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Most people now acknowledge that the mind and body are inextricably linked, and problems in one are often related to problems in the other. Yet some bodily complaints seem so physically based that it is hard to imagine that any kind of talk therapy could touch them. The six disorders below seem to be such cases—but every one of them can be treated with psychotherapy, according to recent studies. So consider all your options before reaching for a pill....

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - The world has finally reached “the beginning of the end” of the AIDS pandemic that has infected and killed millions in the past 30 years, according to a leading campaign group fighting HIV. The number of people newly infected with HIV over the last year was lower than the number of HIV-positive people who joined those getting access to the medicines they need to take for life to keep AIDS at bay....

RECENTLY DEVELOPED powerful, yet also delicate and refined, genetic tools can invasively probe nervous systems of animals, far surpassing the safer but much cruder techniques that psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists use to observe the human brain. Now in a remarkable series of experiments, researchers have located a trigger for aggression in mice—providing us with fresh insights into the workings of our human consciousness. You might object that mice and men are not the same and that studying the murine mind is different from studying the human mind....

Hurricane season is drawing to a close, but not before setting a record. Tropical Storm Theta became the 29th named Atlantic storm this week, making 2020 the busiest season on record. And it’s not just the total number of storms that’s remarkable. At least nine storms this year underwent a process known as rapid intensification, quickly gathering strength over a short period of time as they moved across the ocean. According to at least one expert, only 1995 saw more storms rapidly intensify in a single season....

It outweighs everything else in existence, it governs the fate of the Universe and it cannot be explained by known physics. Dark energy is the name physicists use for whatever substance, force or property of space is messing with the Universe, making its expansion accelerate. As yet, we know almost nothing about it, which has allowed theories about it to multiply uncontrolled. But astronomers are training an impressive array of instruments on the problem....

Tumour cells can plug into—and feed off—the brain’s complex network of neurons, according to a trio of studies. This nefarious ability could explain the mysterious behaviour of certain tumours, and point to new ways of treating cancer. The studies, published on 18 September in Nature, describe this startling capability in brain cancers called gliomas, as well as in some breast cancers that spread to the brain. The findings bolster a growing realization among doctors and scientists that the nervous system plays an important role in the growth of cancers, says Michelle Monje, a paediatric neuro-oncologist at Stanford University in California and lead author of one of the studies....

The letters arrived from the San Diego County medical examiner’s office, informing clinicians that one of their patients had died from a prescription drug overdose. These letters appear to have had an impact—prescriptions of addictive painkillers dropped. In a small, randomized trial, researchers showed that this intervention—aimed at making the abstract issue of safe prescribing individually tangible—led to a slight reduction in the amount of opioids these clinicians prescribed. What’s more, prescribers who received the letters doled out fewer of the most powerful doses and appeared to start fewer patients on opioids compared with doctors who did not receive the letters....

Imagine that you are a child again. In this version of your childhood, you arrive at school hungry, tired and anxious. Your mother was not able to pay the rent this month. The cupboards are bare. A car alarm went off late last night, and it fell to you to soothe your baby brother back to sleep. You woke up early to take the bus across town, and by the time the school bell rings, you have so much on your mind that it is difficult to concentrate....

Through most of the last century, Javan hawk eagles (Spizaetus bartelsi) flew unnoticed through the dwindling forests of Indonesia’s principal island of Java. Their prominent head crest and multi-toned plumage didn’t attract attention, bird markets didn’t sell them, nor did zoos have them on display. Then in 1993 the Indonesian government awarded Javan hawk eagles special protected status. That’s when the bird’s fortune turned—for the worse. To celebrate the raptor’s official “National Rare/Precious Animal” designation, the Indonesian government printed the Javan hawk eagle’s likeness on postage stamps and phone books....

The word “galaxy” derives from the Greek for “milky,” but some such celestial systems look more like extremely skim milk. A new array of small telescopes has serendipitously discovered 47 “ultradiffuse” galaxies whose stars are so spread out from one another that they appear ghostly pale. Several of them are as large as our own, but each is much fainter, bearing roughly 1,000th as many stars as the Milky Way. No one knows how such odd galaxies originated....

The mountains in Venus’ Aphrodite Terra region may prompt the strange weather patterns observed in the thick cloud layer near the top of the planet’s insufferable atmosphere, new research shows. With average surface temperatures of 860 degrees Fahrenheit (460 degrees Celsius), Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. Venus’ atmosphere is made up almost completely of carbon dioxide, creating an extreme version of the greenhouse effect that warms Earth....

Summers in Phoenix pose a daily health threat to Leonor Juarez and her family. She and her five children have asthma, and struggle to breathe the ovenlike air that ripples off the sidewalks when they walk their neighborhood’s shadeless streets. The sun beats down on them at uncovered bus stops during the five-hour round-trip to the doctor, leaving them suffering headaches, dehydration and chest pains. “It feels like I’m having a heart attack,” Juarez says....

Before we had kids, my husband and I loved to travel—he proposed to me on a bench in Reykjavik after a road trip across southern Iceland, and we spent our first anniversary jumping into natural freshwater pools on the Mexican Riviera. Our last big trip was more than two years ago, when we attempted to enjoy a small island in the Bahamas with a teething seven-month-old. (D’oh!) Now, as the parents of two young girls, travel mostly seems like more trouble than it’s worth—and the inherent risks we used to accept without thinking, such as the possibility of a plane crash, seem stark now that children are involved....

Peru Scientists declared a Liolaemus lizard the world’s highest-altitude reptile after a population was spotted at 5,400 meters in the Andes. These lizards must endure frigid temperatures, a particular challenge for cold-blooded animals, as well as reduced oxygen and increased ultraviolet radiation. Algeria Analysis suggests a meteorite from the Sahara Desert contains material as old as, or older than, Earth itself. The meteorite holds the oldest-known sample of magma from space and most likely came from a protoplanet forming in the early solar system....

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a plan to send humans to space by 2022, when the nation will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its independence. If successful, India will join Russia, the U.S. and China in the elite club of countries to achieve homegrown human spaceflight. India’s only citizen to travel to space as yet has been Rakesh Sharma, a pilot in the country’s air force who orbited Earth in 1984 as part of the Soviet Union’s space program....

By Roli Srivastava MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India, one of the world’s biggest consumers of antibiotics, has issued new national guidelines on their use as part of a drive to fight the rise of drug-resistant superbugs. Superbugs are seen as a growing threat to modern medicine, with the emergence in the past year of infections resistant to even last-resort antibiotics. In India, antibiotic-resistant neonatal infections claim the lives of 60,000 newborn babies each year, according to the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance paper published in 2016....

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazineNorth Korea may have conducted two covert nuclear weapons tests in 2010, according to a fresh analysis of radioisotope data.The claim has drawn scepticism from some nuclear-weapons experts. But if confirmed, the analysis would double the number of tests the country is known to have conducted and suggest that North Korea is trying to develop powerful warheads for its fledgling nuclear arsenal.It might also explain a bizarre statement issued by North Korea’s state news agency in May 2010, which said that the country had achieved nuclear fusion....

Dear EarthTalk: What are the major environmental issues that our next president, be it Obama or McCain, will have to confront? – Melinda Barnes, via e-mail Global warming is unquestionably the most pressing environmental issue facing whoever ends up in the White House in January 2009. Not only does climate change impact—and in most cases exacerbate—other environmental problems, it has even wider implications for the economy and society at large. Luckily for all of us, both Barack Obama and John McCain are committed to tackling climate change, although their proposed approaches differ in significant ways....

THE PLAYERS: Since the start of the space age, the list of countries, multinational entities and private commercial consortia that have demonstrated an ability to launch satellites into orbit—and thus potentially to shoot one down—has grown long. The chief worry among observers is that any effort by the U.S. to develop orbital weapons would drive the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation and others to join in a costly arms race in space....

Being overweight or obese is linked to a higher risk of dying prematurely than being normal weight and the risk rises sharply as the extra pounds pile on, scientists said on Wednesday. In findings contradicting the “obesity paradox”, which had suggested a possible survival advantage to being overweight, researchers said excess body weight now causes 1 in 5 of all premature deaths in America and 1 in 7 in Europe. “On average, overweight people lose about one year of life expectancy, and moderately obese people lose about three years of life expectancy,” said Emanuele Di Angelantonio from Britain’s University of Cambridge, who co-led the research....