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Like many warriors, Shaye Wolf is ready to march. She says Pres. Donald Trump’s administration is carrying out a “war on science” with proposed cuts in scientific research funding and appointments of climate change deniers to top positions. So Wolf, climate science director with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, will be joining this Saturday’s March for Science in Washington, D.C. “I see this as a very wide spread grassroots movement to resist Trump’s policies that put people in danger,” Wolf says....

T-ray Vision In principle, terahertz radiation—which lies between the microwave and infrared segments of the electromagnetic spectrum—could help people safely peer through flesh, plastic, fabrics and ceramics to detect anomalies, from tumors to bombs, for medical or security applications. But for decades, so-called t-ray devices were impractical outside the lab because they were fragile and because they weighed 45 kilograms (100 pounds) or more. Yet after just a few months of work, Brian Schulkin of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created a rugged t-ray imager dubbed the “Mini-Z” that is less than 2....

Nuts have gotten a bad rap over the years. Though the number of children developing nut allergies seems to be growing, for most people, eating almonds, peanuts*, cashews and other nuts has long been linked to a better diet, healthier weight and fewer risks for heart attacks and strokes, among other things. Now comes word from the National Center for Health Statistics that the consumption of nuts tends to decrease among children in the U....

Nearly 25 years after scientists described the first fossil traces of Australopithecus anamensis, this unsung human ancestor is finally having its moment. Researchers working in Ethiopia have found a nearly complete cranium of this long-vanished member of the hominin group, which includes Homo sapiens and its close extinct relatives. The fossil, dated to 3.8 million years ago, reveals the never before seen face of A. anamensis, a species previously known mainly from jaws, teeth and a smattering of bones from below the head....

A few times every year, Christopher Higgins’s laboratory in Golden, Colorado, receives a special delivery in the mail. Inside an icebox, Higgins finds several vials, each holding up to 250 milliliters of water collected from boreholes near U.S. military bases. The water looks unremarkable, but it is contaminated with synthetic compounds called fluorochemicals, which have been generating increasing concern around the world. This class of chemical has shown up in worrying concentrations in rivers, soils and people’s bloodstreams from Europe to Australia....

Much astronomy takes place in the offices and observatories where scientists work. But if you want to find the most exciting theories, you need to go where guards are lowered and wilder ideas can roam free. It is not by coincidence that one of the best bars in Tucson, Ariz. (called 1702, after its street address), nestles close to Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. It was there that my colleague Eric Mamajek of the University of Rochester showed me something that sent us on a quest to find the first ringed planet beyond our solar system, a quest involving both the world’s most modern telescopes and century-old astronomical observations....

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – With its fast food restaurants, churches and strip malls, this city in southeast Florida looks like much of America. But on a sunny day last month, city official Hector Castro talked about its resemblance to Italy’s slowly sinking Venice. “At some point in the future, some places may be uninhabitable,” said Castro, director of the city Department of Public Works, Utilities and Engineering. “Maybe people could live in the top part of buildings....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. When deadly school shootings like the one that took place on Valentine’s Day in Broward County, Florida occur, often they are followed by calls for more stringent security measures. For instance, after the Jan. 23 case in which a 15-year-old student allegedly shot and killed two students and wounded 16 others at a small-town high school in Kentucky, some Kentucky lawmakers called for armed teachers and staff....

Scientific American presents Nutrition Diva by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. There’s been a lot of buzz lately over a new study which seems to suggest that people who are overweight (but not obese) may actually have a higher life expectancy than those who are considered normal or healthy weight. In this analysis, researchers categorized people as normal weight, overweight, or obese using Body Mass Index (BMI), a number that takes into consideration your weight and your height....

Editor’s Note (02/08/18): Scientific American is re-posting the following article, originally published August 15, 2016, in light of the 2018 Winter Games which begin on February 9 in PyeongChang, South Korea. Throughout this month the world’s top athletes will take to the field, court and pool at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Some, however, will far outshine the others and land numerous medals. Researchers have a special term for these best of the best: superelites....

The next wave of vaccine developers is starting to introduce new technologies to deal with fast-spreading variants, and they are striking deals—not with the familiar COVID-19 vaccine makers but with producers and institutes in vulnerable low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The flow of technology is not all one-way, either. Bharat Biotech of Hyderabad, India, which recently reported an efficacy rate of 81 percent in an interim read-out from a phase 3 trial of its vaccine Covaxin, has lined up a company called Ocugen to act as its US development and commercial partner....

Next Wednesday, a cadre of ALS patients will gather for a protest outside the FDA’s headquarters in suburban Maryland with a clear message: “No More Excuses.” The rally is being organized by a ragtag group of ALS patients who connected mostly through Facebook, and it’s far less a production than other efforts like the 2014 ice bucket challenge that swept around the world. These protesters haven’t even established a formal organization or a website; some said they’ve never even been to a protest....

Health officials have identified a possible culprit behind the spate of vaping-related illnesses that have sickened thousands: vitamin E acetate. The chemical—used as an additive or thickening agent in some vaping products—turned up in every sample of lung fluid collected from 29 patients with vaping-related illness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. While vitamin E acetate is used in supplements and skin creams and does not seem to cause harm when swallowed or used topically, previous research suggests that inhaling vitamin E acetate might impair people’s lung function....

The first new nuclear reactor ordered in the U.S. in roughly three decades is beginning to take shape in the red clay near Augusta, Ga. Southern Co. and its partners have dug 27.5 meters down into that soil to reach bedrock and are now filling up the hole to provide a stable foundation for what is likely to be the first of a new generation of reactors in the U.S.: two new AP-1000 models at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant that stand next to two older pressurized water reactors, which came online in the 1980s....

Recent media reports and ongoing protests over the reportedly abhorrent working conditions at factories where Apple’s iPhones are produced have left socially conscious Americans with a dilemma: Is it ethical to own an iPhone? For many Americans, even those who support socially responsible manufacturing and business practices, their iPhones and iPads have become must-have devices for both work and personal use. Now they’re being forced to ask themselves whether they are willing to ignore strong evidence that their beloved devices are being made by mistreated and underpaid employees....

The 1966 film Fantastic Voyage treated moviegoers to a bold vision of nanotechnology applied to medicine: through mysterious means, an intrepid team of doctors and their high-tech submarine were shrunk to minute size so that they could travel through the bloodstream of an injured patient and remove a life-threatening blood clot in his brain. In the past 40 years, great strides have been made in fabricating complex devices at ever smaller scales, leading some people to believe that such forms of medical intervention are possible and that tiny robots will soon be coursing through everyones veins....

NASA has renamed its Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a flagship observatory set to launch in 2025, to honor the renowned astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, also known as the “mother of Hubble.” The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—or Roman Space Telescope for short—will help astronomers answer some of the biggest questions of cosmology, like why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. By studying how the distribution of galaxies throughout the universe has changed over time, the telescope will reveal how the universe’s expansion is driven by dark energy, a mysterious form of energy that makes up roughly two-thirds of the energy in the universe....

An ocean within Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may be intermittently venting plumes of water vapor into outer space, according to a new study in the Astrophysical Journal. The finding suggests the ocean, thought to lie underneath perhaps 100 kilometers of ice, may be more amenable to life—and more accessible to curious astrobiologists—than previously thought. “If there are plumes emerging from Europa, it is significant because it means we may be able to explore that ocean for organic chemistry or even signs of life without having to drill through unknown miles of ice,” says study lead William Sparks, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute....

A recent short article in Scientific American Mind looked at the following question: suppose you have a 5 percent chance of dying from a flu vaccine but a 10 percent chance of contracting and dying of the flu when an epidemic strikes. Do you take the flu shot? Surprisingly often, people do not. (See “Which Flu Risk Would You Take?,” by Nicole Garbarini, in Head Lines, Scientific American Mind, Aug./Sept. 2006)....

For decades many researchers have tended to view astrobiology as the underdog of space science. The field—which focuses on the investigation of life beyond Earth—has often been criticized as more philosophical than scientific, because it lacks in tangible samples to study. Now that is all changing. Whereas astronomers once knew of no planets outside our solar system, today they have thousands of examples. And although organisms were previously thought to need the relatively mild surface conditions of our world to survive, new findings about life’s ability to persist in the face of extreme darkness, heat, salinity and cold have expanded researchers’ acceptance that it might be found anywhere from Martian deserts to the ice-covered oceans of Saturn’s moon Enceladus....