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By James Topham and Aaron SheldrickTOKYO (Reuters) - The failure of solar developers to deliver on planned projects in Japan will cost the country’s utilities close to $3.5 billion annually in additional coal and gas imports to generate power.Japan’s government banked on solar power to help meet the shortfall in electricity supply after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 shattered public confidence in nuclear energy. The country’s reactors are shut while the government struggles to convince the population the plants are safe to restart....

After five years of searching, researchers using data from NASA’s exoplanet-hunting Kepler spacecraft have discovered what look to be two of the most Earth-like worlds yet. Dubbed Kepler 438 b and Kepler 442 b, both planets appear to be rocky and orbit in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold habitable zones of their stars where liquid water can exist in abundance. Astronomers announced the planets along with six other newfound small, temperate worlds today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle....

A White House panel that questions vaccine safety and attacks immunization standards set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control—a possibility raised last week in meetings with incoming president Donald Trump—could actually lead to increased disease outbreaks. Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who suggests inoculations are linked to autism, met last week with Trump to discuss a panel to examine what Kennedy called “vaccine safety and scientific integrity.” Although the autism–vaccine claim has been studied and debunked, the president-elect has also suggested a connection....

Every night the Brazilian ant Forelius pusillus takes selflessness to a whole new level. At dusk, as the ants defend their homes by sealing off the entrances with sand, up to eight workers remain outside to finish the job. Left behind, they die by the next day—the first known example of a suicidal mission that is preemptive rather than a response to immediate danger. Behavioral ecologist Adam Tofilski of the Agricultural University of Kraków in Poland and his colleagues found that these ants were not just stragglers trapped outside....

JUNE 13 If you spill some salt and walk under a ladder at the Exploratorium’s new Superstition Obstacle Course, you won’t have to knock on wood—you’ll be conducting these rituals as you learn why our brain is evolutionarily primed to concoct superstitions and how these beliefs shape our actions, emotions and judgment. The course of breakable mirrors and cracked sidewalks is a temporary addition to the science museum’s permanent “Mind” collection....

Gene therapy has markedly improved vision in both eyes in three women who were born virtually blind. The patients can now avoid obstacles even in dim light, read large print and recognize people’s faces. The operation, researchers predict, should work even better in children and adolescents blinded by the same condition. The advance, reported in the February 8 issue of Science Translational Medicine, extends earlier work by the same group. Between 2008 and 2011, Jean Bennett of the University of Pennsylvania’s Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences and her colleagues used gene therapy to treat blindness in 12 adults and children with Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare inherited eye disease that destroys vision by killing photoreceptors—light-sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye....

Three massive hurricanes, severe storms and wildfires across the U.S. caused more than $306 billion in damage last year, making 2017 the most expensive year for climate disasters on record. According to data released by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which tracks the nation’s major weather and climate events, there were 16 “billion dollar” disasters in the United States in 2017, tying the record set in 2011 for most billion dollar disasters in a single year....

By Alison AbbottThe world buzzed last week with news that an antiretroviral gel can halve the incidence of HIV infection in women.But a quieter buzz could be heard at the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) in Vienna, where the gel results were unveiled. At a special session, included in the program at the last minute, attendees heard the results of a handful of successful, but small, early-phase clinical trials for therapeutic vaccines–once thought to be a dead end for tackling HIV....

Scientific American presents Everyday Einstein by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. When award-winning science journalist Jon Palfreman investigated a group of drug addicts who mysteriously ended up with Parkinson’s-like symptoms after a bad batch of heroin—the story that would end up launching his career—he never imagined that more than 25 years later he would be diagnosed with the disease himself. Today there are roughly 1 million Americans living with Parkinson’s and about 60,000 new cases each year....

Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat by John McQuaid Scribner: 2015 $26 In 1942 psychologist Edwin Boring published a 600-page tome on sensory perception that dispensed with the sense of taste in just 25 pages. Within that brief treatment, however, Boring managed to popularize what would become a widely embraced scientific falsehood—that the tongue has distinct regions of flavor perception, neatly delineated like nations on a map. Seven decades later we still do not know much about taste, at least compared with the other senses, writes author McQuaid in Tasty....

From Nature magazine Few researchers have given credence to claims that samples of dinosaur DNA have survived to the present day, but no one knew just how long it would take for genetic material to fall apart. Now, a study of fossils found in New Zealand is laying the matter to rest — and putting paid to hopes of cloning a Tyrannosaurus rex. After cell death, enzymes start to break down the bonds between the nucleotides that form the backbone of DNA, and micro-organisms speed the decay....

Researchers have designed a new type of DNA computer that works in human cells, perhaps paving the way for a distant technology capable of picking out diseased cells from otherwise healthy tissue. The system runs on a process called RNA interference (RNAi) in which small molecules of RNA prevent a gene from producing protein. The goal is to inject human cells with DNA that can determine whether a cell is cancerous or otherwise diseased, based solely on the mix of molecules inside the cell....

The Northern Hemisphere is sweating through another unusually hot summer. Japan has declared its record temperatures a natural disaster. Europe is baking under prolonged heat, with destructive wildfires in Greece and, unusually, the Arctic. And drought-fuelled wildfires are spreading in the western United States. For Friederike Otto, a climate modeller at the University of Oxford, UK, the past week has been a frenzy, as journalists clamoured for her views on climate change’s role in the summer heat....

The worry over Andrew Speaker’s air travel across the Atlantic in May while infected with a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis has died down. But it has given researchers added incentive to complete work developing sensors that could be used to immediately detect and locate not only sick airline passengers but those with more nefarious goals such as contaminating the air with hazardous biological or chemical materials. Researchers with the Air Transportation Center of Excellence for Airline Cabin Environment Research are testing a system that uses mathematical models and sensors designed to pinpoint problem passengers down to their seat number and alert flight and ground crews of an emergency....

A century ago Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 27-member crew set sail from Argentina to Antarctica with ambitions of being the first to cross the coldest continent on foot. Partway through the journey south, however, winter sea ice froze their ship in place. The explorers first stayed close and camped on the surrounding ice but their ship, crushed by shifting ice, broke up and sank after 10 months. Then, Shackleton’s crew set out in small boats to reach nearby but uninhabited Elephant Island....

Gas pumps in California could soon feature signs telling drivers they’re paying more per gallon because of the state’s cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions. The California Independent Oil Marketers Association (CIOMA), a trade group for oil distributors, is handing out to members a label that adds wording on cap-and-trade costs to the standard one that advises motorists on gas taxes. The state requires that a label with gas taxes appear on all gas pumps....

Global warming is making the atmosphere more hostile to the formation of tropical cyclones. By the early 2010s there were about 13 percent fewer storms across all oceans than there were in the late 19th century, according to a new study published on Monday in Nature Climate Change. But having fewer hurricanes and typhoons does not make them less of a threat. Those that do manage to form are more likely to reach higher intensities as the world continues to heat up with the burning of fossil fuels....

In my house, dogs are family. They get their own birthday celebrations and, despite my efforts to train them otherwise, they even get to sleep in the bed. I also talk to them, sometimes in praise, other times in a desperate attempt to convince them that it is not, in fact, in their best interest to eat crayons … again. But how much of what I say to them do they actually understand?...

TOKYO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Japan on Tuesday acknowledged the first possible casualty from radiation at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant, a worker who was diagnosed with cancer after the crisis broke out in 2011. The health ministry’s recognition of radiation as a possible cause may set back efforts to recover from the disaster, as the government and the nuclear industry have been at pains to say that the health effects from radiation have been minimal....

By Patrick Rucker and Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The Keystone XL oil pipeline cleared two hurdles on Friday, setting up a showdown between Congress and President Barack Obama who has raised new questions about the project after more than six years of review. Following months of deliberation, the Nebraska Supreme Court allowed a route for the pipeline to cross the state, shifting the debate over TransCanada Corp’s project fully to Washington, where Republicans now in control of Congress are seeking to force its final approval....