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By James Regan Jamie Freed SYDNEY, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The powerful earthquake that struck New Zealand was unusual in that a big event on one fault may have immediately triggered a big event on a second fault, experts said on Monday. An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 pummelled central New Zealand at 12.02 a.m., killing at least two people, damaging roads and buildings and setting off hundreds of strong aftershocks. “When an earthquake occurs you are changing the stress field immediately, and if there was one fault that was pretty close to breaking, the energy from an earthquake can just tip it over the edge so that may have been what happened today,” Adam Pascale, head of Australia’s Seismology Research Centre, told Reuters....

The negative health effects of smoking are well documented, but new results suggest that the dangers for pregnant women may be even more far reaching than previously believed. Scientists have found that the grandchildren of women who smoked while they were pregnant may have up to double the risk of developing childhood asthma compared to grandchildren of women whose pregnancies were smoke-free. Researchers led by Frank D. Gilliland of the University of Southern California (USC) analyzed data collected as part of the ongoing USC Children’s Health Study....

By Mahmoud Mourad and Lin Noueihed Egypt has uncovered a network accused of illicit international trafficking in human organs, arresting 45 people and recovering millions of dollars in a dawn raid on Tuesday, the health ministry said. Among those held were doctors, nurses, middlemen and organ-buyers, involved in what the ministry described as the largest organ-trafficking network exposed in Egypt to date. “The accused who were arrested exploited the economic situation of some Egyptians and the suffering of some patients and their need for treatment to take large financial sums from them, thus breaking the law,” the ministry said in a statement....

For the first time since the coronavirus outbreak began, the Food and Drug Administration has reported a shortage of a medicine due to a manufacturing “issue” with an active pharmaceutical ingredient “related to a site affected by coronavirus.” However, the agency did not disclose the name of the medicine, prompting criticism over concerns the lack of information can make it difficult to plan for patient needs. In a statement issued Thursday night, the FDA explained that an unnamed manufacturer reported a shortage, but did not provide any further details....

By hijacking the cellular machinery that makes proteins, bioengineers have developed a tool that could allow them to better understand protein synthesis, explore how antibiotics work and convert cells into custom chemical factories. All life owes its existence to the ribosome, a huge, hardworking molecular machine that reads RNA templates transcribed from DNA, and uses the information to string together amino acids into proteins. A cell requires functioning ribosomes to survive — but they are difficult to engineer....

In a typical year 658 Americans die from heat-related causes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This summer extreme heat in the Southwest has left one man dead from heat stroke and dozens of people hospitalized due to heat-related illnesses. Researchers at Columbia University predict an increase in the number of heat waves over the next few years, suggesting a growing need for those who work or play outside to learn how to recognize and avoid heat-related illnesses....

ITALY Art restorers have cleaned the Medici Chapel in Florence with the help of bacteria. Serratia, Pseudomonas and Rhodococcus ate away at detritus—from visitors and decaying corpses—that had seeped into Michelangelo’s sarcophagi. GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS Genetic analysis confirmed that a female giant tortoise, discovered in the Galápagos Islands in 2019, belongs to a species last seen in 1906. Rangers spotted evidence of at least two more of the reptiles, buoying hopes of finding a mate for the female....

Reproductive technologies that marry DNA from three individuals will receive a trial in the court of public opinion this week. Such technologies may hold promise for averting certain genetically inherited diseases passed down via mutations to mitochondria, the cell’s battery pack. Scientists have already had successes with this type of reproductive approach in monkeys and in human embryos, and are now eager to launch human clinical trials. First, however, they must get the green light from the U....

In October 2016, a tiny island in the frigid waters between Russia and Alaska was the site of a morbid mystery. Dozens of dead seabirds began suddenly washing up on the shore. The bodies continued to arrive for months. It was a jolt to the local residents of St. Paul Island, northernmost of a group of four volcanic formations known as the Pribilof Islands, clustered in the icy Bering Sea. While dead animals might occasionally wash up under normal circumstances, the daily bombardments of sodden carcasses were clearly the mark of a mass die-off....

By Kate Kelland Public confidence in immunization varies widely across the world with the French the most skeptical about the safety of vaccines, according to a survey published on Friday. With outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and other infectious diseases occurring in recent years in places where the take-up of vaccinations has been low, the scientists behind the survey said its insights could help policymakers tackle such problems. The study took views from almost 66,000 people across 67 countries about whether they consider vaccines important, safe, effective and compatible with their religious beliefs....

Science has gotten more political, so scientists are looking for new ways to influence politics. Last week, a group called the National Science Policy Network announced its debut. It’s aimed at formalizing loosely linked groups of early-career scientists who want to get involved in policymaking. Symbolically, it’s pushing back against the Trump administration’s efforts to cut research funding. Practically, it’s providing grant money to academic researchers in a wide variety of scientific fields, including biomedical, life, engineering, physical, law and public policy....

Key concepts Chemistry Acids Absorption Solubility Introduction It’s happened to most of us: You wear a brand new shirt, and in the middle of lunch you get a giant ketchup stain right in the middle of it—or maybe it’s peanut butter or spaghetti sauce. Whatever the stain, it’s always ugly and can be tricky to remove. Did you know there are many different kinds of stains and each requires different types of cleaning to get it out?...

Most of the more than 4,000 exoplanets astronomers have found across the past few decades come from NASA’s pioneering Kepler mission, which launched in 2009 and ended in late October 2018. But among Kepler’s cavalcade of data, more planets are still waiting to be found—and a new method just turned up the biggest haul yet from the mission’s second, concluding phase, called K2. The K2 run from 2014 to 2018 was notable for its unique use of the functionality, or lack thereof, of the Kepler space telescope....

Note: This article, to be published in the October 2008 issue of Scientific American, was originally printed with the title, “Questions for Would-Be Presidents.” Add your own questions for McCain and Obama in our comments section below. No one has ever complained that U.S. presidential candidates talk too much about science, and this year has been no exception. Nevertheless, science-related issues such as energy and health care, once viewed as sideshows, have taken center stage in this election....

Boreal forests across the Northern hemisphere are undergoing rapid, transformative shifts as a result of a warming climate that, in some cases, is triggering feedback loops producing even more regional warming, according to several new studies. Russia’s boreal forest - the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world - has seen a transformation in recent years from larch to conifer trees, according to new research by University of Virginia researchers....

As temperatures rise over the next century, three California amphibian species could be pushed to the cusp of extinction because the warming climate will effectively block their migration to more suitable habitats. Interventions by humans who physically relocate the animals may be the only way to help them survive. Managed relocation, or assisted migration, for climate change is a controversial topic because of the challenges of moving an endangered species and the potential harm it may cause in a new ecosystem....

The latest evidence indicates that a few earthquakes can sustain powerful sonic boom–like effects that may enhance their destructive power. The earthshaking results come from analyzing the cracks from a strong 2001 earthquake in Tibet that caused a so-called super-shear rupture—meaning the earth split apart nearly twice as fast as normal—along a quarter of the temblor’s 400-kilometer- (250-mile-) long fracture. Until recently, seismologists were unsure that an earthquake could sustain such high speeds for more than a brief instant....

By Laila KearneySAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hundreds of firefighters battled to gain control of a raging wildfire along central California’s scenic Big Sur coastline on Tuesday, hampered by steep and brushy terrain and narrow roads, officials said.By nightfall, the Pfeiffer fire had blackened 769 acres and was 20-percent contained, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Lynn Olson said. Crews expect to extend containment lines around the perimeter of the fire by Friday, she said....

The so-called “STEM” fields—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—are often grouped together in discussions of education policy or curriculum. But a group of students and faculty at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design (R.I.S.D.) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe that another letter should be added: “A,” for “arts.” “We think that STEM is an incomplete picture,” says Ryan Mather, a student at R.I.S.D. and a member of the group, dubbed STEAM....

In 1994 Time magazine ran a controversial cover photo of O.J. Simpson’s mugshot that, to some readers, seemed to have been intentionally altered to make Simpson’s skin look darker than normal. Accompanied by the headline “An American Tragedy,” Time was criticized for manipulating Simpson’s appearance to make him seem menacing, and therefore more likely to be guilty of his accused crimes. People were so upset by the image that James Gaine, then the magazine’s managing editor, issued a public apology....