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For the past two decades the drug thalidomide—made infamous in the 1950s and 1960s for causing severe birth defects—has had a second act as a cancer therapy. It has proved particularly effective against the blood cancer multiple myeloma, halting the malignancy at its roots in the bone marrow. Yet despite the medication’s life-extending results, researchers have had trouble explaining exactly why it works. Now after years of study scientists have started unraveling key details about thalidomide’s machinations in the body....

Parents of toddlers know the routine: You catch your child red-handed and sticky-fingered—the evidence of a candy raid literally written on his or her face. But instead of a confession, you get a wide-eyed denial: “I didn’t do it!” Learning to tell the truth, even at the risk of punishment, is an important part of moral development, and new evidence suggests it can take seven or more years for kids to get there....

NASA will send its final space shuttle into orbit this summer, when Atlantis lifts off from Kennedy Space Center for a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. The mission will garner much attention for what it represents – the 135th and final flight of NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program. But also important is the work that the four-member crew will be doing to ready the International Space Station for the post-shuttle-program era....

PHILADELPHIA – The day Stuart Parmet’s water bill hit the stratosphere, his mind became a swirl of numbers. American Box and Recycling Co., his business, gathers, recycles and distributes cardboard boxes. The factory only had a dozen or so toilets and used no water in the machinery. What was going on? “One day we get a bill, out of the clear blue sky, that ‘your bill will go from $300 in 2009, $1,100 in 2010, $2,400 in 2011, up to $3,900 in 2013,’” he said....

By Richard A. LovettAmerica’s Pacific Northwest has a 37% chance of being hit by a magnitude 8 or larger earthquake in the next 50 years, a new study shows. That’s more than double previous estimates of a 10-15% risk, says Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis.In a monograph1 soon to be published by the US Geological Survey, Goldfinger and colleagues examined more than 80 core samples taken from the seabed between Vancouver Island, in south-western Canada, and Cape Mendocino, in northern California, looking for deposits from submarine landslides triggered by massive earthquakes....

Identifying genius is a dicey venture. Consider, for example, this ranking of “The Top 10 Geniuses” I recently stumbled across on Listverse.com. From first to last place, here are the honorees: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Emanuel Swedenborg, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, John Stuart Mill, Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bobby Fischer, Galileo Galilei and Madame De Staël. What about Albert Einstein instead of Swedenborg? Some of the living might also deserve this appellation—Stephen Hawking comes to mind....

Five years ago I heightened my self-knowledge—abruptly. I had flown to Moscow to meet an executive in charge of Russia’s railroads, and a press officer had offered a translator. I declined, believing that my conversational Russian would suffice. How wrong I was. Seated at a conference table in the executive’s capacious office, I was struck dumb by the streams of technical jargon zooming past my ears. It was swine flu season, and I couldn’t tell if my forehead burned more from shame or genuine fever....

The United States needs to develop a national strategy to adapt to climate change, according to a new report commissioned by the White House. “Even with mitigation efforts, climate change will continue to unfold for decades due to the long atmospheric lifetime of past greenhouse-gas emissions and the gradual release of excess heat that has built up in the oceans,” reads the report. “Climate change adaptation is thus a necessity for our nation and the world....

Shifting, strengthening winds will help to counteract future sea-level rise in Antarctica—and by doing so, they may help stabilize ice sheets on some parts of the southern continent. “That’s really significant,” says Aimee Slangen, who studies sea-level variation at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Hobart and who was not involved with the study.The band of westerly winds that encircles Antarctica has been speeding up and creeping southward since the 1950s....

To wear the winner’s distinctive yellow jersey when this year’s Tour de France ends in Paris on July 27, cyclists must make every second count throughout the race’s 21 stages and 2,208 miles (3,554 kilometers). A bad day biking through the Alps can push a rider off the leader’s list and deep into the pack, which makes access to the latest high-tech cycling equipment crucial. View slideshow “There is a mad dash to be the most technically advanced,” says Scott Daubert, road bike manager for Trek Bicycle Corporation in Waterloo, Wisc....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. New Testament studies now place Jesus Christ within the parameters of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st century CE, attempting to go behind the layers of later Christian theology and philosophy (such as the trinity) to understand how his message would have been received in the towns and villages of Galilee....

Twelve years ago an estimated 80 percent of medications lacked labeling for use in children because they had only been tested for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in adults. A big legislative push in 2002 led to great strides in getting more drugs tested in children so that now about half of medications lack directions. But more work is needed, according to a recent policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics....

Bluefin tuna were struggling before Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant flooded their spawning grounds with radiation. The fish’s popularity on the sushi platter has plunged population numbers. Now traces of radiation from the nuclear disaster are showing up in the muscles of bluefins off the California coast. This radiation, however, might be a good thing. The levels are low enough that they won’t harm fish or restaurant-goers. In fact, the traces of radioactive isotopes are helping scientists track the torpedo-shaped fish, and could aid conservation efforts....

HONOLULU — The village where Christina Deeley was born in the Marshall Islands is disappearing, bit by bit. When she visits her family in the Laura community on the islands’ Majuro atoll, Hawaii resident Deeley, 34, sees many changes confronting natives. The beach has receded by several feet. Cemeteries once located at the end of the town have vanished. Fish are becoming more scarce and fresh water polluted. Deeley’s mother, Maria de Brum, 57, still lives in Laura and wants to stay....

If astronomers had a few hundred thousand years to wait, they could look toward what is now just a giant cloud of gas and dust they have recently analyzed and see instead a massive newborn star—one that might rank among the heftiest stars known. No one has that much time, of course, but even now astronomers can study the cloud to obtain a detailed snapshot of a colossal star, as much as 100 times the mass of the sun, in the process of forming....

On the Cancer Frontier by Paul A. Marks and James Sterngold PublicAffairs, 2014 ($26.99) The past 50 years have seen remarkable strides in cancer research and treatment, thanks in part to physician and researcher Marks. Since the 1950s Marks has contributed to the genetic research that has gradually provided a basic understanding of cancer cells. He also pushed to change public perception of the disease, petitioning President Richard M. Nixon to declare a war on cancer....

American kids may have become more serious about academics. Investigators from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research surveyed 2,908 U.S. children and adolescents aged six to 17 years in 2002–2003 and compared the data with a smaller survey conducted in 1981–1982. Hours spent per week: 2002–2003 1981–1982 Sleeping 68.2 62.63 Attending school 32.45 26.35 Watching television 14.6 15.73 Playing games 8.08 7.33 Eating 7.1 8.47 Studying 3.97 2.63...

Attention, fast food devotees. If the start of a new year wasnt enough to make you change your eating habits, the results of new research might be. A long-term study has specifically linked consumption of fast food to obesity and type 2 diabetes. Scientists writing in the current issue of the Lancet report that study participants who visited fast food restaurants twice a week or more gained 10 more pounds and experienced double the increase in insulin resistance compared to subjects who indulged less than once a week....

Suppose you want to glimpse the beginning of time, the very first moments of cosmic creation. You might start by building a perfect telescope, an instrument so powerful that it could see to the far end of the observable universe. You’d scout out a dry mountaintop, far from the star-fading glow of civilization. You’d level out a perch near its peak and place a state-of-the-art observatory atop it. You’d outfit it with a gigantic mirror—something much larger than could be launched into space—and equip it with a series of sophisticated detectors....

Green snow algae are some of Antarctica’s smallest living organisms, delicate enough to examine by microscope. But when they grow together in clumps, they’re visible from space—a rich, green stain on the surface of the white snow. Now, scientists are using satellite images to determine how much algae is growing in Antarctica. One of these first-ever mapping projects was published this week in the journal Nature Communications. It identified a large network of algal blooms, cropping up each summer across the peninsula of Antarctica and the nearby islands that dot the Southern Ocean....