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Giggling, sneaky, carrion-scavenging—and good for public health? Hyenas around the Ethiopian city of Mekelle often dine on livestock carcasses. In the process, a new study suggests, they may prevent infections of anthrax and bovine tuberculosis in nearby humans and animals. More than 300,000 people live in Mekelle, along with more than 100,000 head of livestock, according to the study authors. When residents toss dead chickens, donkeys or cattle into the city’s dump, spotted hyenas come calling....

If Democrats win the keys to the governors’ mansions in several states today, they could defy President Trump by adopting California’s stricter tailpipe pollution rules for cars. Thirty-six states are set to elect governors today, and 23 of those seats are currently held by Republicans (E&E Daily, Nov. 5). If Democrats prevail in a handful of states—including Illinois and New Mexico—they could look to thwart the Trump administration’s rollback of Obama-era clean car standards....

When you think of this morning’s breakfast table, what exactly appears in your mind’s eye? How sharp is the image? Do you “see” the colorful bits of cereal floating in the bowl, the glinting steel spoon on the napkin, the half-full coffee mug—or do you just “know” they are there? More than a century ago Francis Galton, the famous anthropologist and statistician, asked numerous colleagues and friends to recall their breakfast spreads and was startled by how varied the answers were....

In the western Pacific Ocean lies the tiny isle of Minami-tori-shima, the easternmost territory of Japan. The triangular speck covers only one square mile, and due to an odd wall-like perimeter, most of the island is strangely below sea level. There’s not much on it aside from an airstrip and a Japanese weather station. The nearest land is over 1,000 kilometers away. Yet in spite of its inauspicious qualities, the island is the key to something extraordinary: a treasure trove of rare earth elements....

A bizarre medical mystery can be added to the list of growing concerns about opioid use in the U.S. Since 2012 more than a dozen illicit drug users have shown up in hospitals across eastern Massachusetts with inexplicable amnesia. In some cases the patients’ memory difficulties had persisted for more than a year. Yet this bewildering condition does not appear to be the result of a simple case of tainted goods: The drug users do not appear to have used the same batch of drugs—or even the same type of substance....

The long-term future envisioned by nanomedicine researchers includes incredibly tiny therapeutic agents that smartly navigate under their own power to a specific target—and only that target—anywhere in the body. On arrival, these self-guided machines may act in any number of ways—from delivering a medicinal payload to providing real-time updates on the status of their disease-fighting progress. Then, having achieved their mission, they will safely biodegrade, leaving little or no trace behind....

By Eugenie Samuel ReichNASA will play a leading part in protecting the United States and the world from the threat of a dangerous asteroid strike, according to letters sent by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), to Congressional committee leaders on Friday.Holdren’s letters to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Science and Technology assign responsibilities to the US space agency that go beyond its 2005 Congressional mandate to detect and track 90% of potentially hazardous asteroids with a diameter greater than 140 metres....

Humans have a natural aversion to those who are ill. When we see others who seem under the weather, we experience a powerful emotional response—disgust—and do our best to avoid those who might be contagious. Now a study shows that seeing sick people can even prompt changes in the immune system. Researchers at the University of British Columbia showed subjects one of two different slide shows—either a depiction of people brandishing guns or images of individuals who were obviously ailing....

Strong winds fractured a sheet of melting ice near Barrow, Alaska, one April afternoon, cutting a three-man whaling crew adrift in the Arctic Ocean. A boat had to be dispatched to rescue them, and according to local observers, the narrowly averted tragedy wasn’t a surprise. “One captain predicted this to happen, so perhaps more experienced whalers are adapting to the unpredictability of young sea ice and avoiding traveling during high winds,” concluded a report posted after the event to the Local Environmental Observer (LEO) Network....

People with Parkinson’s disease may show hints of motor difficulty years before an official diagnosis, but current methods for detecting early symptoms require clinic visits and highly trained personnel. Three recent studies, however, suggest that diagnosis could be as simple as walking, talking and typing. Tests of activities such as these might eventually enable early intervention, which will be crucial for halting progression of the neurodegenerative condition if a cure becomes available....

T. rex may have had lips. Yes, you read that right. Lips. Robert Reisz, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto, is challenging the long-standing image of meat-eating theropod dinosaurs such as T. rex. Specifically, Reisz suggests that theropods’ teeth were not bared all the time, extending outside their mouths and fully visible whether their jaws were open or closed. Rather, these teeth were kept hidden, covered by scaly lips, he said in a presentation May 20 at the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s annual meeting in Ontario....

We’ve all been there: alone in the elevator with your boss, walking into a room and watching all the heads swivel toward you, getting introduced to your friend’s friends and then…what? We feel the heat start to rise, the self-consciousness start to fold in, the imagined judgment start to creep up. It’s social anxiety, it’s universal, but guess what? It’s also changeable. This week we’ll get right into it with the three best social anxiety hacks I’ve ever come across....

Dominion Resources Inc.’s Virginia subsidiary plans to install 46,500 “smart meters” in Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County by the end of the year – the first of 13 electricity conservation projects slated for the state, company executives announced today. Dominion Virginia Power has already installed half of the SmartGrid Charlottesville project’s meters, which will enable commercial and residential building occupants to track and adjust their electricity consumption in real time. Dominion, in turn, would have the ability to stop and start electricity service and read meters remotely....

From 1997 to 2009, Australia faced the worst drought in the country’s recorded history. In Melbourne, a city of 4.3 million people located in southeastern Australia, water levels dropped to an all-time low capacity of 25.6 percent before the drought eased. Despite the dire situation, the city reduced water demand per capita by almost 50 percent by implementing a slew of policies and programs. The actions taken in Melbourne can be used as a road map for water-stressed places around the world, including California, according to research published this week by American and Australian researchers in the journal WIREs Water....

On New Year’s Eve in 2015 local and federal agents arrested a 26-year-old man in Rochester, N.Y., for planning to attack people at random later that night using knives and a machete. Just before his capture Emanuel L. Lutchman had made a video—to be posted to social media following the attack—in which he pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Lutchman would later say a key source of inspiration for his plot came from similar videos, posted and shared across social media and Web sites in support of the Islamic State and “violent jihad....

Joan Rivers once quipped, “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they’ll donate my body to Tupperware.” And if your breasts hang so low you can tuck them into your bikini bottom, or your nose rivals the neighborhood snowman’s, you may have considered cosmetic surgery, too. Cosmetic surgery is by definition not medically necessary and is done simply to enhance your appearance. It’s different than reconstructive plastic surgery for, say, burn survivors, kids with a cleft lip or palate, or women who have undergone a mastectomy....

1968 The Politics of Riots “A view of the U.S. urban riots of the past four years as a ‘pre-political’ form of collective action rather than a series of senseless outbreaks of blind rage is beginning to emerge among social scientists. While there is no consensus among investigators, all of whom agree that the riots have varied and complex origins, there is general emphasis on the idea that the disorders represent more than a Negro protest, more than a sudden reaction to years of deprivation....

Since early January, medical students across the U.S. have joined physicians, surgeons, nurses and hospital employees in vaccination rollouts. When Trump’s CDC released the phase 1A guideline to vaccinate health care workers first (along with long-term care residents), patient-centered goals were not a factor in the decision. States were left to decide if, for example, COVID-19-facing health care workers, or providers who see patients in person, or simply all health care workers, should be prioritized....

Far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, a dark and mysterious expanse of space tantalizes astronomers. Here, as many as trillions of comets are thought to swarm, hurled to their present locale by Jupiter or other planets billions of years ago. They form a giant sphere known as the Oort cloud that envelops the solar system and stretches out to perhaps a couple of light-years from the sun. No one really knows just how many comets exist in the Oort cloud or its true extent because so little illuminating sunlight reaches that remote region....

The northern white rhinoceros is a species waiting for extinction. Its three remaining individuals, kept in a well-guarded Kenyan conservation park, cannot breed naturally. A 15-year-old female named Fatu could be the last of a creature that once roamed central African savannahs by the thousands. In a last-gasp effort to avert that scenario, researchers this week unveiled the details of an audacious plan to save the northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), by transforming cells from living rhinos and from frozen storage into sperm and egg cells, and then using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to create embryos and revitalize the population....