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(Adds context, quotes and background) By Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) - Fracking for shale oil and gas has not led to widespread pollution of drinking water, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency draft report said on Thursday, although it warned some drilling activities could potentially cause health risks. The study, requested by Congress and five years in the making, said fracking could contaminate drinking water under certain conditions, such as when fluids used in the process leaked into the water table....

IN 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm....

A massive crack in Antarctica’s fourth-biggest ice shelf has surged forward by at least 10 kilometres since early January. Scientists who have been monitoring the 175-kilometre rift in the Larsen C ice shelf say that it could reach the ocean within weeks or months, releasing an iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg into the Weddell Sea. The plight of Larsen C is another sign that global warming is destabilizing ice along the eastern Antarctic Peninsula and raising sea levels....

Hedy Lamarr wasn’t just a beautiful movie star. According to a new play, Frequency Hopping, she was also a shrewd inventor who devised a signal technology that millions of people use every day. Lamarr—born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria in 1914—developed a passion for helping the U.S. military after walking away from an unhappy marriage to an Austrian Fascist weapons manufacturer in 1937. In an attempt to stall her acting career, he had brought her to his business meetings, where she found herself continuously listening to “fat bastards argue antiaircraft this, vacuum tube that,” explains Lamarr’s character—played by Erica Newhouse—in the play, Frequency Hopping....

Cats have a curious allure. Even the most pampered house cats seem to flaunt their independence, as if to say that they do not really need us to get by. Despite this hauteur—or perhaps because of it—many of us cannot resist bringing these regal creatures into our homes, litter boxes and all. In fact, cats outnumber canines as human companions, although we know surprisingly little about their cognition. Our partnership with cats is long-standing....

The tornado that plowed a wide swath of death and destruction through Joplin, Mo., on Sunday unleashed winds of up to 198 miles per hour, federal forecasters said yesterday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s preliminary analysis ranks the twister as an F4, the second-highest rating on the five-point scale used to classify tornadoes. Agency officials said the Joplin storm, at times three-quarters of a mile wide, was the deadliest single tornado to hit the United States since 1953....

An intranasal form of the hormone oxytocin is no more effective than placebo at increasing social behaviors in autistic children, according to what may be the largest clinical trial of the treatment to date. The results were published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Because of oxytocin’s role in strengthening social bonds, researchers have considered it as a candidate treatment for autism for more than a decade. Small trials hinted that the hormone could improve social skills in some autistic people, such as those with low blood levels of oxytocin or infants with Prader-Willi syndrome, an autism-related condition....

On September 18, 2015, Guatemalan professor Rigoberto Lima Choc awaited a judge’s decision on an issue he had been the first to uncover: A company was polluting the waters of La Pasión River near his town and Lima Choc had not only documented and reported the problem but had also taken journalists and photographers to witness the fish slaughter. That day, as he walked down the steps of the courthouse, two men on a motorcycle approached and fired at him....

If you’re single and looking to change that status, perhaps you have been pondering the mysteries of romantic attraction. It will come as no surprise to learn that research has established that physical appearance is one factor that predicts attraction. This is starkly evident in online dating. A study of thirty-somethings found that being rated in the top (versus bottom) ten percent on physical attractiveness roughly tripled the probability of receiving a “first-contact” message (Hi!...

Editor’s Note (06/11/18): Scientific American is re-posting the following article, originally published July 6, 2017, in light of the summit in Singapore between Pres. Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Many Americans returned to work after the Fourth of July holiday to learn that parts of the U.S. are now within striking distance of a new type of North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)....

In 2012, the quantum physicist John Preskill wrote, “We hope to hasten the day when well controlled quantum systems can perform tasks surpassing what can be done in the classical world.” Less than a decade later, two quantum computing systems have met that mark: Google’s Sycamore, and the University of Science and Technology of China’s Jiǔzhāng. Both solved narrowly designed problems that are, so far as we know, impossible for classical computers to solve quickly....

The U.S. is plump with coal. The country has one quarter of the world’s reserves, and coal accounts for about 50 percent of the nation’s electricity. To cut the reliance on oil imports, why not also use it to power cars and trucks or to heat homes, too? That may happen soon. This year Waste Management and Processors, Inc. (WMPI), will break ground for the first U.S. coal-to-diesel production facility, in Gilberton, Pa....

It has long been known that—contrary to the common sense notion that like charges repel—electrons in solids tend to pair up at low temperatures to conduct electricity without heating the wire, a phenomenon known as superconductivity. Superconductivity is utilized, among other things, to create high magnetic fields in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. The phenomenon involves the condensation of a group of bosons—particles such as the paired electrons—that dance together synchronously in the same quantum state....

The past decade has seen a number of major shifts in global energy systems. After years of rising natural gas exports, the United States suddenly finds itself awash in domestic supply. The nuclear industry, which until a few years ago anticipated a “renaissance” of new construction, has found its growth checked by the aftershocks of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Consumption of fossil fuels continues to rise, meanwhile, despite heavy investments from both developed and developing countries into renewables and energy efficiency....

With the persistence of vaccine denial, as well as many Americans still reluctant to face the facts of climate change even in the face of devastating floods and record-breaking heat, social media has been suffused with theories about why people don’t trust science. In my own work, I have talked about how 40 years of partisan attacks on government have led to distrust of government science and then of science generally....

More consumers are placing compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) in their shopping baskets. Using 25 percent the energy of standard incandescents (and lasting 10 times longer), the swirly little tubes have become a symbol of green living and a means to fight climate change. Australia will require home­owners and businesses to replace all incandescents with CFLs by 2010, ultimately reducing greenhouse gas emissions by four million metric tons a year. At least four U....

Poaching of elephants, rhinoceroses and pangolins makes headlines almost every day. But tree trafficking? Not so much. Nevertheless, illegal logging is a major market; the United Nations estimates its value in the tens of billions of dollars. Rosewood—a category that includes 33 commercial species of long-lived hardwoods that share a sweet, floral smell—is a particularly lucrative target. These trees are being poached at breathtaking rates: authorities in Thailand alone seize more than one haul of rosewood a day on average, according to research published online in March in Environmental Conservation....

Did Apple kick YouTube to the curb, or did Google have a part in its disappearance from iOS?(Credit:Screenshot by Ben Parr/CNET)YouTube will no longer come standard on the iPhone and iPad, and the Internet is jumping to conclusions as usual.The next version of Apple’s mobile OS – iOS 6 – will be missing the familiar YouTube app from its home screen. Instead, users will have to download a new YouTube app from the App Store....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Aztecs of ancient Mexico measured time with a sophisticated and interconnected triple calendar system which followed the movements of the celestial bodies and provided a comprehensive list of important religious festivals and sacred dates. Each day in the calendar was given a unique combination of a name and a number....

GUÁCIMA, ALAJUELA, Costa Rica—Hundreds of robots—some designed to play 3D Tetris or soccer, others to tackle some of Earth’s dire sustainability challenges—invaded this small Costa Rican town last weekend. The machines were accompanied by their creators: 2,500 competitors, ages six to 25, from more than 60 countries, at the 14th World Robot Olympiad (WRO) held Nov. 10–12. This was the first time in the event’s 14-year history that it was held outside Asia....