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In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient’s illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely “mental,” and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses....

The prototype for Google’s HUD glasses has been seen, according to tech news site 9to5Google. And, supposedly they resemble Oakley’s Thump glasses, which makes them look a lot like something the Terminator might wear. But, it’s not just how Google’s glasses look, their function also mirrors something out of the Terminator trilogy. In December, rumors spread that Google was finishing up a prototype on high-tech glasses known as wearable head-up displays (HUD) that could tap into Google’s cloud-based location services and detail users’ surroundings....

U.S. climate policy hung a U-turn yesterday, with President Biden using his Inauguration Day to launch a domestic and international response to climate change that is diametrically opposed to that of his predecessor. The new administration marked the day by rejoining the Paris climate agreement, revoking the Keystone XL oil pipeline’s federal permit and pledging to “review” a laundry list of Trump administration regulatory actions aimed at propping up high-emitting industries....

Dear EarthTalk: How are populations of the world’s orca whales faring these days? Are we still in danger of losing them all in the wild? —J. Witham, Bangor, ME The largest member of the dolphin family and a major draw at marine parks, orcas (also known as “killer whales”) are highly intelligent and social marine mammals that, because of these traits, have come to be known as ambassadors for nature and marine ecosystems around the world....

On a research vessel in the waters off Greece’s Amvrakikos Gulf, Joan Gonzalvo watched a female bottlenose dolphin in obvious distress. Over and over again, the dolphin pushed a newborn calf, almost certainly her own, away from the observers’ boat and against the current with her snout and pectoral fins. It was as if she wanted to nudge her baby into motion—but to no avail. The baby was dead. Floating under direct sunlight on a hot day, its body quickly began to decay; occasionally the mother removed pieces of dead skin and loose tissue from the corpse....

Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at The Ohio State University (O.S.U.) in Columbus, does not believe in the impossible. More than three decades ago he led an expedition that retrieved ice cores from the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru at 5,670 meters above sea level, which most glaciologists at the time considered too high for humans to conduct this kind of work. The exquisitely preserved layers of dust and air bubbles in the cores provided an unprecedented climate history of the tropics, and Thompson’s work has come to focus on the increasingly important climate change lessons to be learned from Earth’s so-called “third pole”—the ancient and massive buildup of glacial ice straddling the subtropics in Tibet....

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - The number of people killed by malaria dropped below half a million in the past year, reflecting vast progress against the mosquito-borne disease in some of the previously hardest-hit areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The World Health Organization’s annual malaria report showed deaths falling to 438,000 in 2015 - down dramatically from 839,000 in 2000 - and found a significant increase in the number of countries moving towards the elimination of malaria....

In the midst of a brutal winter, it makes sense that anyone would want to head south ASAP, including, it seems, some common American songbirds, which new research shows, zip to winter hotspots far speedier than previously believed. Researchers report in Science today that, for the first time, they were able to map the entire flights – some of which are more than 4,600 miles (7,500 km) – of wood thrushes and purple martins from their summer North American breeding grounds to their winter homes in balmy South and Central America....

The monarch butterfly hits the peak of its winter migration in October, and as it makes its way from Canada and the U.S. to Mexico, all three countries will be watching its numbers closely. In February, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, flanked by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, announced that they would set up a task force charged with saving the continent’s monarchs. Then in late May, the three countries devoted several sessions to the butterfly at an annual wildlife conservation summit....

US researchers have developed a method to dramatically lower the sulfur content of fossil fuels. Sulfur-rich fuels produce sulfur dioxide when burnt that reacts with water to form harmful acid rain, so the new work could cut pollution. While there are reactions that can reduce fuel sulfur content to 10ppm—the current EU standard—these require high pressure hydrogen, a metal catalyst and temperatures of 400°C. Lower quality, higher sulfur content diesel is often exported to countries with less stringent standards....

Hurricane Sandy caused widespread havoc when it made landfall in the Caribbean and on North America’s East Coast (as a post-tropical cyclone) in 2012. The storm killed more than 40 people in New York City alone. “Never in its recorded history had the city experienced a storm of this size,” local officials wrote in a report. “Never had a storm caused so much damage. Never had a storm affected so many lives....

Earlier this year, the world’s largest biomedical research funder announced a radical sex change to its funding decisions. Money would no longer flow as freely to studies that excluded female subjects. Instead, scientists seeking grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health would have to include plans for studying both female and male cells, mice, monkeys or whatever living things they used in their experiments, according to a commentary published in Nature by two top officials....

Despite the vast distances that separate them, Saturn’s moon Titan and Earth have at least one thing in common: towering dunes shaped by wind. Radar images taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it passed by the frigid globe revealed distinctive linear features that almost precisely mimic sand dunes in our own planet’s deserts. “It’s bizarre,” says Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona, lead author of the study presenting the findings in today’s Science....

The transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms was one of the most significant developments in the history of life on Earth. Without it, all living things would still be microscopic and simple; there would be no such thing as a plant or a brain or a human. How exactly multicellularity arose is still a mystery, but a new study, published January 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that it may have been quicker and easier than many scientists expected....

In 1876 Samuel B. Parsons received a shipment of chestnut seeds from Japan and decided to grow and sell the trees to orchards. Unbeknownst to him, his shipment likely harbored a stowaway that caused one of the greatest ecological disasters ever to befall eastern North America. The trees probably concealed spores of a pathogenic fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, to which Asian chestnut trees—but not their American cousins—had evolved resistance. C. parasitica effectively strangles a susceptible tree to death by forming cankers—sunken areas of dead plant tissue—in its bark that encircle the trunk and cut off the flow of water and nutrients between the roots and leaves....

Fifty years ago this month Harold D. Craft, Jr., published a remarkable black-on-white plot in his Ph.D. dissertation at Cornell University. A stacked series of jagged lines displayed incoming radio waves from pulsar CP1919, as detected at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Several months later the chart appeared as a full-page visualization in Scientific American, this time with white lines on a field of cyan. A pulsar is a rapidly rotating neutron star that emits a radio-frequency beam that sweeps through space like a lighthouse beacon....

NORFOLK, Va. - Water is inescapable in Virginia’s second-largest city, home to the world’s biggest naval base, three major port facilities and public and private shipyards. Norfolk is nearly surrounded by water: it sits at the mouth of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and the junction of the Elizabeth and James Rivers. Canals and creeks penetrate into many neighborhoods, and home sale listings highlight water access - “Within 50 feet of H2O - You can canoe and kayak!...

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The chariot was used in Chinese warfare from around 1250 BCE but enjoyed its heyday between the 8th and 5th century BCE when various states were constantly battling for control of China. Employed as a status symbol, a shock weapon, to pursue the enemy, or as transport for archers and commanders, it was used effectively in many battles of the period....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Originality in literary compositions in the ancient world did not carry the same weight and value as it does today. In recent centuries, authors have been applauded for the creation of original works and have been derided for plagiarism or for passing off a work as a true account - especially a first-person account - when it is not....

As the new year begins, good things, however small, are happening. Someone’s loved one got a new job in San Francisco. In Charlottesville, a canceled reservation allowed someone else to get a seat on a sold-out train and arrive in time for a wedding. The storybook characters Pooh and Piglet made someone in East Sussex, England, happy, and in Colorado Springs, ever-reliable bacon brightened someone’s day. Grateful people have posted these bright spots on the World Gratitude Map, a crowd-sourcing project with an uplifting mission....