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A technique that makes mouse brains transparent shows how the entire brain responds to cocaine addiction and fear. The findings could uncover new brain circuits involved in drug response. In the technique, known as CLARITY, brains are infused with acrylamide, which forms a matrix in the cells and preserves their structure along with the DNA and proteins inside them. The organs are then treated with a detergent that dissolves opaque lipids, leaving the cells completely clear....

Nurses and our health care teams have brought this nation through the worst devastation to our health in over 100 years. We have witnessed more than 720,000 deaths in the United States as a result of COVID-19. And it’s not over. COVID continues to ravage many of our communities, taking the lives of potentially anyone, including younger, healthier adults and hundreds of children. The critical care nurses of America have been beside seriously ill COVID patients, holding their hands so that your loved ones wouldn’t die alone....

The U.S. electrical grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth: 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines, linking thousands of generating plants to factories, homes and businesses. The National Academy of Engineering ranks it as the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century. What it cannot do is support the massive shift to low-carbon power that scientists warn will be needed to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts....

Melting Mess New details are emerging on how the melting poles could raise ocean heights [see “The Unquiet Ice”; SciAm, February 2008]. Researchers at the University of Toronto and Oregon State University suggest that the rise could be uneven around the world. They examined the West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough grounded ice to boost global sea levels by five meters if it splashed into the water. But such a huge redistribution of mass in Antarctica would reduce the gravitational pull in the area and shift the earth’s rotation axis by 500 meters....

The intriguing streaks, called recurring slope lineae, were first spotted in 2010 in images from the MRO’s HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera. Scientists have long suspected that the streaks marked the location of liquid water. Now researchers have found the chemical signatures of hydrated minerals on these slopes, confirming that explanation. The new evidence also comes from the MRO via CRISM, its Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, which separates light into its constituent wavelengths to reveal the chemicals present on the Martian surface....

Geothermal energy is cheap, clean and constant. Over the next 50 years the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that a new technology known as an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) could supply about 10 percent of the country’s current electrical capacity. Unlike conventional power plants that rely on near-surface hydrothermal systems such as springs and geysers, EGS can draw energy from depths of up to three to five kilometers. Yet drilling for the wells is a financially risky endeavor....

You may be hard-pressed to recall events after a night of binge drinking, but a new report suggests that low to moderate alcohol consumption may actually enhance memory. “There are human epidemiological data of others indicating that mild [to] moderate drinking may paradoxically improve cognition in people compared to abstention,” says Maggie Kalev, a research fellow in molecular medicine and pathology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a co-author of an article in The Journal of Neuroscience describing results of a study she and other researchers performed on rats....

By Heidi LedfordAfter a 10-year hiatus, the chimpanzees of the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico are being called back to duty. The 186 chimps, already grizzled veterans of medical research, will be pulled from an un­official retirement and sent back into the lab by the end of 2011, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced last month. But the decision has brought to a head a simmering debate about the use of chimpanzees for medical research in the United States–a practice finally banned by the European Union earlier this month....

When patients with a new disease called COVID-19 started pouring into his hospital, pulmonary and critical care physician Bilal Jalil found himself turning to a pocket-size device he had been using to quickly check heart function in his private practice. It was a handheld point-of-care ultrasound, or POCUS, which consists of a simple probe that can broadcast ultrasound images to a display tablet or phone. The tool proved invaluable in making critical triage choices: within minutes Jalil, who also works in the intensive care unit at a large hospital in Texas, could see whether someone’s lungs were affected enough to send them to the ICU....

TOKYO, March 18 (Reuters) - A reactor in southwestern Japan cleared another regulatory hurdle on Wednesday, another small step in Japan’s return to nuclear power after all units were shut down for stringent safety checks following the 2011 Fukushima atomic disaster. The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said the No. 1 reactor at Kyushu Electric Power Co’s Sendai plant had received approval for construction works upgrading the unit’s basic design to meet higher standards set since Fukushima....

I moved my eyes, and I realized that I was asleep in bed. When I saw the beautiful landscape start to blur, I thought to myself, “This is my dream; I want it to stay!” And the scene reappeared. Then I thought to myself how nice it would be to gallop through this landscape. I got myself a horse … I could feel myself riding the horse and lying in bed at the same time....

In 2016 a panel of physicists, a cosmologist and a philosopher gathered at the American Museum of Natural History to discuss an idea seemingly befitting science fiction: Are we living in a computer simulation? How exactly the flesh and blood of our brain is able to formulate an aware, self-examining mind capable of critical thought remains a mystery. Perhaps the answer eludes us because, the panel mused, we are the avatars of a higher species’ simulation and simply unable to discover the truth....

For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer’s disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments—although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive. The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater—the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord....

Virtual reality’s goal is to fully immerse a person in a digital landscape, triggering the same kinds of physical and psychological reactions they would experience in the real world. In virtual reality (VR) parlance, this is called “presence”—a mental state in which people recall VR experiences as if they had actually occurred. Computer graphics have improved dramatically in recent years, and advances in haptic, or touch, VR technology are beginning to allow users to feel sensations such as temperature, pressure and vibrations....

The Securities and Exchange Commission broke new ground yesterday when it unveiled a 510-page rulebook that, if finalized, would force companies to provide investors with more information to help them better account for the economic realities of a warming world. The SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rules touch everything from corporate emissions goals to long-term climate strategies. But in the immediate aftermath of the rule’s release, groups on all sides of the issue were grappling with one element in particular—the agency’s treatment of Scope 3 emissions, or the carbon output associated with a company’s customers and suppliers....

Researchers are continually finding new evidence that common items in our kitchens, bathrooms and toy chests can make us sick. One of the most insidious substances is bisphenol A, a component of the light plastics used in baby bottles and many other consumer products. Over the past several years, scientists have reported that low levels of bisphenol A can disrupt cell division, leading to spontaneous miscarriages and birth defects such as Down syndrome....

Starting with its first issue in 1845, Scientific American has faithfully reported on technology used to produce the magazine. Some advances have been shown directly on the cover, such as a digital letterform in May 1969 (above). Echoes of other advances are visible in the cover color analysis here. After more than 75 years of weekly publishing—largely in black and white, with occasional washes of color—the magazine shifted to a rotary offset lithography press for covers in 1917, which allowed for the lush paintings that marked its transition to a monthly in 1921....

Behold the highest-resolution image of atoms ever taken. To create it, Cornell University researchers captured a sample from a crystal in three dimensions and magnified it 100 million times, doubling the resolution that earned the same scientists a Guinness World Record in 2018. Their imaging process could help develop materials for designing more powerful and efficient phones, computers and other electronics, as well as longer-lasting batteries. The scientists obtained the image using a technique called electron ptychography....

By Lawrence HurleyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Interior Department will not be held in contempt over its actions in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill after the Supreme Court declined on Monday to review an appeals court ruling in the government’s favor.The nine justices refused to hear an appeal filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC, a drilling company subsidiary of Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc, and other businesses affected by a moratorium on deep sea drilling that the federal government imposed in May 2010....

We spend a third of our lives asleep. Every organism on Earth—from rats to dolphins to fruit flies to microorganisms—relies on sleep for its survival, yet science is still wrestling with a fundamental question: Why does sleep exist? During Shakespeare and Cervantes’ time, sleep was likened to death, with body and mind falling into a deep stillness before resurrecting each new day. In reality, sleep is a flurry of action. Trillions of neurons light up....