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The controversy over electronic cigarettes has been reignited today with the publication of a study claiming that they do not help smokers to quit their habit. Whether or not ‘e-cigarettes’ are an effective aid in the cessation of smoking has become a major issue for the rapidly growing industry that produces the devices, and for the tobacco researchers struggling to assess their impact. There is widespread agreement that inhaling from an e-cigarette, where a heating element vaporizes a liquid containing nicotine, is not as harmful as smoking a conventional cigarette, and proponents say that the products could save millions of lives....

By Bill Cotterell TALLAHASSEE (Reuters) - A group of 42 scientists from Florida universities submitted a joint letter on Thursday urging Governor Rick Scott and other state leaders to participate in a summit this fall to seek solutions for climate change. The group plans to host a conference of state and national policymakers and scientists, along with engineers and entrepreneurs who have “job-creating solutions.” Scott, who is a Republican, has come under fire from environmentalists for not taking stronger action over sea level rise and climate change....

By Katharine SandersonGalileo Galilei was right: Earth moves around the Sun, just as Nicolaus Copernicus said it did in 1543. But had Galileo followed the results of his observations to their logical conclusion, he should have backed another system – the Tychonic view that Earth didn’t move, and that everything else circled around it and the Sun, as developed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in the sixteenth century.This is the conclusion that Christopher Graney, a physicist at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, came to after reading manuscripts from another astronomer who was active in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, at the same time as Galileo....

Susan was still a child when she first suspected something might be wrong with her mother. A cup or plate would often crash to the floor by accident when her mother was serving dinner or washing up dishes. “She was, she would have said, ‘clumsy’, but she wasn’t really clumsy,” says Susan. “Her hands had beautiful, glamorous movements, which I now recognize as early HD.” Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited condition that causes widespread deterioration in the brain and disrupts thinking, behaviour, emotion and movement....

People who took magic mushrooms were still feeling the love more than a year later, and one might say they were on cloud nine about it, scientists report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. “Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives,” comparing it with the birth of a child or the death of a parent, says neuroscientist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the research....

For millions of diabetes sufferers, life is a constant battle to keep their blood sugar balanced, which typically means they have to test their glucose levels and take insulin throughout the day. A new generation of “artificial pancreas” devices may make tedious diabetes micromanagement obsolete. In healthy people, the pancreas naturally produces insulin, which converts sugars and starches into energy. People with type 1 diabetes, however, do not produce any insulin of their own, and those with type 2 produce too little....

In October 2005 teams watched their robots attempt to navigate the rugged Mojave Desert as part of a challenge sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The previous year’s challenge had ground to a halt when none of the competitors completed more than 5 percent of the 150-mile race. But last year everything changed. Four robots finished the race in fewer than 10 hours, and the winning Stanford Racing Team’s robot, fondly named Stanley, clocked speeds as high as 38 miles per hour....

Even for Jimi Hendrix, the guitarist who used feedback and distortion to build sounds the world had never heard before, it wasn’t easy to break into the music business. He joined his first band in 1958 and spent years as a touring and backup musician before releasing his first hit record in 1966. By the late 1960s Hendrix was headlining top music festivals such as Woodstock, where he earned more than any other performer....

Stare at a blank wall in any room, and you are unlikely to learn much more than the paint color. But a new technology can inconspicuously scan the same surface for shadows and reflections imperceptible to the human eye, then analyze them to determine details including how many people are in the room—and what they are doing. This tool could extrapolate information from a partial view of a space, perhaps spying on activity from around a corner or monitoring someone who avoids a camera’s line of sight....

What if you could pop a pill that made you smarter? It sounds like a Hollywood movie plot, but a new systematic review suggests that the decades-long search for a safe and effective “smart drug” [see box below] might have notched its first success. Researchers have found that modafinil boosts higher-order cognitive function without causing serious side effects. Modafinil, which has been prescribed in the U.S. since 1998 to treat sleep-related conditions such as narcolepsy and sleep apnea, heightens alertness much as caffeine does....

Michigan’s bald eagles are among the most contaminated birds on the planet when it comes to phased-out flame retardant chemicals in their livers, according to new research. The study, published last month in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, found that the top predators in the Great Lakes are highly exposed to banned flame retardants, still widespread in the environment. Michigan’s population of bald eagles is stable, but the compounds have been linked in other birds to impaired reproduction, weird behavior and development, and hormone disruption....

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazineThree common chemotherapy drugs cause DNA mutations not only in mice that receive treatment, but also in their offspring, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.The results suggest that the genome in treated mice became destabilized yielding new mutations long after exposure to the drugs has ceased. A similar phenomenon has been observed in mice exposed to radiation....

Insecticides commonly used in households may be associated with behavior problems in children, according to a new study by researchers in Quebec. The study is one of the first to investigate potential human health effects of pyrethroids, which are used in more than 3,500 commercial products, including flea bombs and roach sprays. The findings raise some questions about the safety of the compounds, which have replaced other insecticides with known risks to children’s brain development....

SQUATTERS FOR SUBURBIA The detritus of human habitation reveals that Tell Brak, an ancient city in northeastern Syria, was urbanized more than 7,000 years ago and boasted suburbs most likely filled with immigrants as far back as 6,200 years ago. Instead of an ancient ruler willing a city into existence, analysis of clay potsherds show a more haphazard, perhaps squatter-promoted growth pattern. All told, the city swelled to cover 130 hectares (321 acres) by 3400 B....

Struggles with mental ill-health are the world’s leading cause of disability. Beset by the coronavirus pandemic, underresourced mental health systems have strained to keep up. But access to care is limited by three major obstacles: a dearth of professional care providers, embedded stigma surrounding mental health problems and a distrust of institutions. The scenario is by no means uniformly dire. Both the public and private sectors have demonstrated a willingness to promote change....

Halo Sport is a brain stimulator that claims to helps you develop muscle memory faster. On their website, they say: You can gain skill, strength, and endurance 45% faster. You can also break through plateaus and set PRs Using their product will also increase neuroplasticity and accelerate learning in the motor cortex And all of this is backed by 4,000+ peer-reviewed studies, trusted by NFL, NBA, MLB, and Olympic athletes. The company has more than 20 patents issued to them....

In the push for batteries that store more energy and cost less, many researchers are chasing diminishing performance returns with exotic materials and chemistries, including lithium air, liquid metal and molten salt. One of the problems is that scientists are still grappling with the fundamental physics behind batteries and are finding out that in some instances, they’ve been going about it all wrong. Last week, in the journal Nature Communications, researchers outlined a new understanding of how energy moves within certain types of electrodes in cells, overturning the conventional wisdom that has reigned for more than 80 years....

The number of patents granted each year by the U.S. is skyrocketing. Companies inside and outside the country lead the race as they scramble to tap huge American markets. Patents going to overseas concerns are at an all-time high of 52 percent of the total, according to data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Geographical hotbeds of innovation are still a major factor in the U.S., however. Many traditional locations such as Silicon Valley in California and the New York City area remain strong but some newer regions such as Seattle and Raleigh, N....

In 1946 the Argentine Navy imported 10 beaver couples from Canada and set them free in Isla Grande, the deep south of Tierra del Fuego, with the intention of “enriching” the native fauna—and the local fur industry. The consequences of such initiative were disastrous: Protected from hunting for 35 years, and devoid of natural predators, the beavers grew over 5,000 times their initial population, caused irreversible changes in the forest ecosystem, and started advancing over the continent....

As Hurricane Florence bears down on the North Carolina coast, residents of the state’s Outer Banks—the string of barrier islands sitting just offshore—are fleeing their homes for higher ground. On Tuesday night, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) ordered an evacuation for all the state’s barrier islands ahead of the monster storm. The Outer Banks, and other barrier islands along the North and South Carolina shorelines, may see some of their worst storm-related damage in years as Florence approaches the coast, experts say, due to a combination of high winds and catastrophic storm surge....