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We asked experts on behavior change how they recommend approaching three of the most common New Year’s resolutions. The advice can be generalized to just about any goal, so read on even if you have a more unusual challenge ahead of you. Resolution #1: Eat healthier “New Year’s resolutions are often too general,” says Phillippa Lally, a research psychologist at University College London. She emphasizes identifying specific behaviors, deciding when to perform them and then doing so repeatedly....

We compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. But the truth is we are practically walking petri dishes, rife with bacterial colonies from our skin to the deepest recesses of our guts. All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (U....

Lightning has been around since the dawn of time, but what triggers it is still an enigma. Now, researchers propose that the answer could lie in solar particles that penetrate the atmosphere and ionize the air, releasing free electrons and leading to a massive discharge. Thunderclouds become electrically charged from the collisions of microscopic ice particles in their midst, and from air currents that push the negative and positive charges apart....

On a sunny spring day one of us (Dixon) entered the London Underground at the Mile End station on his way to Heathrow Airport. Eyeing a stranger, one of more than three million daily passengers on the Tube, he idly wondered: What is the probability the stranger would emerge at, say, Wimbledon? How could you ever figure that out, given that the person could take any number of routes? As he thought about it, he realized that the question was similar to the knotty problems that face particle physicists who seek to make predictions for particle collisions in modern experiments....

By Mark SchropeAs oil continues to spew from the oil rig that went up in flames in the Gulf of Mexico last week, the probability of major environmental damage increases. For now, frantic clean-up efforts and favorable winds are preventing 18 square kilometers of thick oil slick and thousands more square kilometers of oily sheen from reaching the shore.About 160,000 liters of oil per day are gushing from two holes in the pipe that once connected the 1....

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which may soon help scientists put our planet in its galactic context by showing how common Earth-like worlds are throughout the Milky Way, is off to a good start. The space telescope, which was launched in March and began its science mission in May, will spend more than three years observing a patch of 100,000 stars near the northern constellations Cygnus and Lyra. If those stars have planetary systems aligned with Kepler’s line of sight, the spacecraft’s photometer should be able to detect the periodic dimming caused by the planets as they transit, or pass in front of, their stars....

Edited by Dava Sobel First it fell just fell at my feet no wind no squirrel or bird to give it a push a green green pine cone with brown accents heavy with sealed overlapping rounded rhomboid structures in spirals I have to restrain myself from seeing here the condensed aromatic hydrocarbons I leave it on a plate and look on the web for the names of cone parts names are important even if my last name changed three times what I learn is that I have a female cone that the plates are scales and that each comes in two types bract or seed I think I am seeing seed scales in formation tightly fitting each scale at its center begins to ooze ever-so-slowly a tiny pitch droplet a spiral of spherical diamonds now I know it’s pitch and not sap because it is damn sticky I can’t get it off my fingers we enter the world of science dealing with the world of words and the world of things being farmed and manufactured and sold sap is not pitch which is not resin-resin and rosin and turpentine and pine tar what’s in it for plants is not what’s in it for us see water-based sap gets molecule A from site B to C in the inner tree while pitch is an organic soup moving in its own pipelines near the bark ready to flow out if bark or wood is damaged to push out with some force an insect to seal in time forming a solid resin odoriferous to repel insects that might enter the damage or attract some others and we thought we humans made things complicated damned chemist in me can’t stop wondering what smells what makes things sticky it’s terpenes oligomers of isoprene with appropriate names monoterpenes like pinene and diterpenoid resin acids like abietic acid I could tell you how they’re made in pine or the lab and before long we have the whole lovable interconnected and thoroughly messy world meanwhile the cone rests oozing gently maybe the small globules of pitch are a survival strategy to be pollinated by any pollen from male cones that might be left over vain hope wrong season no males and the premature cone begins to darken to brown waiting for dispersal....

“Maybe these guys were just soldiers who want to learn about science,” says Ribeiro, a researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal. He coordinated the analysis on behalf of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), which hosted the meeting and commissioned the report. But it didn’t look like they were there out of curiosity, Ribeiro says. The incident is the latest example of the rising tensions between the country’s scientists and President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration....

In 2031 a cannonball shot from Mars should fall to Earth somewhere in the deserts of the western U.S., allowing scientists to get their hands on what some would consider the most precious materials in human history: pristine geologic samples taken from the surface of another planet. Decades in the making, this moment would represent the zenith of the robotic Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, an international endeavor involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and a consortium of industry partners....

The ability to see requires healthy eyes, but it also requires that signals can get from the eyes to the parts of the brain involved in vision. A Boston neuroscientist hopes to deliver a ray of hope to the blind by bypassing eyes and optic nerves damaged by illness or head trauma and sending image information directly to the regions of the brain that process them. The prosthesis proposed by John Pezaris, an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston—at least as it’s envisioned at this early stage—would be worn like a pair of eyeglasses, with digital cameras over a person’s eyes that connect to an array of electrodes implanted in the brain....

Trees once covered almost the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. Vast forests supported a rich ecosystem, including flocks of the extinct passenger pigeon big enough to blot out the sun. But by the 1920s at least half of this forest was gone—a victim of tree-clearing for farming, forestry or fossil-fuel extraction. Then, the forest rebounded for several decades as once-farmed fields were left fallow. But a new study reveals that since the 1970s eastern forests have begun to diminish again; roughly 3....

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The European-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft is officially on its way to the sun. The 3,790-lb. (1,800 kilograms) spacecraft lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket, rising off a pad at Space Launch Complex 41 here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sunday (Feb. 9) at 11:03 p.m. EST (0403 GMT on Feb. 10). The veteran launcher flew in a unique configuration featuring a 13-foot-wide (4 meters) fairing and a single solid rocket booster....

All stars are in motion, but some have a little more oomph than others. In recent years astronomers have identified a handful of stars that are moving so fast that they will someday flee the galaxy altogether. On their way out, these escapees may tell us a thing or two about the nature of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up nearly 85 percent of all matter in the universe....

Key concepts Aerodynamics Wind Flight Forces Introduction Have you ever tried to build your own kite? Kites have been a source of entertainment through the centuries for kids worldwide. And they’ve been used for scientific experiments, too—Benjamin Franklin flew one to investigate lightning. (Something you shouldn’t do!) In this activity you will have a chance to build your very own kite—a simple sled kite—and use it to investigate how tails help kites fly....

The long, squiggly arms of a brittle star—a relative of the sea star with baroque tendencies—have a surprising relationship with the rest of its body. Its arms function more or less independently, sensing their own environment and making their own decisions about how to react to it. They are only loosely coordinated by a nerve ring in the animal’s core. A single brittle star is almost like five co-joined animals with a mutual interest in where to go, what to eat and making little brittle stars....

In spite of their enormous requirements for materials and energy, and their enormous generation of wastes, many see urban living as the sustainable future for most of humankind in the twenty-first century. But there are serious issues for urban areas, especially very large ones in both the developed and developing world, given the interrelated problems of climate change, and energy and resource scarcity, and the importance of natural systems for society....

By Environment Correspondent Alister DoyleWARSAW (Reuters) - The United Nation’s panel of climate experts revised estimates of historical greenhouse gas emissions, made in September, both up and down on Monday but said the errors did not affect conclusions that time was running out to limit global warming.More heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels are forecast in the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC), which guides governments on shifting towards cleaner energy sources....

By Tom Miles, Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland The World Health Organization (WHO) expects the Zika virus, which is spreading through the Americas, to affect between three million and four million people, a disease expert said on Thursday. The WHO’s director-general said the spread of the mosquito-borne disease had gone from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions. Marcos Espinal, an infectious disease expert at the WHO’s Americas regional office, said: “We can expect 3 to 4 million cases of Zika virus disease”....

By Janet FangResearchers have puzzled out how spider silk is able to catch the morning dew. Their findings may lead to the development of new materials that are able to capture water from the air.The study, published today in Nature, examines the silk of the hackled orbweaver spider Uloborus walckenaerius. “Bright, pearl-like water drops hang on thin spider silk in the morning after fogging,” says study author Lei Jiang from the Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Ancestor worship in ancient China dates back to the Neolithic period, and it would prove to be the most popular and enduring Chinese religious practice, lasting well into modern times. The family was always an important concept in Chinese society and government, and it was maintained by the twin pillars of filial piety and respect for one’s dead ancestors....