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The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. A bloom of new jellyfish started appearing in the Gulf of Venice last autumn. They were first detected by a fisherman from Chioggia in north-east Italy when hundreds of the beautiful yellow species filled his nets. News of this reached my team at the University of Salento’s MED-JELLYRISK and VECTORS projects through a citizen-science initiative we run that gets locals to report jellyfish sightings along the Italian coasts....

Got too many stamps? Baseball cards? Vintage cars? Blame your brain. About 70 animal species, including rats and crows, hoard things—mostly food but occasionally useless objects such as beads. Primitive brain regions, including the hippocampus and amygdala, are involved, but in humans higher brain structures are at work as well. Steven W. Anderson, a neurologist at the University of Iowa, recently studied 86 people who had lesions in various well-defined areas; of the total, 13 were “abnormal collectors,” filling their homes with everything from junk mail to spoiled food or broken appliances....

Howard J. Wilk is a long-term unemployed synthetic organic chemist living in Philadelphia. Like many pharmaceutical researchers, he has suffered through the drug industry’s R&D downsizing in recent years and now is underemployed in a nonscience job. With extra time on his hands, Wilk has been tracking the progress of a New Jersey-based company called Brilliant Light Power (BLP). The company is one of several that are developing processes that collectively fall into the category of new energy technologies....

Researchers in California have flushed a wealth of data out of toilet waste. For the first time, scientists have been able to detect specific variants of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage weeks before they were showing up in testing clinics. The wastewater data tracked “wave after wave of different viruses”, says Rob Knight, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and co-author of the study, which was published in Nature on 7 July....

Shantaquilette Carter-Williams was on the gym treadmill when she first felt an odd flutter in her heart. “I remember stopping and thinking, ‘That doesn’t feel right,’” says the now 43-year-old Dallas resident. But she knew the importance of exercise—she walked or ran almost every day—so she got back to it and finished her workout. She followed up with a doctor who diagnosed her with exercise-induced arrhythmia and told her to be careful with increasing her heart rate, says Carter-Williams, a retired accountant....

As a college student at Brown University, Jerry White spent his junior year abroad studying in Israel. On a sunny day during the Passover holiday in April 1984, White and two friends set out for a camping trip in the Golan Heights. “I was walking out ahead of my friends with a song in my heart. I like being the leader, the one out in front,” he recalls. “Then, boom! A huge explosion....

Editor’s note: we are publishing this article on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912 Scientific American Vol. CVI, No. 17, April 27, 1912 In the long list of maritime disasters there is none to compare with that which, on Sunday, April 14th, overwhelmed the latest and most magnificent of the ocean liners on her maiden voyage across the Western Ocean....

Imagine communicating your deepest emotions without having to say a word. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) are headed that way with their wearable goose-bump sensor, which they describe in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. Goose bumps arise when the muscles at the base of hair follicles are flexed, which happens when we are cold or when we feel a strong emotion such as fear, pleasure or nostalgia....

The aloof and elusive nature of cats is perhaps their most distinctive feature, endearing to some and exasperating to others. Despite such mercurial tendencies, the house cat is the most popular pet in the world. A third of American households have feline members, and more than 600 million cats live among humans worldwide. Yet as familiar as these animals are, a complete understanding of their origins has proved elusive. Whereas other once wild animals were domesticated for their milk, meat, wool or labor, cats contribute virtually nothing in the way of sustenance or work....

Scientists increasingly agree that it might be impossible to cap global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels—without first overshooting it and then using technology to siphon carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, causing temperatures to fall again. The problem is there are no rules under the Paris climate accord, or anywhere else, for how badly the target can be missed and what techniques might be used to lower the planet’s temperatures....

We tend to think of smooth talkers as having the most influence on others. Although the gift of gab is indeed important, being a good listener provides even more of an advantage, according to new research. In a study from the June Journal of Research in Personality, former work colleagues rated participants on measures of influence, verbal expression and listening behavior. Results indicate that good listening skills had a stronger effect on the ratings of influence than talking did....

Thousands of years ago humans moved for the first time into the tibetan plateau, a vast expanse of steppelands that towers some 14,000 feet above sea level. Although these trailblazers would have had the benefit of entering a new ecosystem free of competition with other people, the low oxygen levels at that altitude would have placed severe stresses on the body, resulting in chronic altitude sickness and high infant mortality. Two years ago a flurry of genetic studies identified a gene variant that is common in Tibetans but rare in other populations....

Have you ever bowled a string of strikes that seems like it came out of nowhere? There might be more to such streaks than pure luck, according to a study that offers new clues as to how the brain learns from positive and negative experiences. Training monkeys on a two-choice visual task, researchers found that the animals’ brains kept track of recent successes and failures. A correct answer had impressive effects: it improved neural processing and sent the monkeys’ performance soaring in the next trial....

A new technique classifies neurons by surveying chemical tags that turn genes on or off on the neurons’ DNA1. The approach represents a new way to chart the brain’s cellular diversity. It could reveal how patterns of chemical tags known as methyl groups are altered in autism. Methyl groups bind to the DNA base cytosine. Patterns of methylation can be inherited, but they can also change in response to environmental factors, such as exposure in the womb to stress hormones or to the mother’s diet....

Scientists solve mystery of patients with Alzheimer’s plaques but no disease The only way physicians can confirm that someone suffered from Alzheimer’s disease is if an autopsy reveals a protein called amyloid beta (Aß) accumulated in a postmortem brain. But doctors occasionally find these plaques in the brains of deceased people who showed no Alzheimer’s symptoms. Now Harvard Medical School researchers say they know why: Aß comes in several varieties, but apparently only one of them causes the memory-ravaging effects of Alzheimer’s....

The Obama administration gave environmentalists little to cheer about last week, but the game is hardly over. When it comes to climate change, Obama’s rhetoric has been striking and unequivocal (for example here), but with congressional deadlock, his ability to enact climate legislation has been … well, nonexistent. He has been able to make some progress without legislation— the new fuel economy standards [pdf], for example — but with only three years left in his administration his climate legacy is very much in question....

Dear EarthTalk: Has the use of E-ZPass and similar programs to facilitate faster highway toll-paying cut down on traffic jams and therefore tailpipe pollution? Why do we need tolls at all?—Dianne Comstock, New York City Yes, E-ZPass and similar programs have been a boon to both participating drivers and the environment by reducing or eliminating idling and traffic back-ups at toll booths. Maybe that’s why 25 U.S. states either participate in E-ZPass or have their own similar systems (FasTrak in California, EXpressToll in Colorado, SunPass in Florida, etc....

A bipedal robot can now put its best foot forward, stepping with a heel-toe motion that copies human locomotion more closely than flat-footed robot walkers can. By rocking its “feet” forward from the heel and pushing off at the toe, the DURUS robot closely imitates the walking motion of people, making it more energy-efficient and better at navigating uneven terrain, according to Christian Hubicki, a postdoctoral fellow in robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the researchers who helped DURUS find its footing....

Here’s a new twist on an old drink: gluten-free distilled spirits. After a 2012 Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) interim ruling, gluten-free labeled vodkas hit the market this year, including National Basketball Association legend Shaquille O’Neal’s gluten-free “Luv Shaq.” Gluten, a protein in wheat, barley and rye, causes severe gastrointestinal symptoms in people suffering from the autoimmune disorder celiac disease (CD). According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, three million Americans suffer from CD, which attacks the lining of the small intestine and keeps the body from absorbing necessary nutrients....

We are prejudiced against all kinds of other people, based on superficial physical features: We react negatively to facial disfigurement; we avoid sitting next to people who are obese, or old, or in a wheelchair; we favor familiar folks over folks that are foreign. If I asked you why these prejudices exist and what one can do to eliminate them, your answer probably wouldn’t involve the words “infectious disease.” Perhaps it should....