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The research world’s most famous human cell has had its genome decoded, and it’s a mess. German researchers this week report the genome sequence of the HeLa cell line, which originates from a deadly cervical tumor taken from a patient named Henrietta Lacks. Established after Lacks died in 1951, HeLa cells were the first human cells to grow well in the laboratory. The cells have contributed to more than 60,000 research papers, the development of a polio vaccine in the 1950s and, most recently, an international effort to characterize the genome, known as ENCODE....

The quest to rejuvenate aging people with the blood of young donors has generated paying customers, captured the popular imagination, and, now, prompted a warning from the Food and Drug Administration. The agency on Tuesday said in a statement that plasma infusions from young people provide “no proven clinical benefit” against normal aging, Alzheimer’s disease, or a host of other diseases—despite a surge in their promotion for those purposes. And, like any other plasma product, young-blood transfusions can pose risks, according to the FDA’s statement, which was attributed to Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Peter Marks, the director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research....

Key concepts Physics Gravity Inertia Centripetal force Introduction Can you turn a cup of water upside-down without the water pouring out? Sounds impossible, right? This project will show you how you can do it using a neat physics trick! Background Have you ever gone around a fast curve while riding in a car? Did you notice how it feels like you are being “pushed” to the outside of the curve? You are not actually being pushed—rather, your body “wants” to continue traveling in a straight line....

Moving from a well-lit space into a dark one has always been a common experience in human lives, explains Bruno Laeng, a cognitive and visual scientist at the University of Oslo in Norway. “Driving into a tunnel and [perceiving] an expanding dark hole flowing toward you at the center of your vision” is akin to what our ancestors might have experienced “when entering a dark cave.” Because such occurrences are so regular, being able to dilate one’s pupils in anticipation of the enveloping darkness could mean seeing predators and prey better and faster in dim environments....

SAN FRANCISCO — Ötzi the Iceman, an astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic mummy found in the Italian Alps in 1991, was a native of Central Europe, not a first-generation émigré from Sardinia, new research shows. And genetically, he looked a lot like other Stone Age farmers throughout Europe. The new findings, reported Thursday (Nov. 8) here at the American Society of Human Genetics conference, support the theory that farmers, and not just the technology of farming, spread during prehistoric times from the Middle East all the way to Finland....

The James Webb Space Telescope has successfully deployed all five layers of its tennis-court-sized sunshield, a prerequisite for the telescope’s science operations and the most nerve-wracking part of its risky deployment. The challenging procedure, which required careful tensioning of each of the five hair-thin layers of the elaborate sunshield structure was a seamless success today (Jan. 4). Its completion brought huge relief to the thousands of engineers involved in the project over its three decades of development, as well as the countless scientists all over the world who eagerly await Webb’s groundbreaking observations....

Cities worldwide are promoting environmentally “green” roofs to mitigate several urban problems. Ground cover, shrubs and other flora planted across a building’s roof can reduce storm water runoff, easing the burden on local sewers and water treatment systems. And the vegetation can keep the roof cooler in summer, lowering interior air-conditioning costs and therefore peak demand on area power plants. Green roofs have been blossoming in Europe for more than a decade, and Tokyo now requires that at least 20 percent of any new roof on medium and large buildings be cultivated....

This Christmas season, Jeri Seifert’s Scotch pines do not look festive. A few years ago, these bright green quintessential Christmas trees with 1-inch needles boasted sturdy branches, perfect for displaying heavy, colorful ornaments and twinkling lights. Today, her pines are dry, brown in some spots and susceptible to insect infestations thanks to the California drought. Scotch pines, according to the National Christmas Tree Association, are the most common Christmas tree variety purchased in the United States....

Kids should exercise at least one hour a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in the U.S., less than half of six- to 11-year-olds and only 8 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds meet that target. Schools help to promote physical activity, with recess accounting for up to 40 percent of a child’s daily exercise needs. So how exactly do kids spend that welcome break from their desks?...

Editor’s Note (1/4/23): Oregon began allowing adult use of psilocybin mushrooms on January 1 after passing a ballot measure that made it the first state to legalize such use in 2020. The mushrooms must be obtained from a licensed service center and taken in the presence of a licensed facilitator. They are not being sold for home use. Oregon made history on November 3, becoming not just the first U.S. state to legalize psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in “magic mushrooms,” but also the first jurisdiction in the world to lay out plans for regulating the drug’s therapeutic use....

Asia is where old Dell computers go, not to die, but to be regenerated. In Texas, Dell collects electronics made both by itself and other manufacturers, strips out components and sends them on a journey to processing plants and component makers in China. The plastic gets shredded, melted and blended with virgin plastic. The resulting material, which is 35 per cent recycled, is then used to make new components. These are shipped back to Dell’s factory where they are used to build new computers....

Any commercial fisher or weekend angler knows to “throw the little ones back.” The idea is to give small fish time to grow up and make babies. But that strategy may actually be harming fish stocks. Ongoing experiments on captive fish reveal that harvesting only the largest individuals can actually force a species to evolve undesirable characteristics that diminish an overfished stock’s ability to recover, says David O. Conover, director of the Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook University....

Key Concepts Weather Atmosphere Evaporation Condensation Introduction Have you ever imagined what it might be like inside of a cloud? Did you know that if you were in one, you would get soaking wet? There are many different types of clouds, but one thing they have in common is that they’re all made of water (or ice). But how do clouds form, and how is it possible that water can float above us in the air?...

The future belongs to the elastic mind. This is the argument behind best-selling author Leonard Mlodinow’s new book, Elastic, which examines the swirl of change we find ourselves living through, and the ways of thinking best suited to it. We all have what is needed for “elastic thinking”—to a greater extent, perhaps, than we realize. It’s just a matter of recognizing the needed skills, Mlodinow argues, and nurturing them. He answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook....

Key concepts Mathematics Patterns Algorithms Puzzles Introduction Are you tired of math work sheets and homework? Did you know that there are more creative ways to exercise your mathematical muscle? A lot of games, puzzles and riddles revolve around mathematical concepts. Think about simple games such as tic-tac-toe, more strategic games such as chess or math puzzles such as sudoku. People have been playing these games and puzzles for centuries! They are fun, entertaining and sometimes useful....

ATTOSECOND (A billionth of a billionth of a second.) The most fleeting events that scientists can clock are measured in attoseconds. Researchers have created light pulses lasting just 53 attoseconds using high-speed lasers. Although the interval seems unimaginably brief, it is an aeon compared with the Planck time—about 10–43 second—which is believed to be the shortest possible duration. FEMTOSECOND (A millionth of a billionth of a second.) An atom in a molecule typically completes a single vibration in 10 to 100 femtoseconds....

Women at peak fertility tend to have a stronger preference for sexually desirable men, many past studies have shown. An open question, however, is whether these variations affect women’s long-term relationships. Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, gave 65 women in committed relationships a questionnaire to assess their feelings about their partnerships at different times of the month. Results indicate that on high-fertility days, women who considered their partners less sexually desirable felt less close to them and were more critical of their faults....

What color is a tree, or the sky, or a sunset? At first glance, the answers seem obvious. But it turns out there is plenty of variation in how people see the world—both between individuals and between different cultural groups. A lot of factors feed into how people perceive and talk about color, from the biology of our eyes to how our brains process that information, to the words our languages use to talk about color categories....

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. A question-and-answer piece with Dr. Leana Wen of the George Washington University School of Public Health explains why COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. is going so slowly and “the need to balance speed with fairness" (1/26/21), as freelance science writer Marla Broadfoot writes for Scientific American....

An attempt to save the lives of both elephants and people by moving the pachyderms away from humans has failed in Sri Lanka, a new study finds. Instead of the relocated elephants living peacefully in their new homes, they wandered, researchers found. Relocated elephants died more often than problem elephants left in their original range. The relocated elephants also killed more people than elephants that stayed put. “We were stunned that translocation neither solves the conflict nor saves elephants,” study researcher Peter Leimgruber, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, said in a statement....