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By Janelle WeaverThe loss of genes that guide the development of fins may help to explain how fish evolved into four-limbed vertebrates, according to a study.In the late Devonian period, around 365 million years ago, fish-like creatures started venturing from shallow waters onto land with the help of eight-fingered limbs. The limbs had evolved from fins; during the transition, our back-boned ancestors lost rows of rigid fibers, called actinotrichia, that provide structural support and guide fin development....

The blizzard lashed at the men digging out a giant red bus-tank hybrid out of snowdrifts on the Antarctic Peninsula. The whiteout lasted 10 days, and by the end, 23-year-old glaciologist Claude Lorius felt a decade older, he said in “Ice and the Sky,” a new documentary on his life that will soon be released in the United States. It was 1956, and Antarctica was a scientific mystery. Over the half-century, Lorius would meticulously assemble proof from the continent showing that humans are warming the planet by pumping out carbon at rates never before seen in Earth’s history....

More than a Feeling: Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Becomeby Barbara L. Fredrickson Hudson Street Press, 2013 ($25.95)Emotion researcher Fredrickson wants to revamp our view of love. In Love 2.0., she has us reimagine love as a series of micromoments in which any two people, even strangers, can click with each other. This feeling might pop up multiple times a day, perhaps when smiling at a stranger or striking up a conversation while waiting in line for coffee....

While Irene is posing the greatest danger to lives this weekend, it is not the only tropical woe in the Atlantic Basin. Tropical Storm Jose is nearing Bermuda, while the formation of Katia may be on the horizon. Tropical Storm Jose formed earlier this morning, around the time Irene’s center was bearing down on the New York City area. Jose, however, will never become the powerful storm that Irene intensified into....

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) really shine as an energy-efficient, long-lasting source of illumination in sensors, flashlights and video screens. For larger and more powerful LEDs to succeed in replacing incandescent and fluorescent bulbs in home and industrial lighting, however, they must be designed to better keep their cool. Heat is the great enemy of LEDs. Because LEDs do not emit heat as infrared radiation like incandescent or fluorescent bulbs do, it must be removed from the device by conduction or convection....

The human brain continues to produce new nerve cells throughout its life and these neurons may be key to learning new information. But many of these novice neurons wither and die before joining the vast signaling network of their mature peers. Now new research seems to show that the presence or absence of new information–represented by the neurotransmitter glutamate–may determine a young neuron’s survival. Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and his colleagues suspected that a lack of brain signals significantly impacted a new neuron’s fate....

Transcript: This is the Earth. We share this planet with nearly two million species of plants and animals. At least, that’s how many have been identified so far. Scientists still routinely discover new species. As the following maps from the Atlas of Global Conservation reveal, humans are responsible for some 140,000 species disappearing each year. That’s why some scientists call the present era the Anthropocene, or the era of humanity. We are the dominant force on the planet—for good and for ill....

Ask a random person on the street to name his or her five favorite scientists, chances are you would hear a litany of familiar names—perhaps Marie Curie, Albert Einstein or Louis Pasteur—all of them instrumental in casting the world in which we live. Much less likely would be a recital of contemporary researchers hard at work shaping the work in which we will live. If inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen has his way, the names of some of these architects of the future will roll off the tongue just as easily as those of the giants of the past after the premiere of his new television program—aptly named “Dean of Invention”—later this week....

If you’re a small business owner with a technology company, this has probably happened to you: One of your best employees is poached by a larger competitor, leaving you scrambling to find a qualified replacement who is able to pick up the load. You post the vacancy on every job board you can find. But after more than a month, the demand from your clients hasn’t decreased, and you’re struggling to keep up....

In studies that observe the brain in action, the right hemisphere seems to be the sexy hemisphere. It lights up during orgasm—so much so that, in one study, much of the cortex went dark, leaving the right prefrontal cortex as a bright island. New research suggests the right hemisphere is also hyperactive amongst the “hypersexual,” a symptom of brain injury loosely defined as groping, propositioning or masturbating in public without shame....

By Ed Yong of Nature magazineTwo teams of scientists, led by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have created mutant strains of H5N1 avian influenza. These laboratory strains could be passed between mammals more easily than wild strains of the virus.News of the research sparked an intense debate about whether the two teams’ work should be published in full to aid pandemic preparedness or redacted to prevent misuse by terrorists....

Scientific American presents Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Today we’re turning our attention to solving math problems faster than you ever thought was possible. In this article you’ll learn two tips to help you add quickly…all in your head! Next we’ll build on these tips to learn another way to do some fast addition in your head....

By Sharon Weinberger of Nature magazineIt is every government’s dream: a system that can predict future events such as riots, political upheavals and the outbreak of wars. Last week, a collection of academics and private businesses was scrambling to meet the deadline for proposals for research aiming to do just that.The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research arm of the US intelligence community, is sponsoring the work under the Open Source Indicators (OSI) program....

Mystery Cruise Control The velocities of Pioneer 10 and 11, now speeding out of the solar system, are mysteriously changing, as if an extra force from the sun were tugging at them. Explanations have ranged from gas leaks and observational error to modified theories of gravity [see “A Force to Reckon With”; SciAm, October 2005]. Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues, who helped to uncover the Pioneer anomaly, have found similar unexpected changes with four spacecraft that have flown by Earth—namely, Galileo, the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission, Cassini and Rosetta....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The treasure ship Madre de Deus (aka Madre de Dios) was a Portuguese vessel carrying hugely valuable cargo from the East Indies which was attacked and captured by a fleet of English privateers in the Azores in September 1592 CE. The ship, packed full of jewels, pearls, gold, silver, ebony, and spices, was the richest prize ever taken by the privateers who plundered the Atlantic during the long reign of Elizabeth I of England (r....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. If there’s a gene for hubris, the 23andMe crew has certainly got it. Last Friday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered the genetic-testing company immediately to stop selling its flagship product, its $99 “Personal Genome Service” kit. In response, the company cooed that its “relationship with the FDA is extremely important to us” and continued hawking its wares as if nothing had happened....

The finding last month that a group of fossils from a cave not far from Johannesburg belongs to a previously unknown human ancestor would appear to cement South Africa’s status as one of the world’s leading hotspots for research on human origins. But it also provoked a backlash from a few influential national figures who associate the finding with five decades of apartheid governance. A paper in the journal eLife last month that pegged Homo naledi as a new member of our genus Homo prompted a leader on the South African political scene to engage in a muddled questioning of the theory of evolution and a denial that humans were in any way related to other primates....

Paradise, the postcard Sierra Nevada town incinerated 22 months ago by the worst wildfire in California history, passed a milestone last month on its journey to rebuild from the ashes of 2018. “The Town of Paradise has surpassed the 1,000th building permit issued!” officials crowed in an Aug. 12 recovery update. The occasion marked the town’s rise from what remained of 14,000 destroyed homes and buildings. A new Tractor Supply Co....

By Lizzie BuchenMale fruitflies will try to mate with nearly anything with a pair of wings – as long as it doesn’t have a funky smell, work by a team of scientists in Canada suggests.Hydrocarbons on the fly’s exoskeleton, or cuticle, are known to act as pheromones, providing signals during courtship and helping flies identify members of their own species. But the details have been fuzzy because it’s difficult to tinker with the mixture of hydrocarbons that decorate the flies....

From Nature magazine Vaccines are largely safe, and do not cause autism or diabetes, the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) said in a report issued today. This conclusion followed a review of more than 1,000 published research studies. “We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines,” says Ellen Wright Clayton, chairwoman of the reporting committee and director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee....