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If every living thing died right now, by some estimates only around 1 percent would become fossils. Even fewer would have any soft tissues preserved. These rare tissue fossils offer crucial clues about biology and evolution, but their formation remains mysterious. Why do scientists find fossilized intestines, for example, but never a fossilized liver? Fossils develop when minerals replace the body parts of organisms that die and get buried in sediment, such as the mixture of mud and seawater on the ocean floor....

Suicide is a devastating problem among Black youth, and researchers and mental health professionals are desperate to understand why and how best to address it. A 2018 study found, for instance, that Black children between the ages of five and 12 are about twice as likely to die by suicide as white children of the same age. The urgency to deal with the issue has only grown more acute. A new study found that suicide rates among Black children and adolescents have recently been worsening: between 2003 and 2017, suicides rose in this group, especially among Black girls, whose rate of increase was more than twice as high as that of Black boys....

The alien planet HD 189733b is a beautiful blue dot in a sea of inky blackness, just like Earth. But that’s where the similarities between the two worlds end. For starters, HD 189733b is much bigger and hotter than Earth; it’s about the size of Jupiter and zips around its host star in just 2.2 Earth days. That orbit is so close that the exoplanet is probably tidally locked, always showing one face to its star, just as the moon always shows one face (the near side) to Earth....

Venus scientists have long complained that the planet wasn’t getting its due in robotic investigators. But those days are over: space agencies have announced three new missions to Earth’s mysterious twin in just over a week. On June 2, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency would pursue two new Venus missions dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, aiming to launch the spacecraft between 2028 and 2030. Today (June 10), the European Space Agency (ESA) joined the rush to Venus, announcing that it would launch a mission dubbed EnVision to the planet in the early 2030s....

When Christopher Murray was 10 years old, he and his family packed a few suitcases and a portable generator and left their home in Golden Valley, Minn., for a flight to England. From there they traveled by car and ferry to Spain, to Morocco and finally through the Sahara Desert to the village of Diffa in rural Niger. For the next year the family of five, led by a physician father and microbiologist mother, set up and then administered the local hospital....

Sugar and spice and everything nice hold no interest for a cat. Our feline friends are interested in only one food: meat. This predilection is not solely the result of an inner killer just waiting to catch a bird or torture a mouse. It also occurs because cats lack the ability to taste sweetness. The cause has been traced to a gene. The tongues of most mammals hold taste receptors—proteins on the cellular surface that bind to an incoming substance, activating the cell’s internal workings and leading to a signal being sent to the brain....

This month, my Scientific American column addressed the growing frequency and intensity of online shamings—massive outpourings of threats and vicious hate showered on people whose judgment lapses make them internet targets. Often the victims pay for their mistakes in horrific, life-shattering ways, far out of proportion for the crimes—losing their jobs, homes, marriages and any shred of self-worth. Equally often, they pay this steep price because of missing context—because the public misunderstood the original story and, too impatient for nuance and complexity, man the torpedoes without fully grasping the situation....

Imagine if we could rewire our brains so that tastes we usually crave became unpleasant—or even nullify responses to taste completely. New research from a group led by neuroscientist Charles Zuker of Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute suggests this may be possible. The research shows the brain is hardwired to generate responses to specific tastes, and the resulting feelings of pleasure or revulsion separate out from the qualities of tastes that allow us to identify them....

Astronomers have discovered rings around an asteroid-like body whose orbit is between those of Saturn and Uranus. At just 250 kilometers across, Chariklo is the smallest body so far found to have rings. Previously, only the giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — have been seen sporting them. Published online today in Nature, the finding indicates that rings may be a more common feature than previously thought. The discovery was an accident and a surprise, says lead author Felipe Braga-Ribas, an astronomer at the National Observatory in Rio de Janeiro....

Parents often notice the first signs of autism in their children at around 12 to 18 months. Maybe a child isn’t making eye contact, or won’t smile when mom or dad walks in the door. But a new study suggests there is evidence of autism in the brain even earlier—well before a child’s first birthday—and that the signs can be seen on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. “We’re learning that there are biological changes that occur at [the time] or before the symptoms start to emerge,” says Geraldine Dawson, a clinical psychologist and autism researcher at Duke University who was not involved in the new work....

Editor’s Note (9/10/20): Wildfires are raging across California and many other parts of the U.S. West. Daytime skies over San Francisco are dark orange from the flames and smoke. A record number of acres have already burned in California, and the wildfire season has a long way to go. Scientists have predicted for at least a decade that climate change will make this terrible trend worse, as these projections we published in 2011 show....

As many as 115,000 people die in India each year from coal-fired power plant pollution, costing the country about $4.6 billion, according to a groundbreaking new study released today. The report by the Mumbai-based Conservation Action Trust is the first comprehensive examination of the link between fine particle pollution and health problems in India, where coal is the fuel of choice and energy demands are skyrocketing. The findings are stunning. In addition to more than 100,000 premature deaths, it links millions of cases of asthma and respiratory ailments to coal exposure....

Finding some of nature’s weirdest particles has won two experimenters the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita and Canadian researcher Arthur B. McDonald will share this year’s award for the discovery that neutrinos—fundamental particles that come in three types, or flavors—can actually swap identities and change flavors as they fly through space. Their turn-of-the-millennium discovery not only revealed the strangeness of these shape-shifting particles—it also contradicted the Standard Model of particle physics....

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will pass a law next week obliging kindergartens to inform the authorities if parents fail to provide evidence that they have received advice from their doctor on vaccinating their children, the health ministry said on Friday. Parents refusing the advice risk fines of up to 2,500 euros ($2,800) under the law expected to come into force on June 1. Vaccination rules are being tightened across Europe, where a decline in immunization, has caused a spike in diseases such as measles, chicken pox and mumps, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)....

Last fall the discovery of a 2,700-year-old toilet made headlines around the world. Its significance had less to do with long-ago plumbing than with the site of its discovery: Jerusalem. No place on Earth has seen so much digging for so long as this ancient Middle Eastern city; on any given day, a dozen or more excavations are underway in what is now a fast-growing metropolis. And no place attracts as much media attention for its archaeological finds, no matter how mundane....

Deep in the heart of Texas–just east of Houston, actually–a research project designed to answer some of the technical questions about storing carbon dioxide underground is producing its first results. Scientists hope that carbon capture and sequestration could help ameliorate global warming without harming the local environment. The preliminary data at this geologic site, called the Frio Formation, are thus far providing mixed lessons. Interring carbon dioxide may become an important option for curbing global warming....

This past summer doctors treated two Americans infected with Ebola virus with an experimental drug created by Mapp Biopharmaceutical. Both patients lived, although experts are not certain whether the drug contributed to their survival. Named ZMapp, it is a mixture of different antibodies that bind to the virus—and is made by tobacco plants. Plants do not have antibodies of their own, but they nonetheless have the cellular machinery to make these infection-fighting proteins....

Agricultural pesticides have been linked to widespread invertebrate biodiversity loss in two new research papers. Pesticide use has sharply reduced the regional biodiversity of stream invertebrates, such as mayflies and dragonflies, in Europe and Australia, finds a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previous research has shown similar decreases in individual streams, but the study by Mikhail Beketov, an aquatic ecologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues analyzed the effects of pesticides over broad regions....

BRAIN EXERCISES In devising recommendations for exercise regimens to enhance cognition in healthy individuals and those experiencing cognitive decline, as discussed by David A. Raichlen and Gene E. Alexander [“Why Your Brain Needs Exercise”], scientists would do well to talk to experienced older runners, cyclists and dancers. For example, many runners and cyclists participate in group runs and rides, where social interaction might provide enhanced mental stimulation more than exercising solo....

NATURAL HISTORY REPEATS “The Worst Times on Earth,” by Peter Brannen, describes past mass extinctions and what they could mean for our future. Brannen has written one of the most beautiful and poignant pieces I’ve ever read here, all the more so because a great sadness has overtaken me as I parse the odds of life on this planet making it through. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. SUSAN WILLIAMS Lakewood, Colo....