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Spending a lot of time on Facebook is linked to diminished well-being, according to many studies. Yet questions linger about cause and effect—perhaps people who are already lonely simply spend more time on social media. New studies reveal that Facebook can indeed affect mood and mental state, and whether the effect is positive or negative depends heavily on how a person interacts with his or her contacts. Several of the new findings reveal that when Facebook hurts, the underlying culprit is—you guessed it—envy....

Would-be warlords, take note. Researchers say they have figured out how the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great was able to build a nearly kilometer-long road over the sea to strike at the island of Tyre in 332 B.C. Based on geologic samples taken from the area, in what is now Lebanon, they conclude that the island and shore were linked by a stretch of sand a few meters below the water’s surface—well-suited for traversing with an artificial bridge....

As the director of the Sculpting Evolution Group at the MIT Media Lab, Kevin Esvelt (K.E.) spends every day thinking about extinction. Esvelt is a biochemist, and he is developing a method to eradicate certain diseases before they eradicate us. Instead of tackling a disease after an infection, like most gene therapies would, Esvelt wants stop diseases before they strike. Using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and gene drive — a natural mechanism that preferentially pushes a gene from one generation to the next, Esvelt could, in theory, eliminate a disease by blocking the organisms that carries it (See Creating Complete Resistance with CRISPR/Cas9....

By Katharine SandersonAfter being stuck in soft soil on Mars for six months, Spirit, one of two NASA rovers on the red planet, is about to attempt an escape.“It’s likely that this process will take months and we don’t even know if we’ll be successful,” says John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 for what was originally planned as only a three-month mission....

Many of our most vexing problems, from overeating to not saving enough for retirement to not working out enough have something in common: lack of self-control. Self-control is what gives us the capacity to say no to choices that are immediately gratifying but costly in the long term—that piece of chocolate cake (instead of an apple), that afternoon in front of the couch (instead of a visit to the gym). Despite our best intentions, we often fail to meet our lofty goals....

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazineAt the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but mysterious entity that is used to determine the probabilities that quantum particles will have certain properties. Now, a preprint posted online on November 14 reopens the question of what the wavefunction represents–with an answer that could rock quantum theory to its core. Whereas many physicists have generally interpreted the wavefunction as a statistical tool that reflects our ignorance of the particles being measured, the authors of the latest paper argue that, instead, it is physically real....

Plutonium stowed underground in blocks of the mineral zircon would erode its housing in as little as 1,400 years, according to new measurements. Zircon no longer tops the list of substances for storing radioactive waste from dismantled nuclear weapons and other sources, but the new way of measuring its durability could lead to more precise estimates of the life span of other storage materials. The new method measured the number of atoms dislodged on average in a sample of zircon every time it was struck by an alpha particle spewed by radioactive plutonium....

The day Donald Trump took office as US president, the mood was sombre at the main research campus of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Durham, North Carolina. As scientists arrived for work, they saw pictures of former president Barack Obama and the previous EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, coming down off the walls. Researchers had reason to be anxious: Trump had threatened many times during his campaign to shutter the EPA, and he had already taken steps along that path....

LIMING, CHINA—Fourteen-year-old Feng Yu’s parents used to have to carry as much as 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of wood daily to fuel the cooking stove in their kitchen. Although the old stove was in a separate building from the two-story wooden living quarters where she sleeps, its smoky smell still permeates its corner of the walled compound the family calls home and the walls are still blackened by years of smoke....

Sure, space travel makes bones and muscles atrophy and alters the distribution of blood and other bodily fluids, among other physiological consequences of microgravity, but what does it do to the brain? Since astronauts on a mission to Mars will need their wits about them, NASA and outside scientists have been keen to assess the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the 3 pounds of protoplasm inside the skull. In a NASA-funded study published on Wednesday, Dr....

Just days after a gunman opened fire in a gay club in Orlando, Florida, a complex and sometimes contradictory picture of his motivations is emerging. He called 911 during the attack to pledge allegiance to the jihadist group ISIS and its rival, the al-Nusra Front, according to the FBI. He was known to spew hatred against women, Jews, black people and gays, but apparently used gay dating apps and visited Pulse (the nightclub he would later attack) regularly for years, according to multiple people who knew him before the shooting....

Weak productivity growth became a major concern in the U.S. beginning in the late 1970s, when overall productivity in the country slowed considerably. Researchers attributed most of the slowdown to the service sector, where more than eight out of 10 Americans now work. Services, economists believed, were not amenable to rapid productivity growth. The work of two economists decisively puts this notion to rest. Using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jack E....

MOST OF US take our brain for granted. As poet Robert Frost wrote, “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” Weighing in at a mere three pounds and possessing the consistency of a lump of Jell-O, our brain looks surprisingly unimpressive in the flesh. Yet it is capable of soaring intellectual feats....

For the first time, octopuses have been spotted throwing things — at each other. Octopuses are known for their solitary nature, but in Jervis Bay, Australia, the gloomy octopus (Octopus tetricus) lives at very high densities. A team of cephalopod researchers decided to film the creatures with underwater cameras to see whether — and how — they interact. Once the researchers pulled the cameras out of the water, they sat down to watch more than 20 hours of footage....

That trophy largemouth you caught might come from a long line of bass that take the bait. And in the same pond, there are hundreds of fish you’ll never see. You may never see their offspring, either. A new, 20-year study, led by University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign ecologist David Philipp, “provides the first direct experimental evidence that vulnerability to angling is a heritable trait,” the authors wrote. But Philipp says the discovery amounts to more than just gee-whiz genetics....

This week astronomers using NASA’s Kepler space telescope announced that the planet-hunting spacecraft had increased its catalogue by an additional 1,284 worlds. This is the greatest number of planets ever announced at one time, swelling Kepler’s confirmed planetary haul to more than 2,000 and the number of indisputably known planets beyond our solar system to more than 3,000. A paper summarizing the findings appears in The Astrophysical Journal. Like nearly all of Kepler’s worlds, the latest discoveries come from a single star-filled patch of sky in the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus....

Spiders spin the stuff of engineers’ dreams. Their silk is as strong as steel, stretchy, nontoxic and biodegradable. But spiders are not easy to farm. Each produces only a minuscule amount of silk, and some are cannibalistic. For decades scientists have tried to mimic the silvery strands to use for sutures, athletic gear and bulletproof vests, but their synthetic fibers have fallen short. Now a team has coaxed bacteria to produce silk as tough and elastic as the natural version....

On topics ranging from astrophysics to public health, rejections of scientific consensus can prove quite inflexible when bolstered by religious doctrine. But a new approach to teaching evolutionary biology appears to ease such tensions. It involves airing perceived conflicts between religion and evolution in the classroom rather than simply presenting a mountain of evidence for evolution. Such a curriculum could help biologists (most of whom claim to hold no religious beliefs) more effectively prepare students (most of whom profess belief in God) to meet the nation’s growing need for scientists and technologists....

Dear EarthTalk: Isn’t it a waste that we buy water in plastic bottles when it is basically free out of our taps? Even health food stores, which should know better, sell it like crazy. When did Earth’s most abundant and free natural resource become a commercial “beverage”?—A. Jacobs, via e-mail Bottled water has been a big-selling commercial beverage around the world since the late 1980s. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global bottled water consumption has more than quadrupled since 1990....

For now, regulations and technical issues make widespread drone deliveries impossible, which means an army of flying machines probably will not fetch your holiday gifts this year or even the next. Here’s what experts note as the major challenges to resolve before delivery by drone becomes a reality. Sense-and-avoid technology Picture a delivery drone flying your package kilometers from its distribution center all the way to your doorstep—technology needs to make every step of this trip safe and reliable....