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More than 1,000 people in the U.S. died while waiting for a liver transplant in 2018, partly because standard preservation methods can keep a donor liver alive outside the body for only about 24 hours. But now, in a feat of medical engineering, scientists have developed a machine that can keep a liver functional for a week or more. It has not yet been used for human transplants, but the technology represents a leap forward in the field of organ preservation....

By the time the pregnant woman arrived at the nearest hospital with a maternity ward—90 minutes after leaving her home in Winfield, Ala.—she was ready to deliver her baby. She made it just in time, recalls Dan Avery, an obstetrician–gynecologist who tended to patients in rural Alabama and elsewhere until his recent retirement. Too often, he says, patients are not so lucky. Some have ended up delivering on the side of the road....

Multiple sclerosis (MS) relapses are known to swing with the seasons. Scientists have attributed these fluctuations to the rise and fall of vitamin D production, which is triggered by exposure to seasonal sunlight. Now a new study suggests that melatonin, a hormone that regulates your internal body clock and sleep cycles, could also play a protective role. MS is a disease of the central nervous system in which an abnormal immune response attacks the myelin sheath, or fatty protective layer, around neurons....

One of the world’s largest oil companies confirmed scant growth in global carbon emissions from energy yesterday and projected a robust future for renewables in its annual energy assessment. Oil major BP PLC found that growth in shale oil and gas output in the United States lowered the prices of these fuels around the world. The company, which closed its own solar division in 2011 because it couldn’t make enough money selling photovoltaics, also reported that wind and solar power expanded rapidly worldwide as technology improved and manufacturers achieved economies of scale....

In about a quarter of the five million Americans with the condition known as heart failure, the organ’s chambers fail to contract in perfect synchrony. When pacemakers are implanted to restore favorable timing—known as cardiac resynchronization therapy—the heart often ends up stronger than in heart failure patients who never had out-of-step contractions. In essence, moving from dyssynchrony to synchrony seems to be beneficial. That observation led David Kass, who directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Molecular Cardiobiology, to a tantalizing question: Could heart failure patients with regular contractions benefit from a little discord?...

By Martinne Geller and Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Electronic cigarette makers are racing to design and buy variations of a technology that has lit a billion-dollar boom, created a new vocabulary, and prompted a backlash from health officials worried about the impact of the new smokeless devices. Research by Thomson Reuters shows that China - with over 300 million smokers - is the front runner in the manufacture and development of so-called e-cigarette technology, while new versions being patented include a “pay as you go” computer-assisted device and others that can deliver caffeine instead....

A casual brush with poison ivy can cause agonizing itching for an estimated 10 to 50 million Americans every year. But exactly how the plant inflicts such misery is still somewhat of a mystery. By exposing mice to poison ivy’s oily allergen urushiol, Sven-Eric Jordt of Duke University and colleagues have now pinpointed a molecular pathway that helps transmit an itch signal through nerve cells. Antihistamines and corticosteroids are commonly prescribed to people with a poison ivy rash....

The “food pyramid” is getting squashed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) this week. Gone will be the massive base slab of breads, pasta and grains—and the suggestive “sparing” point of sweets and fats—of the 1990s. Gone also will be the confounding rainbow-striped “MyPyramid” with its online personal food plans introduced in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration. In their place will be a new circular chart to depict the government’s recommended model for American meals....

Sukel used to do a lot of crazy stuff. She explored Africa and the Middle East with an infant strapped to her back when her first husband was deployed in Iraq. Then the science writer got divorced and settled in the suburbs with her son and a mortgage. Life became predictable. After a surprise marriage proposal from her boyfriend of only a few months, though, Sukel decided to reengage with her more daring self....

Stem cells have long been heralded as a potential treatment for a range of brain ailments, but research has so far focused on movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Now a new animal study shows that the immature cells could also help with cognitive impairments. Frank M. LaFerla of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues showed that neural stem cells can reverse memory loss. The team manipulated the genome of mice such that they could initiate neuron death in the hippocampus by turning on specific genes....

Avid Everyday Einstein listeners may recall that the depletion and subsequent rebound of the ozone layer is one of my favorite science stories. Scientists were able to identify a problem (the depletion of the ozone layer) and its cause (chlorofluorocarbon gases or CFCs) and within two years, politicians took swift action to reverse course to protect our planet and its inhabitants. The ozone layer has now rebounded and scientists predict that by 2060-2075, the ozone layer will be back to its pre-1950 levels....

We all know what happened, or think we know. When American troops entered Baghdad in April 2003, hordes of looters rushed into the Iraq Museum, repository of the world’s greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities, and stripped the place while our GIs were busily pulling down Saddam statues for CNN. The truth, wouldn’t you know it, is a bit more elusive. About 15,000 objects were stolen, not 170,000 as first reported (actually the size of the museum’s entire collection), an exaggeration resulting from misunderstandings between the first journalists to reach the shattered museum and distraught Iraqi curators....

Every new year millions of people vow to finally get it together and improve themselves—from health factors, to relationships, to overall happiness in life. Yet statistics show that fewer than half of them will have stuck to their resolutions even six months later. Are humans so weak-willed? Or are our tactics of self-improvement flawed? To be sure, self-improvement requires effort and discipline, and the latest diet and lifestyle crazes are often cocktails of unsubstantiated claims and promises....

By Suzanne Barlyn and Bill Berkrot The chief executive of embattled Theranos Inc on Monday presented plans for a new product and said the blood testing company was working diligently to rectify all of its outstanding issues involving its product and laboratory operations. CEO Elizabeth Holmes described new technologies that she said were “distinct from the operations of our clinical laboratories” that have come under scrutiny - part of a presentation before some 2,650 scientists at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry meeting in Philadelphia....

Most of the world’s cities started from an important marketplace or town square. Over time, they developed multiple centers where people could work, shop and play. But why? Some economists have suggested that cities fragment because of agglomeration—businesses that spring up in clusters increase their chances of success. Yet physicists have arrived at a slightly different explanation: traffic jams. Marc Barthelemy and Rémi Louf, both at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in France, designed a mathematical model to explain how cities and their surrounding suburbs evolve....

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Mind Matters, www.ScientificAmerican.com/MindMatters, a column edited by Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at the Boston Globe, and Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the blog The Frontal Cortex, http://scienceblogs.com/cortex The setting: a nursery. A baby speaks directly to the camera: “Look at this. I’m a free man. I go anywhere I want now.” He describes his stock-buying activities, but then his phone interrupts....

Irma is one of the most powerful storms ever recorded Hurricane Irma is a Category 5 storm and a “dangerous major hurricane,” according to the National Weather Service. Longtime observers have been shocked by its power and have warned that it could be one of the most infamous storms in Atlantic hurricane history. “Irma has me sick to my stomach,” Eric Blake, a scientist at the National Hurricane Center, wrote in a Twitter message....

DHARMENDRA S. MODHA is probably the only microchip architect on the planet whose team includes a psychiatrist—and it’s not for keeping his engineers sane. Rather his collaborators, a consortium of five universities and as many IBM labs, are working on a microchip modeled after neurons. They call their research “cognitive computing,” and its first products, two microchips each made of 256 artificial neurons, were unveiled in August. Right now all they can do is beat visitors at Pong or navigate a simple maze....

Glaciers are melting. Seas are rising. We already know ocean water will move inland along the Eastern Seaboard, the Gulf of Mexico and coastlines around the world. What scientists are urgently trying to figure out is whether the inundation will be much worse than anticipated—many feet instead of a few. The big question is: Are we entering an era of even faster ice melt? If so, how much and how fast?...

Allen Nicklasson has had a temporary reprieve. Scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri on 23 October, the convicted killer was given a stay of execution by the state’s governor, Jay Nixon, on 11 October — but not because his guilt was in doubt. Nicklasson will live a while longer because one of the drugs that was supposed to be used in his execution — a widely used anesthetic called propofol — is at the center of an international controversy that threatens millions of US patients, and affects the way that US states execute inmates....