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The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The Earth’s magnetic field, generated some 3,000km below our feet in the liquid iron core, threads through the whole planet and far into space – protecting life and satellites from harmful radiation from the sun. But this shielding effect is far from constant, as the field strength varies significantly in both space and time....

The Food and Drug Administration is under pressure from the Trump administration to approve drugs faster, but researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found that nearly a third of those approved from 2001 through 2010 had major safety issues years after they were widely available to patients. Seventy-one of the 222 drugs approved in the first decade of the millennium were withdrawn, required a “black box” warning on side effects or warranted a safety announcement about new risks to the public, Yale professor Dr....

Distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic has made both physical and social connections a touch more difficult to maintain. For Stanford University graduate student Millie Salvato, being apart from her girlfriend on the opposite coast has proved challenging. Sometimes a text or video call is not enough, and people in Salvato’s situation often long for a way to send a loving caress or comforting squeeze from afar. For a new study detailed in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, she and her colleagues demonstrated a wearable sleeve that can simulate human touch—and convey abstract social messages sent electronically....

As a 16-year-old boy, Albert Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light in the vacuum of space. He mused on that vision for years, turning it over in his mind, asking questions about the relation between himself and the beam. Those mental investigations eventually led him to his special theory of relativity. Such thought experiments, which Einstein referred to by the German term gedankenexperiment, continue to nourish the heart of physics today, especially in the field of quantum mechanics, which he helped to establish....

Human detection and tracking system: Law-enforcement officials are often stuck scrolling through hours of video in an attempt to catch a suspect, an activity that could be sped up with the right software. Unfortunately, current technology cannot reliably track multiple people or sort individuals from a larger group. Even a shadow can confuse programs—its movements might look like a second person. To build systems that work in more crowded environments, co-inventors Ram Nevatia, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California, and Bo Wu, now an engineer at Google, decided to zero in on body parts....

By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazineUS researchers are concerned that revised guidelines that recommend a minimum size for breeding lab rodents’ cages will substantially increase the cost of animal work.The eighth edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, published last year by the US National Academies in Washington DC, is the first to recommend minimum cage sizes for female rats and mice and their litters. The guide recommends 330 square centimetres (51 square inches) of floor space for a single female mouse plus her litter, and 97 square centimetres for each adult mouse weighing more than 25 grams....

It takes large quantities of rocket fuel to power space probes through the cosmos. So much so that many long-range missions, including exploratory voyages to the outer planets and beyond, are typically impractical or too time-consuming to contemplate carrying out using conventional rocket motors. To address the problem, scientists have developed ingenious alternative propulsion systems such as ion-drive technologies that require much less propellant than standard chemical rockets but, nonetheless, travel much faster over time....

Africa is home to some 2,000 languages, nine biomes, 119 terrestrial ecoregions, about 45,000 plant species, 1,100 species of mammals, almost 2,500 bird species, and 950 amphibian species. Most visitors experience only a fraction of that diversity, but 44 travelers will next September board a private jet for a 21-day journey that brings together a continent’s ecosystems and cultures in a single trip. The expedition, which includes six UNESCO World Heritage Sites, will be led by David Tett, a Zimbabwean and the founder of the tour operator, Bushtracks Expeditions....

In picking Tom Price to be secretary of Health and Human Services, Donald Trump has chosen an orthopedic surgeon who in his congressional career, has loyally promoted the interests of the medical profession—its freedom and importantly, its financial interests. A conservative representing Georgia’s 6th District, Price sponsored a 2015 bill that would restrict efforts to reduce doctor payments for medical services. He cosponsored another 2011 bill that would have limited reports used by hospitals and regulators to perform background checks used to screen doctors before hiring them....

Dear EarthTalk: What exactly is the federal government’s Recreational Trails Program, and is it true that it’s on the chopping block?—Randy Caldwell, Lyme, N.H. The Recreational Trails Program (RTP) is a federal assistance program that helps states pay for the development and maintenance of recreational trails and trail-related facilities for both non-motorized and motorized recreational trail uses. The Congressionally mandated program was in jeopardy due to budget cuts, but its backers in Congress announced this past July that RTP would be retained to the tune of $85 million per year as part of the new surface transportation agreement law called MAP-21....

By Julie Steenhuysen U.S. health regulators have cleared the way for a trial of genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida that can reduce mosquito populations, potentially offering a new tool to fight the local spread of Zika and other viruses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that a field trial testing Intrexon Corp’s (XON.N) genetically engineered mosquitoes would not have a significant impact on the environment. The announcement came as Florida officials grapple with the first cases of local Zika transmission in the continental United States....

As I write these words in early February, the nation is watching a measles outbreak caused by parents opting out of vaccines for their children. Meanwhile presidential hopefuls have been making news via their strong pro-choicey opinions, which are somehow about whether to get your kids vaccinated. I was going to pass on commenting, so weary did I become upon hearing the retrograde absurdities that came out of the mouths of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Representative Sean Duffy (R-WI)....

A single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in the infamous psychedelic mushrooms indigenous to Mexico, triggered long-lasting mystical experiences in several dozen middle-aged volunteers enrolled in an unusual study at Johns Hopkins University. Roland Griffiths and his colleagues brought 36 people into the laboratory for an eight-hour session during which they experienced their first psychedelic high. Two thirds of them said that the trip was among the most profound spiritual events in their life, Griffiths reports....

If you’ve ever accidentally brushed your hand against a hot stove, you’ll probably remember immediately clutching the burn with your other hand—an instinct that seems to help relieve the pain. In contrast, we often pull back in fear if someone else tries to touch a wound. Although psychologists have long recognized this distinction, no one properly understood the cognitive mechanisms that allow reflexive self-touch—rather than a stranger’s touch—to soothe pain. A new study published online September in Current Biology suggests that touching an injured area on one’s own body reduces pain by enhancing the brain’s map of the body in a way that touch from another cannot mimic....

By David CyranoskiCloning pioneer Woo Suk Hwang was sentenced to two years in prison at the Seoul Central District Court on 26 October, after being found guilty of embezzlement and bioethical violations but cleared of fraud.Supporters of Hwang, a former professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, were pleased with the sentence, which is suspended for three years and half the length sought by prosecutors. The prosecution plans to appeal....

1969 Lung Support “Respiratory failure is now reversible in a large percentage of cases if proper treatment is provided. Such treatment is available in respiratory intensive-care units: properly equipped hospital facilities directed by a new kind of medical specialist, the intensivist, and manned by teams of trained physicians. The increasing capability of respiratory intensive care is the result of an increasing discourse between respiratory physiologists and physicians who treat patients. Data that have long been available are now being brought to bear through active intervention to preserve the life of critically ill patients....

There are advantages to being smart. People who do well on standardized tests of intelligence—IQ tests—tend to be more successful in the classroom and the workplace. Although the reasons are not fully understood, they also tend to live longer, healthier lives, and are less likely to experience negative life events such as bankruptcy. Now there’s some bad news for people in the right tail of the IQ bell curve. In a study just published in the journal Intelligence, Pitzer College researcher Ruth Karpinski and her colleagues emailed a survey with questions about psychological and physiological disorders to members of Mensa....

The perfect weather day could happen less often in the future. The mild weather most people prefer, sunny with temperatures between 64 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit, will yield to more extreme weather in many parts of the globe, according to a new study published today. The study, published in the journal Climatic Change, found that the global number of mild weather days could decline by up to 13 percent by the end of the century as a result of climate change....

As the world scrambles to contain the spread of COVID-19, many economic activities have ground to a halt, leading to marked reductions in air pollution. And with the skies clearing, researchers are getting an unprecedented chance to help answer one of climate science’s thorniest open questions: the impact of atmospheric aerosols. What they learn could improve predictions of the earth’s climatic future. “We hope that this situation—as tragic as it is—can have a positive side for our field,” says aerosol researcher Nicolas Bellouin of the University of Reading in England....

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three researchers who helped reveal the mechanism by which cells in the body sense and adapt to oxygen availability. William Kaelin, Jr., Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza shared the prize for their work, which has played a critical role in understanding—and ultimately treating—diseases such as anemia and cancer. The scientists will share the prize, worth nine million Swedish kronor ($907,695)....