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Between 2004 and 2008, PEPFAR has: Allocated $18.8 billion to fight global AIDS. Supported antiretroviral treatment for 1.73 million people. Of these, 1.64 million are in the program’s 15 focus countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (figures as of March 31, 2008). Increased the number of children receiving antiretroviral therapy through the program from 4,800 in 2004 to 85,900 in 2007. Provided antiretroviral drugs for more than one million pregnant women, thereby preventing nearly 200,000 infant infections....

You probably know the GIF as the perfect vehicle for sharing memes and reactions. We believe the format can go further, that it has real power to capture science and explain research in short, digestible loops. So each Friday, we’ll round up the week’s most GIF-able science. Enjoy and loop on. Geese in a Wind Tunnel Credit: Milsom Lab and University of British Columbia If Icarus had been a bar-headed goose, he might have made it....

Dear EarthTalk: I came home today to yet another set of phone books at my front door. I feel they are a great waste of paper, especially in this electronic age. How can I stop getting these books? Better yet: How can we get the phone companies to stop making them? – Bill Jones, via e-mail Many of us have little or no use for phone books anymore. While such directories are helpful for that occasional look-up of a service provider or pizza place, consumers and businesses increasingly rely on the Internet to find goods and services....

When divers off the Greek island of Zakynthos chanced upon an underwater labyrinth of stone several years ago, they encountered eerie scenes reminiscent of cobblestone floors and the bases of Hellenic-like colonnades, conjuring images of a city that had vanished beneath the waves thousands of years in the past. But when Greek authorities took a closer look they found no nearby signs of human life such as pottery shards, coins or tools....

Young East Coast fish are making moves to cooler waters, and researchers say that could mean changes for regional stock assessments. For decades, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been charting fish movement along the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf Ecosystem—from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to Cape Sable in Nova Scotia. Most of that research has focused on adult fish, but that is only giving researchers and fishery managers part of the picture of how stressors like climate change and fishing are affecting different species....

No animal compares to humans when it comes to studying populations over time. Easy to track and occasionally living in relative isolation, Homo sapiens is the only species that keeps detailed records. That is why biologist Virpi Lummaa of the University of Sheffield in England started in 1998 to comb through Finnish church records from two centuries ago for clues about the influence of evolution on reproduction. “I always wanted to work on primates,” Lummaa says....

An electronic cigarette exploded in the face of a man in Albany, New York, recently, leaving him with a hole his tongue and burns on his hand, CNN reported. The explosion also knocked out several of the man’s teeth. But this is far from the first injury caused by an exploding e-cigarette, or e-cig. The battery-powered devices work by heating a liquid, which typically contains nicotine as well as other chemicals, into a vapor that a user then inhales....

In 1990, when James Danckert was 18, his older brother Paul crashed his car into a tree. He was pulled from the wreckage with multiple injuries, including head trauma. The recovery proved difficult. Paul had been a drummer, but even after a broken wrist had healed, drumming no longer made him happy. Over and over, Danckert remembers, Paul complained bitterly that he was just—bored. “There was no hint of apathy about it at all,” says Danckert....

I’ll admit it. I am partial to neutrinos. And I always have been. Neutrinos alone, among all the known particles, have ethereal properties that are striking and romantic enough both to have inspired a poem by John Updike and to have sent teams of scientists deep underground for 50 years to build huge science-fictionlike contraptions to unravel their mysteries. It never ceases to amaze me that every second of every day, more than 6,000 billion neutrinos coming from nuclear reactions inside the sun whiz through my body, almost all of which will travel right through the earth without interruption....

Workers at a steel mill and a power plant were the first to notice something strange about the Monongahela River last summer. The water that U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy used to power their plants contained so much salty sediment that it was corroding their machinery. Nearby residents saw something odd, too. Dishwashers were malfunctioning, and plates were coming out with spots that couldn’t easily be rinsed off. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection soon identified the likely cause and came up with a quick fix....

The first four-legged fossil snake ever found is forcing scientists to rethink how snakes evolved from lizards. Although it has four legs, Tetrapodophis amplectus has other features that clearly mark it as a snake, says Nick Longrich, a palaeontologist at the University of Bath, UK, and one of the authors of a paper describing the animal in Science. The creature’s limbs were probably not used for locomotion, the researchers say, but rather for grasping prey, or perhaps for holding on to mating partners....

Climate change will cause billions of dollars in damage to roads, buildings, airports, railroads and pipeline infrastructure in Alaska, particularly if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, a new study found. The findings suggest it would be prudent for local, state and federal governments and businesses to adapt infrastructure or design new infrastructure with climate change considerations in mind. “We know that these changes can come with increased societal risks and may also have economic implications,” the lead author of the study, April Melvin said in an email....

Trump administration officials tend to talk around climate change, but in official documents, they outline an unfolding crisis of extinctions, flooding and fire. Agencies under President Trump are cataloging climate impacts in the mandatory environmental reviews that precede major federal actions. They describe worsening damage to virtually every ecosystem, from entire forests down to the ocean’s smallest life forms. But officials use those same documents to minimize the connection between that damage and human-caused emissions, especially when the government is considering the impacts of fossil fuel projects, like drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge....

After inspecting asteroid Ryugu for two months, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has revealed the sites where the Hayabusa2 spacecraft will touchdown to collect a sample to bring back to Earth—and also where it will drop the first two of its planned landing probes. Mission planners faced tough choices because the body almost uniformly strewn with boulders. “Ryugu is beautiful, but challenging,” said Aurélie Moussi, a collaborator from the French space agency CNES in Toulouse, at a press conference in Sagamihara, Japan, on 23 August....

Scientific American presents Nutrition Diva by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. There are some miracle stories out there about people who cured themselves of incurable, end-stage cancer with a macrobiotic diet. Not surprisingly, people facing cancer often find these stories very compelling. One of the many things that makes cancer so difficult is the feeling of helplessness that this disease can engender in patients and loved ones....

For more than half a century, the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) has supported a thriving research station in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. Scientists at the station have helped to bring the iconic Galapagos tortoise back from the brink of extinction and to eradicate invasive goats from Isabela, the largest island in the Galapagos archipelago. But that long legacy is being threatened by a spat with the local government, which could force the Charles Darwin Research Station to close....

In this age of scientific armament, every new invention that bears at all upon the art of warfare is carefully weighed in. the balance of military usefulness. The balloon, telegraph, telephone, automobile, motorcycle and, more recently, wireless telegraphy, have all demonstrated their ability to further the dread game of war and have, consequently, been added to the standard equipment of armies. While enthusiasts are heralding the advent of universal peace, the silent, non-sentimental sentinels of warfare are eagerly acquiring every device and invention that may give them an advantage in the next clash of arms perhaps the worlds greatest war!...

Sheldon Solomon is a professor of psychology at Skidmore College. He has spent the last few decades studying how thoughts of death can powerfully influence our decisions and judgments. He and Jonah Lehrer, the editor of Mind Matters, discuss what this phenomenon can teach us about the upcoming election. LEHRER: What is terror management theory? SOLOMON: Terror management theory (TMT) is derived from cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s efforts to explain the motivational underpinnings of human behavior....

Just past the confines of Earth’s geomagnetic field, deep space gets downright nasty. There, cosmic radiation from solar flares, supernovae, supermassive black holes and other powerful astrophysical phenomena could spark cancer, vision loss and impaired thinking in future astronauts voyaging to the moon, Mars or beyond. But a new NASA-funded study published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity makes a bold claim: When exposed to cosmic radiation, women may have an innate biological capacity to stave off associated cognitive declines....

Google’s mystery barge in San Francisco Bay. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET) Google has finally acknowledged that it is behind the mystery barge in San Francisco Bay, and that, as has been reported, it is likely to use the structure it’s building there to showcase its technology. CNET was first to report the Google connection to the odd edifice, covered in scaffolding and dark netting, that sits on top of a barge in San Francisco Bay....