overfishing in the late 19th century, the proliferation of dams in Oregon and Washington in the 20th, and more recent ecological shifts have set tribes, conservationists and the fishing industry head to head over the diminishing resource. By the end of the 21st century, though, there may be nothing left to fight about. The waters off the coast of the Pacific Northwest are warming, particularly in the upper reaches where pelagic fish like salmon and capelin swim and feed....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The relationship between the Byzantine Empire and ancient Armenia was a constant and varied one with an equal mix of wars, occupations, treaties of friendship, mutual military aid, and cultural exchange. Regarded as a vital defence to the Empire’s eastern frontiers, emperors used various means of influence from outright takeover to gifts of titles and lands to Armenian nobles....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Mithila, a region in the state of Bihar, northern India (and also stretching into Nepal), has an important tradition of knowledge in the form of paintings. Madhubani paintings (also known as Mithila paintings) have been practised by the women of the region through the centuries and today it is considered as a living tradition of Mithila....