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Ask any teenager if they would like to talk about mindfulness and mood thermometers with their peers a dozen times in one school year, and most would decline the opportunity. But ask them instead if they would like a vaccine to ward off the worst mental health impacts of the past year and a half, and most would raise their hands without thinking. Adolescence is a critical time for mental health, and most teens have an intimate relationship with stress....

The iPad Air isn’t visionary, but it’s a strong update. That’s good enough for me. I’ve been using the Air for the last 24 hours and it does pretty much everything Apple promised: it’s faster than the iPad 4 (which I traded in at Verizon), thinner, lighter, better looking, and appears to have equal or better battery life. That’s a tall order considering the challenges of packing a power-hungry 9.7-inch Retina (2,048x1,536) display into a one-pound, 7....

US president-elect Joe Biden has chosen decorated geneticist Eric Lander as presidential science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In what would be a first for this position, if Lander is confirmed by the US Senate, he will serve as a member of Biden’s cabinet. Many scientists have long called for the OSTP director to be raised to a cabinet-level position. “Having science elevated to its rightful place in the administration seems to me a very positive step,” says Harold Varmus, a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and former head of the National Institutes of Health....

By Julie Steenhuysen (Reuters) - U.S. and Brazilian researchers are heading to João Pessoa in the state of Paraíba on Monday to recruit mothers and babies in one of the biggest government-led studies to understand whether the Zika virus is linked to microcephaly, a rare birth defect. Brazil has confirmed more than 500 cases of microcephaly since the start of the outbreak. Over 3,900 additional suspected cases are being investigated. Brazil normally only sees about 150 cases a year....

By Zeeya Merali Ink stamps have been used to print text and pictures for centuries. Now, engineers have adapted the technique to build pixels into the first full-colour ‘quantum dot’ display – a feat that could eventually lead to televisions that are more energy-efficient and have sharper screen images than anything available today. Engineers have been hoping to make improved television displays with the help of quantum dots – semiconducting crystals billionths of a metre across – for more than a decade....

Editor’s note: Neurobiologist Ruth Itzhaki has been working in this field for 20-to-25 years, so this article was updated to remove an incorrect reference to 50-plus years on April 4, 2016. Scientists have long puzzled over the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating and typically fatal condition that currently denies more than five million Americans their cognition and memory. But in a provocative editorial soon to be published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, a cadre of scientists argue that the complex disease may have a surprisingly simple trigger: tiny brain-infecting microbes....

Dear EarthTalk: Vice President Joe Biden just announced a commitment by the Obama administration of $53 billion to high-speed rail. Isn’t it about time? Why is the U.S. so far behind other nations in developing environmentally friendly public transportation?—Diane A., Boston There are many reasons why public transit hasn’t taken off in the U.S. as it has in parts of Asia, Europe and elsewhere. For one, ever since the Model T first rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line, Americans have had a love affair with cars....

Cockroaches are infamous for their tenacity, and are often cited as the most likely survivors of a nuclear war. Some even claim that they can live without their heads. It turns out that these armchair exterminators (and their professional brethren) are right. Headless roaches are capable of living for weeks. To understand why cockroaches—and many other insects—can survive decapitation, it helps to understand why humans cannot, explains physiologist and biochemist Joseph Kunkel at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who studies cockroach development....

A small team of government scientists looking for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector had what one member called an “Oh, my gosh” moment. They recently stumbled across a potential breakthrough in a research paper that had been buried in a library for more than a century. The paper described an alternate chemistry that can be used to make carbon fiber, a lighter material than steel that is starting to be used when making car bodies....

Studying volcanic eruptions in person can be dangerous, and scientists have died trying. Volcanic lightning—yes, volcanoes make lightning!—by contrast offers a safer opportunity to examine what happens inside a volcano. But these bright bolts still occur in vicious environments, plus the thick, dense plumes of ash can obscure lightning strikes. Now, scientists have developed a way to analyze volcanic lightning that is cost effective, relatively simple and safe. Rather than get near volcanic lightning or use expensive equipment, researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany gain clues through a byproduct of the lightning: glass....

While the focus of the COVID-19 pandemic has been on respiratory problems and securing enough ventilators, doctors on the front lines are grappling with a new medical mystery. In addition to lung damage, many COVID-19 patients are also developing heart problems—and dying of cardiac arrest. As more data comes in from China and Italy, as well as Washington state and New York, more cardiac experts are coming to believe the COVID-19 virus can infect the heart muscle....

Summer of ‘45. The war is winding down. Now the call to arms is about to be replaced by a call to wings. The time has come for the Chicken of Tomorrow contest. As Maryn McKenna details in her fun, fascinating and sometimes frightening new book Big Chicken, the aim of this nationwide breeding challenge was to create, you guessed it, a big chicken. A very big chicken. When the U....

Within biology, mushrooms have sometimes been written off as uncomplicated organs that simply produce as many spores as possible. How far those spores traveled across a landscape, researchers assumed, depended on the whims of the wind. As scientists look closer, however, a more complex picture is emerging. “Mushrooms are really the dark matter of biology,” says Marcus Roper, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They’re everywhere, but they’re horribly understudied....

NASA has a reputation for leaving no stone unturned to correct anything that goes wrong. True to form, it launched an exhaustive investigation after a leak sprung in a spacesuit during a spacewalk last summer, putting the astronaut in peril of drowning in his helmet. The report (pdf) was released on Wednesday; it includes 49 recommendations for changes to implement at NASA to make sure it never happens again. Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano was 44 minutes into a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on July 16 when he reported that water was floating around in his helmet....

NASA’s new Mars lander has snapped its first selfie on the Red Planet. The InSight spacecraft, which touched down on the flat equatorial plain Elysium Planitia on Nov. 26, took the selfie using the camera on its 5.9-foot-long (1.8 meters) robotic arm. The photo is a composite made up of 11 separate images, NASA officials said. “This is the same imaging process used by NASA’s Curiosity rover mission, in which many overlapping pictures are taken and later stitched together,” the officials wrote in a statement describing the image, which was released today (Dec....

Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. When meeting someone for the first time, your impression of that person may be different if you meet that person at a formal dinner party, a cocktail party, or a pool party. These settings typically influence how the person dresses and how much skin they expose. Whether you consciously pay attention to a person’s exposed skin or not, focusing on their body may have unintended consequences....

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - Children whose mothers were exposed to higher levels of phthalates, common chemicals in consumer products, in late pregnancy tend to score lower than other kids on intelligence tests at age seven, according to a new study. Some soaps, nail polish, hairspray, shower curtains, raincoats, car interiors and dryer sheets contain phthalates, which are used as so-called plasticizers, or softening agents. At present, the Food and Drug Administration does not have evidence that phthalates as used in cosmetics pose a safety risk, but six types of phthalates are currently banned from children’s toys, according to the U....

Pluto’s surface hosts blades of ice that soar to the height of skyscrapers — and researchers have narrowed down exactly how the dramatic features form. According to new research, the blades are made mostly of methane ice, and form similarly to (much shorter) spikes of snow and ice on Earth. When the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto in July 2015, researchers observed an astonishing variety of terrains across the dwarf planet....

If ever Americans were up for a bit of class warfare, now would seem to be the time. The current financial downturn has led to a $700 billion tax-payer-financed bank bailout and an unemployment rate stuck stubbornly above nine percent. Onto this scene has stepped the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which seeks to bring together a disparate group of protesters united in their belief that the current income distribution is unfair....

Time can wreak havoc on the brain. Age-related cognitive decline comes with a wide range of symptoms, from memory loss to problems with concentration. But what causes these symptoms? What happens in the brain of people as they age? Jessica Andrews-Hanna and her colleagues at Harvard University, the University of Michigan and Washington University School of Medicine have explored the possibility that cognitive decline during aging results in part from a loss of coordination and communication among large-scale brain systems....