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On the savanna a lioness will fell and shred her prey without empathy. Yet for we humans who can imagine that a cow might feel pain, pleasure and fear, enjoying animal flesh may have moral overtones. New research indicates that we have developed a mental tool to help us cope with the realities of our carnivorous nature: denial. In a study that excluded vegetarians, psychologist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland in Australia and his colleagues first asked par­ticipants to commit to eating either meat slices or apple wedges....

Clothes make the man—and they might also reflect his mind. A recent study of London teens reveals that choice of clothing style may affect mental health. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, queried Bangladeshi adolescents attending London schools about their fashion preferences and, two years later, assessed their mental health. The scientist reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in May that the girls who wore traditional Bangladeshi clothing were less likely to suffer later from psychological problems, such as depression, than were those who wore Western-style garments....

Saturn’s spectacular ring system may date back some 4.4 billion years to the time when the planet itself formed, new findings suggest. The work could help to resolve a long-running debate about whether the rings are ancient or formed much more recently, on the order of hundreds of millions of years ago. For the first time, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has measured the rate at which dust from outside the Saturn system is falling on the rings and polluting them....

Scorching summertime heat waves in Europe, Asia and North America, as well as extreme cold snaps in central Asia, have become more likely because of changes in the way air is flowing over those regions, a new study detailed in the journal Nature suggests. The overall warming of the atmosphere that has resulted from the buildup of greenhouse gases has generally tipped the odds in favor of more extreme warm temperatures and fewer cold ones....

A proposal to release genetically altered mosquitoes into the United States for the first time hit a possible stumbling block on Tuesday, with voters in the Florida Keys expressing ambivalence about a field trial there. Residents split on the possibility of a trial, with one ballot initiative open only to residents of Key Haven, where the trial would take place, failing, and another initiative open to all residents of surrounding Monroe County being approved....

Climate change made Hurricane Harvey more powerful and increased its deadly flooding, according to new research released as major storms may be driving more Americans to worry about global warming. Human-caused climate change caused the storm to drop significantly more rain than storms would have before atmospheric carbon dioxide levels spiked from the consumption of fossil fuels, according to research published yesterday. Meanwhile, a new poll suggests that witnessing that type of damage and the suffering of those affected has also seemed to move public opinion slightly toward an acceptance of the risk that it poses to a large segment of the U....

Early in Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of State, climate change expert Nigel Purvis approached her with a wonky request. It was about using a particular slice of development aid to help communities in Indonesia stop cutting their forests—filled with the kind of technical jargon that makes some political celebrities yawn. Purvis said he wasn’t at all that sure Clinton—who at the time was grappling with a popular revolt in Libya, tensions in Sudan and the burgeoning brutality of Syria’s Bashar Assad—would be familiar with this in-the-weeds issue, but she was....

How is a lost tale of chivalry from medieval Europe like an unknown species of animal? According to a new study, the number of both items can be tallied using exactly the same mathematical model. The findings align with existing estimates of lost literature—and suggest that ecological models can be applied to a surprising variety of social science fields. Experts know that much fiction from the medieval era (roughly from the beginning of the fifth century A....

If a salamander loses its leg, it can grow a new one. Humans and other mammals are not so fortunate, but we can regenerate the tips of our digits, as long as enough of the nail remains. This was first shown some 40 years ago; today researchers finally reveal why it is that nails are necessary. Working with mice, researchers led by Mayumi Ito at New York University have identified a population of stem cells lying beneath the base of the nail that can orchestrate the restoration of a partially amputated digit....

Solution: The following solution (from T.J. Takei) assumes a downtown in the center at (0,0) where the first coordinate indicates east-west coordinate and the second indicates a north-south coordinate. Eastbound buses (red arrows) will line up along a -1 slope (five blocks/units apart on each road). For each time t, the position of bus n will be: En = { b(-y + t + 5n, y) } for each y-th East-West street Westbound buses (blue arrows also five units apart) are lined up along the same angle and move in the opposite direction Wn = { b(-y - t + 5n, y) } Northbound buses (purple arrows, five units apart) are lined up in steeper incline (slope = 1....

Warning that “decision-making gridlock” has bogged down efforts to protect public health, a national panel of scientists recommended Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overhaul its strategy for analyzing the hazards of toxic chemicals and pollutants. Risk assessment is the scientific tool that policymakers use to guide their decisions about how and when to regulate chemicals in air, water, food and consumer products. But the assessments, often decades-long and cumbersome, fail to provide the answers that policymakers need to make their decisions, according to a panel of experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences....

We were talking about politics. My housemate, an English professor, opined that certain politicians were thinking with their reptilian brains when they threatened military action against Iran. Many people believe that a component of the human brain inherited from reptilian ancestors is responsible for our species’ aggression, ritual behaviors and territoriality. One of the most common misconceptions about brain evolution is that it represents a linear process culminating in the amazing cognitive powers of humans, with the brains of other modern species representing previous stages....

The sun’s nearest neighbor may actually host three planets, a new study reports. Astronomers have found evidence of a third planet circling Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star that lies a mere 4.2 light-years from our solar system. The candidate world, known as Proxima d, is estimated to be just 25% as massive as Earth, making it one of the lightest known exoplanets if it ends up being confirmed. “The discovery shows that our closest stellar neighbor seems to be packed with interesting new worlds, within reach of further study and future exploration,” study lead author João Faria, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço in Portugal, said in a statement....

Controversy has arisen again about whether holding a cell phone next to the head for too many minutes a day threatens the brain with electromagnetic radiation. The preponderance of evidence continues to indicate there is no threat. Many people do not realize, however, that we are increasingly surrounded by technologies that emit radiation in the same radiofrequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum: WiFi routers, Bluetooth transmitters and more. As the graphic above shows, the radiation emitted in this region is nonionizing: it may heat molecules in the body but does not ionize them (that is, set electrons free)....

I never even met one of the patients who had the most enduring impact on me. I was just a fourth-year medical student on rotation with the neurosurgery service, excited to participate in a cool, complex case. At my level, I would be relegated to scrubbing in and watching. The chief resident made me feel like part of the team, though, by discussing the case with me and granting me the dubious honor of placing a catheter in the patient’s bladder, a lowly but necessary task....

Forty years ago this month the lunar surface reverberated with life for the first time. Forty years from now will Mars, too, come alive? President Barack Obama has affirmed the broad goals for human spaceflight that his predecessor put forward in 2004: retire the shuttle in 2010, develop a replacement line of rockets (named Ares), return to the moon by 2020, and go to Mars, perhaps in the mid-2030s [see “To the Moon and Beyond,” by Charles Dingell, William A....

Sugar and spice and everything nice hold no interest for a cat. Our feline friends are only interested in one thing: meat (except for saving up the energy to catch it by napping, or a round of restorative petting) This is not just because inside every domestic tabby lurks a killer just waiting to catch a bird or torture a mouse, it is also because cats lack the ability to taste sweetness, unlike every other mammal examined to date....

The Obama administration is pushing to make climate change a focal point as the United States becomes the new leader of the international Arctic Council, a move that is winning praise from environmentalists, even though it’s unclear how it may translate into action. This week, senior Arctic officials from multiple countries will meet in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, to hear the United States present its agenda for its two-year chairmanship starting next year....

Key Concepts Physics Sound Waves Biology Introduction Have you ever listened to noises underwater? Sound travels differently in the water than it does in the air. To learn more, try making your own underwater noises—and listening carefully. Background Sound is a wave created by vibrations. These vibrations create areas of more and less densely packed particles. So sound needs a medium to travel, such as air, water—or even solids. Sound waves travel faster in denser substances because neighboring particles will more easily bump into one another....

Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasitic infection that has ravaged African and Asian populations since antiquity, may be on the verge of being eradicated, says Jimmy Carter. The former president has helped lead the global effort to fight Dracunculiasis, or Guinea worm disease, through his work with the Carter Center, a foundation he and his wife, Rosalind, established for fighting disease and promoting human rights. Speaking at a recent press conference, Carter lauded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for pledging $40 million to carry out the final stages of the eradication campaign....