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by Amy Maxmen Groups of friends show patterns of genetic similarity, according to a study published today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings are based on patterns of variation in two out of six genes sampled among friends and strangers. But the claim is a hard sell for some geneticists, who say that the researchers have not analysed enough genes to rule out alternative explanations. The team, led by James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California, San Diego, looked at the available data on six genes from roughly 5,000 individuals enrolled in unrelated studies, and recorded the variation at one specific point, or single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), in each gene, and compared this between friends and non-friends....

Looking like a quirky, rolling landscape out of a dr. seuss book, the green roof is literally the crowning achievement of architect Renzo Piano’s new California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco. Every element of the structure has been designed with sustainability in mind, in keeping with the academy’s mission—“to explore, explain and protect the natural world.” The academy boasts that its $500-million home, which holds a platinum rating for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), is “the greenest museum in the world....

What do the sounds of whispering, crinkling paper, and tapping fingernails have in common? What about the sight of soft paint brushes on skin, soap being gently cut to pieces, and hand movements like turning the pages of a book? Well, if you are someone who experiences the autonomous sensory meridian response—or ASMR, for short—you may recognize these seemingly ordinary sounds and sights as “triggers” for the ASMR experience. No idea what I’m talking about?...

On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami that destroyed roads, bridges, and buildings; killed nearly 16,000 people; and critically disabled three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. By March 12, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was already considering urging Americans within 50 miles of the stricken nuclear reactors to evacuate, given an explosion in Unit 1 that destroyed the reactor building and exposed spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials to the air....

Last summer Italian officials destroyed dozens of groves of prized and economically vital olive trees with chainsaws in an attempt to stop the spread of Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium that has been blamed for the death of up to a million olive trees in the nation’s southern region. But new studies released recently reveal that some of the destruction could have been avoided. One study shows that certain varieties that were felled are resistant to the bacterium even when they are near infected trees....

Thomas Jefferson is best known for expressing in words the justification for American independence. But Jefferson the politician and statesman coexisted with Jefferson the scientist. The combination led Jefferson to invest a great amount of time and energy in debunking a popular European conceit—that America was a degenerate place. American degeneracy allegedly was evident in its weak and stunted flora, fauna and people. Jefferson’s effort to illustrate the complete biological equality of the New and Old Worlds went beyond mere pride in his home continent—he and other founders believed that a successful rebuttal was necessary to ensure the growth and prosperity of their new country....

Natural selection argues against cooperation. If all organisms, including humans, are pitted in a ceaseless struggle for survival and sex, those who help others would quickly find themselves swamped in a rising tide of selfishness, especially if those they helped bore no relation to them. Yet, most humans reflexively help another person in need even if there are no family ties or a direct benefit to be gained. This conundrum has puzzled evolutionary biologists since the time of Darwin, but a new study shows how internecine warfare among early humans might have allowed for the spread of a dominant group of altruistic tribes....

On a day in late June, Navajo and Pueblo tribal activists met virtually with EPA and White House officials to urge them to reverse a decision that would weaken rules governing the release of methane at oil and gas wells. EPA is preparing to finalize a rule later this month that would significantly lighten requirements for fossil fuel producers and remove the regulations entirely for natural gas transmission and storage facilities....

Finger-stick monitors have long been the only way for people with diabetes to determine their glucose levels on a day-to-day basis. Anywhere from twice a week to several times a day, patients jab their fingers with small lancet needles to draw drops of blood that can then be slipped into a monitor to measure the concentration of the glucose in their blood. Aside from the pain and inconvenience, such occasional blood sampling is less than ideal for maintaining healthy glucose levels....

On the platform of a subway station, a woman and two men are talking a few feet away from the open track pit. Without warning, one of the men shoves the woman. She staggers backward toward the edge. The other man reaches out to catch her, but he is too late, and down she goes onto the tracks. In an instant, he reacts. He turns on his heels and coldcocks the culprit....

A middle-aged woman–call her Anne–was taken aback when one day her right hand refused to hold a pen. A few weeks later her right foot began to drag reluctantly behind her left. After her symptoms worsened over months, she consulted a neurologist. Anne, it turned out, was suffering from multiple sclerosis, a potentially disabling type of autoimmune disease. The immune system normally jumps into action in response to bacteria and viruses, deploying antibodies, other molecules and various white blood cells to recognize and destroy trespassers....

Every January nearly half of Americans make New Year’s resolutions. We resolve to eat better, exercise more, get organized, spend less money, and so on. Unfortunately, several studies suggest that most of these resolutions don’t stick. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’ve made a resolution this year and would like help keeping it, you’re in luck: Ayelet Fishbach, one of the world’s foremost researchers on the science of motivation, has written a book designed for you....

ASPEN – Shifting the United States to clean-burning renewable fuels has the potential to cut through a thicket of thorny social ills and solve long-standing problems across the entire spectrum of American life, from manufacturing to national security to clean water, the country’s top environmental cop said on Wednesday. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson spoke before 150 scientists, lawyers, industry executives, activists and others gathered at this alpine town for a three-day conference on the country’s energy future....

PROFILE Name: Rosalind Picard Title: Director of affective computing research, M.I.T. Media Lab Location: Cambridge, Mass. How did this project start? We built our first sweatband sensor to get emotional information from autistic children outside the lab. But then one of my undergrad researchers asked if he could borrow a wristband for his little brother who had autism. When he came back, we looked at the data and saw this weird peak on one side of [the boy’s] body....

As the official flu season begins in the Northern Hemisphere, health officials are looking for ways to stretch limited supplies of vaccine against the novel H1N1 flu virus that leapt from swine to humans earlier this year. A suite of studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) online Thursday and preliminary data from two clinical trials released today offer good news, particularly for the 43 million Americans vaccinated against “swine flu” in 1976....

A solar-powered airplane currently soaring over the Pacific Ocean, from Japan to Hawaii, has set a slew of new world records, logging the farthest and longest flights made so far in a solar-powered aircraft. The Solar Impulse 2 plane set the new distance and duration records when it flew 3,519 miles (5,663 kilometers) in 80 hours. The solar-powered aircraft is currently partway through a planned journey around the world. “Can you imagine that a solar-powered airplane without fuel can now fly longer than a jet plane?...

On Saturday, December 4, 1926, a green Morris Cowley motorcar stood abandoned in a roadside ditch near the city of Guildford, England. The car belonged to the renowned author Agatha Christie, who had apparently disappeared without a trace. But after missing for 11 days, she turned up in a hotel in Harrogate, a spa town in Yorkshire 200 miles north of Guildford. Christie was unable to explain what had transpired during the intervening time period, nor is this mysterious episode mentioned in her autobiography....

Whether it is American senior citizens driving into Canada in order to buy cheap prescription drugs or Canadians coming to the U.S. for surgery in order to avoid long wait times, the relative merits of these two nations’ health care systems are often cast in terms of anecdotes. Both systems are beset by ballooning costs and, especially with a presidential election on the horizon, calls for reform, but a recent study could put ammunition in the hands of people who believe it is time the U....

In the relatively pristine waters of the Great Barrier Reef marine disease ecologist Joleah Lamb spent years looking for the ways human activities—from pollution that warms the ocean to commercial fishing to scuba diving and other tourist activities—could affect how often the legendary corals off the Australian coast get sick. One thing she and her team did not see much of was plastic trash. “So it wasn’t something I thought about a lot,” Lamb says....

An imaging technique used in medicine could help detect hidden nuclear material, according to the results of a computer simulation reported this week in the Journal of Applied Physics. The work suggests a way to improve efforts to stem illegal transport of such items. “The basic idea here is to use currently available technologies, spectral X-ray detectors, to get more use out of the information that is available,” says co-author Andrew Gilbert, a nuclear engineer at the University of Texas in Austin who conducted the research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington....