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A group of respected coral reef scientists has released a declaration intended to change how the Australian government manages development in the coastal region bordering the Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage site. A coal mining boom in the country, fueled by demand from Asia, has spurred plans to develop several ports along the coast of Queensland, the northeastern Australian territory whose coast abuts the reef. In the statement, the scientists call for Queensland and the Australian government to restrict port developments and create a sustainable development standard for the Great Barrier Reef coastline....

A rare edge-on view of the rings around Uranus has given astronomers their first glare-free peek at them since 1986, when the Voyager 2 probe flew past our solar system’s seventh planet from the sun. The shaded glimpse, permitted by the heavens once every 42 years, revealed a surprisingly bright swath of faint dust that had been obscured by reflected sunlight glinting from other rings made of larger rocks, researchers report online today in Science....

Could the next prescription from your doctor be for an app? A raft of apps in use or under development can now detect or monitor mental and physical disorders autonomously or directly administer therapies. Collectively known as digital medicines, the software can both enhance traditional medical care and support patients when access to health care is limited—a need that the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated. Many detection aids rely on mobile devices to record such features as users’ voices, locations, facial expressions, exercise, sleep and texting activity; then they apply artificial intelligence to flag the possible onset or exacerbation of a condition....

The idea that “opposites attract” may seem to hold true often enough, but it is definitely not the whole story: When it comes to choosing a partner, people actually tend to pair up with those similar to them—in qualities ranging from height and weight to education, income and personality. In a new study published this week in JAMA Psychiatry, a team of researchers in Sweden reported that partners also tend to be more alike in their psychiatric status....

When viscous fluids such as honey dribble onto a surface, they coil around like a self-weaving basket. All you have to do is pour some honey onto toast and marvel at the strange patterns that result. If that whets your appetite (for science), it is easy to do more elaborate experiments and observe the variety of ways that liquids coil. Collect the following equipment: 1 liter of viscous honey or sugar syrup 1 empty half-liter plastic bottle, with its screw cap A drill to make a hole in the cap 1 pan 1 glass with a flat bottom A small quantity of wax or putty...

World leaders, scientists and policymakers are gathered in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP27) climate summit. So far, the discussions have addressed the urgent need to decarbonize high-emitting industries, adaptation strategies for climate-resilient agriculture and loss and damage compensation. As the conference enters its second week, Nature spoke to four climate scientists from the host country about their research, the challenges they encounter and their hopes for COP27....

Physicists have caught ghostly particles called neutrinos misbehaving at an Illinois experiment, suggesting an extra species of neutrino exists. If borne out, the findings would be nothing short of revolutionary, introducing a new fundamental particle to the lexicon of physics that might even help explain the mystery of dark matter. Undeterred by the fact that no one agrees on what the observations actually mean, experts gathered at a neutrino conference in June in Germany excitedly discussed these and other far-reaching implications....

More than 80,000 chemicals are produced, used, and present in the United States. This is one of their stories. Post updated 8/22/2013. Are we letting the chemical industry decide what is safe for us to eat? Toxic substances — how does the government prevent them from getting into the products we buy? If you’ve been reading about the appalling inadequacy of the Toxic Substances Control Act or TSCA (such as here and here), you already know the answer to that question: Not well at all....

By Anna Driver and Terry WadeMERTZON, Texas (Reuters) - At a dusty Texas oilfield, Apache Corp has eliminated its reliance on what arguably could be the biggest long-term constraint for fracking wells in the arid western United States: scarce freshwater.For only one well, millions of gallons of water are used for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process that has helped reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil over the past five years by cracking rock deep underground to release oil and gas....

The chemical bisphenol A, known as BPA, has become familiar in the past decade, notably to parents searching for BPA-free bottles for their infants. Animal studies have found that BPA, which resembles the sex hormone estrogen, harms health. The growing brain is an especially worrisome target: estrogen is known to be important in fetal brain development in rodents. Now a study suggests that prenatal, but not childhood, exposure to BPA is connected to anxiety, depression and difficulty controlling behaviors in three-year-olds, especially girls....

Dear EarthTalk: Can you recommend some sources for toys and other holiday gifts that are both safe and not harmful to the environment? – Tracy Gately, Marblehead, MA Given the massive recall of toys contaminated with lead last year, let alone all the other bad news about chemicals seeping out of just about every other conceivable type of consumer item, it’s no wonder that people are nervous about what might be inside the wrapping paper this next holiday season....

For thousands of years humans have used embalming methods to preserve dead bodies. But nothing compares with Russia’s 90-year-old experiment to preserve the body of Vladimir Lenin, communist revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union. Generations of Russian scientists have spent almost a century fine-tuning preservation techniques that have maintained the look, feel and flexibility of Lenin’s body. This year Russian officials closed the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square so that scientists could prepare the body for public display again in time for the Soviet leader’s 145th birthday anniversary today....

By Lizzie BuchenA notorious pair of man-eating lions that teamed up to terrorize Kenyan labour camps more than 100 years ago did not have the same taste for human flesh, a new study suggests. The findings may reveal unexpected flexibility in lion social relationships.Between March and December 1898, a pair of male lions killed and devoured 28-135 people in the Tsavo region of Kenya. To understand what happened, Justin Yeakel, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues analysed the lions’ remains....

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano—the largest active volcano on Earth—erupted on Sunday night for the first time since 1984, flooding the bowl-like caldera at its summit with a pool of glowing lava. The eruption was presaged by an increase in earthquake swarms and sections of the ground moving up and down at the summit caldera (called Moku‘aweoweo) starting in August, says Jessica Ball, a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. At approximately 11:30 P....

Fighting cancer is currently a messy war. Modern chemotherapies attack tumors with the equivalent of a machinegun approach: cover the area widely with deadly fire and hope to destroy the tumor with a minimum of collateral damage. Doctors have long sought a way to precisely target tumors with their chemical therapies. Now researchers may have found it in a nanoparticle laced with a cancer-combating drug. Omid Farokhzad of Harvard University, Robert Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their colleagues created the nanoparticle out of a previously FDA-approved polymer that has been shown to dissolve inside cells....

By Gopal Sharma and John Chalmers KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal’s government agreed on Tuesday to compensation demands for Mount Everest sherpas, after the single deadliest avalanche on the world’s highest mountain killed at least 13 guides. Expedition leaders said tension was running high at Everest base camp after last Friday’s incident, which has rekindled debate on the disproportionate risks that sherpas take helping foreign mountaineers reach the 8,850-metre summit. Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, told Reuters that although some sherpas had proposed suspending work for the rest of this climbing season, they had now agreed to resume expeditions on Saturday....

Editor’s Note: We are republishing this new story from our February 1995 issue as part of our in-depth report on Science at the Movies. The world was safe all along. Back in the 1950s, moviemakers regularly served up the spectacle of creatures from other planets attempting to take over our bucolic little orb. Heroic earthlings fought the aliens with dynamite, napalm, atomic torpedoes and bad acting. But had the heroes been better acquainted with life-history strategies – the reproductive behaviors that determine patterns of population growth – they might not have bothered....

President Obama used his final address to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday to warn that climate change would worsen the kind of unrest and inequality that has spurred a global refugee crisis. Speaking before a high-level summit on migrants he convened at U.N. headquarters, Obama told the assembly of world leaders and foreign ministers that the problems they are seeing would only worsen in a warming world. “If we don’t act boldly, the bill that could come due will be mass migrations, and cities submerged and nations displaced, and food supplies decimated, and conflicts born of despair,” he said....

By Edward McAllister NEW YORK (Reuters) - Recent small earthquakes in Ohio were likely triggered by fracking, state regulators said on Friday, a new link that could have implications for oil and gas drilling in the Buckeye State and beyond. In the strongest wording yet from the state linking energy drilling and quakes, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) said that injecting sand, water and chemicals deep underground to help release oil and gas may have produced tremors in Poland Township last month....

Edited by Dava Sobel High-born, not like those other elements, The common riffraff, the ones All too ready to mix it up. From the right tower of the periodic table They appraise their inferiors, Arrayed in colored boxes as far as they can see. Dancing lightly on the parapet, Helium waves her party balloons Of yellow, red, and blue. A level down, in her flaming orange-red dress, Neon shows a leg and shouts into the darkness Her cry of freedom....