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Depending on your perspective, one of nature’s perverse ironies—or exquisite feats—is that some mosquito-borne viruses appear to benefit from their victims’ immune responses to bug bites. Simply put, the body’s defensive reaction to pathogens, including dengue or West Nile, acts as a handmaiden for the viruses themselves. The first glimpses into exactly how these pathogens manage to hijack the body’s defense systems to enhance disease were revealed Tuesday in a new mouse study....

In the century since Albert Einstein proposed his theory of general relativity physicists have put it through the wringer with extensive experimental tests—and it has withstood them all. But these experiments were conducted in environments of relatively weak gravity. Scientists have thus been left to wonder how well the theory describes the universe under more extreme conditions, like those found in the regions around black holes. To that end a new study suggests a means of testing the limits of the theory: Researchers have determined that if general relativity does break down near black holes, the effects may be detectable in x-rays blazing off the infalling matter....

A 62-year-old man from Singapore was traveling to the U.S. to see relatives last December and was detained after a routine fingerprint scan showed that he actually had none. So how did this happen? The man, identified in a medical journal case report only as “Mr. S,” had been on chemotherapy to keep his head and neck cancer in check. As it turns out, the drug, capecitabine (brand name, Xeloda) had given him a moderate case of something known as hand–foot syndrome (aka chemotherapy-induced acral erythema), which can cause swelling, pain and peeling on the palms and soles of the feet—and apparently, loss of fingerprints....

Most scientists have long assumed that life on Earth is a homegrown phenomenon. According to the conventional hypothesis, the earliest living cells emerged as a result of chemical evolution on our planet billions of years ago in a process called abiogenesis. The alternative possibility–that living cells or their precursors arrived from space–strikes many people as science fiction. Developments over the past decade, however, have given new credibility to the idea that Earth’s biosphere could have arisen from an extraterrestrial seed....

On the morning of May 3, 2010, three agents of the Food and Drug Administration descended upon the Houston office of Cetero Research, a firm that conducted research for drug companies worldwide. Lead agent Patrick Stone, now retired from the FDA, had visited the Houston lab many times over the previous decade for routine inspections. This time was different. His team was there to investigate a former employee’s allegation that the company had tampered with records and manipulated test data....

By Will Boggs MD NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Fecal microbiota transplantation can be effective for recurrent Clostridium difficile infection, but new-onset obesity could follow transplant of stool from an overweight donor, say the authors of a case report. “Fecal transplant has helped a lot of people who have run out of other options,” Dr. Colleen R. Kelly, from Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, told Reuters Health by email....

By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazine For researchers who rely on lab animals shipped from distant sources, and for the companies that breed them, the options are narrowing again. This week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will announce that it has obtained written assurances from the world’s two largest air-cargo carriers, FedEx and UPS, that they will not transport mammals for laboratory use. UPS says that it is also planning to further “restrict” an exemption that allows the transport of amphibians, fish, insects and other non-mammals....

How do painkillers buffer against social rejection? —Lauren Sippel, State College, Pa. Jeannine Stamatakis, an instructor at various colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area, answers: WE OFTEN feel rejected when faced with the popular clique at school or the office bully. Learning to protect yourself against such social assaults can prove quite difficult, but new research shows a common painkiller may reduce the impact of these upsetting interactions. A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, may buffer against social pain....

Traces of chemicals known to cause human cancer lurk everywhere. But after decades of research, figuring out how many people might contract cancer because of them remains an elusive goal. More than 60 percent of U.S. cancer deaths are caused by smoking and diet. But what about the rest? A report by the President’s Cancer Panel, released earlier this month, reignited a 30-year-old controversy among cancer experts and environmental epidemiologists about how large a role environmental factors play in the No....

Between 55 million and 40 million years ago, the northern edge of what is now India began to slam into the giant slab of Earth’s crust that today carries Nepal and Tibet. This ancient collision had a terrible after-effect this past Saturday: The deadly earthquake, centered in Nepal, which had an estimated death toll of nearly 4,000 people as of Monday evening. India bulled its way under Nepal those many millions of years ago, shoving the northern land skyward....

This story is a supplement to the feature “Jeremy Nicholson’s Gut Instincts: Researching Intestinal Bacteria” which was printed in the July 2008 issue of Scientific American. One of the hottest biomedical fields right now is metabolomics—the study of the metabolites and other chemicals that the body and its bacteria produce. The goal is to find out how the compounds can serve as indicators of health and disease. For the Insights story, “Going with His Gut Bacteria,” in the July 2008 Scientific American, Melinda Wenner talked with Jeremy Nicholson of Imperial College London....

In a full-scale particle accelerator, electrons fly along a kilometers-long path as microwaves bombard them, boosting the particles to near light speed. Such a high-energy electron beam, produced at facilities such as California’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, enables a variety of experiments, including capturing extremely detailed images and probing the structures of molecules. But particle accelerators are expensive, require scientists to travel from locations all over the world and cannot accommodate all the researchers who submit requests to book time....

The bursting blooms of many types of flowers herald the onset of spring. New research is helping scientists unravel the cellular signaling that prompts the plants to blossom after their winter slumber. According to a report published in today’s issue of the journal Science, the action of one protein that responds to daylight starts a chain reaction that allows flowering to commence. Previous research had identified a protein called CONSTANS that manages a plant’s flowering in response to changes in day length....

Fifty years ago the starting pistol fired with the launch of Sputnik, and the space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was on. The contest was less like a race, however, than it was an extraplanetary game of Risk, with each side seeking to attain dominance over some portion of Earth’s neighborhood. Notwithstanding the high-minded rhetoric about humanity expanding out among the stars, the leadership of the two countries had more immediate military motivations to develop better technology for hurling ICBMs and spying from orbit—and denying the other side an equivalent advantage....

Renewable energy is now cheaper than natural gas and coal in parts of the United States. The only problem: Cheap renewables may not be enough to stop the world from warming to dangerously high levels. The dynamic is outlined in a pair of recent reports. The first, by the financial advisory firm Lazard Frères & Co. LLC, finds wind and solar costs have declined by 69 percent and 88 percent, respectively, over the last nine years....

First-time visitors to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, usually remark that they cannot believe they are in a country that a little over 20 years was in the midst of a civil war. The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi resulted in the slaughter of up to one million people—around 15% of the population. But the landlocked country is developing rapidly. Where gravel roads once dominated, paved streets are now the rule. Internet connections are fast and stable....

Talk about bouncing back from adversity. A new stretchy material can be cut and rejoined at the same spot just by pressing the broken ends together for a few minutes. The self-healing rubber stays stretchy even after being severed five or six times, or cut and left on the countertop overnight, French researchers say. A chemical manufacturer is already working to create large batches of the material for still hypothetical applications such as sealants and self-healing rubber duckies....

Tucked away in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, three massive metal cones could help address the world’s dwindling supply of phosphorus, the crucial ingredient of fertilizers that has made modern agriculture possible. The cones make consistently high-quality, slow-release fertilizer pellets from phosphorus recovered at the Durham Advance Wastewater Treatment Facility, less than 10 miles from downtown Portland. By generating about one ton of pellets every day, they are changing the view that such recycling could not be done efficiently....

In 2013 the Black Lives Matter movement began after George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black teen. The following year the movement triggered national protests after the killing of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In 2020 the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd led to global protests against racial injustice. These are not isolated incidents. Institutional and systemic racism reinforce discrimination in countless situations, including hiring, sentencing, housing and mortgage lending....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The gods of the Aztecs (1345-1521 CE) were many and varied and, as with many other ancient cultures, deities were closely associated with things and events important to the culture and the general welfare of the community. These include gods of maize and the rain to nourish it, fire and the hearth to cook it, and all manner of gods to represent major celestial bodies, prominent geographical features and extreme meteorological events from the Morning Star to evening frost....