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By Maggie Lu YueyangSYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian firefighters battled massive wildfires in bushland around Sydney on Wednesday, but hot weather that could have caused a catastrophic mega-fire did not materialize, allowing authorities to tell some evacuated residents it was safe to return to home.However, the crisis was far from over with new fires igniting and strong winds fanning blazes in the Blue Mountains, a major commuter area of small towns west of Sydney....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. It is the dry season in western states, which means that large swaths of land are burning or smoldering and are likely to remain that way until the snows arrive. The 2017 wildfire year started earlier and has scorched more acreage than normal. It is also far from over. As wildfire trends worsen, it is increasingly important for communities in fire-prone regions to learn from past blazes and adapt to a more flammable future....

On September 23, 1846, Johann Gottfried Galle, Director of the Berlin Observatory, received a letter that would change the course of astronomical history. It came from a Frenchman, Urbain Le Verrier, who had been studying the motion of Uranus and concluded that its path could not be explained by the known gravitational forces acting on it. Le Verrier suggested the existence of a hitherto unobserved object whose gravitational pull was perturbing Uranus’s orbit in precisely the way required to account for the anomalous observations....

The Democratic debate last night indicated how deeply climate change is coloring the presidential race. The six candidates on stage told voters that it’s the most pressing issue, with a mostly unified voice. It came as polls show that climate change is a top concern among Democratic voters as the nation races toward primary contests beginning with the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. Although moderators disappointed some environmentalists and others by devoting just one round of questions to climate, the candidates sprinkled it into answers all night....

Some 1.6 million people in the U.S. live with limb loss, according to a 2008 study, and that number could more than double by 2050. Modern prostheses enable replacements of limbs lost to injury or disease. But people who lose functionality in an otherwise healthy arm or leg have had few options. A team of surgeons in Vienna, Austria, however, recently developed bionic reconstructions of the hands of 16 people who had lost manual control and sensation because of nerve damage....

Sufferers of tinnitus and other hearing disorders have had virtually no proved treatment options. That’s because the inner ear is one of the most inaccessible places in the human body—a bony, membrane-lined labyrinth measuring only a few cubic millimeters. These tight quarters make surgery all but impossible. “We can operate in the heart, in the brain, even inside the eye—the only place where we can’t operate in a functioning organ is the inner ear,” says Robert Jackler, a Stanford University School of Medicine otologist–neurotologist who specializes in complex ear diseases....

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering introducing new regulations that would require companies to disclose the composition of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), but the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) is warning that such a rule could jeopardise the trade secrets of its members, which include small businesses that manufacture chemicals used in oil and gas exploration. Back in May, EPA sought public comment on what information could be reported and disclosed for fracking chemicals, and said the mechanism for obtaining this information could be regulatory, voluntary, or a combination of both....

A new laser technology could improve the quality of deep-space communication, making it easier for humans to push the boundaries of the final frontier. Much of today’s space communication relies on radio signals. But these diffract and broaden as they travel, as does light or any other electromagnetic wave. A radio beam fired from the moon to Earth “would typically diverge to the size of a continent,” says Peter Andrekson, a photonics researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and co-author of a new study in Light: Science and Applications....

It takes a lot of effort and more than a little bit of luck for researchers like André Raine to get to the remote mountaintops of Kauai, where they’re working to save endangered Hawaiian seabirds from extinction. First you need a helicopter capable of reaching sites more than 4,600 feet above sea level. Then you need exactly the right weather to fly—and the hope that conditions don’t shift, as they frequently do....

The order in which colors are named worldwide appears to be due to how eyes work, suggest computer simulations with virtual people. These findings suggest that wavelengths of color that are easier to see also get names earlier in the evolution of a culture. A common question in philosophy is whether or not we all see the world the same way. One strategy that scientists have for investigating that question is to see what colors get names in different cultures....

A commercial effort to get humans into orbit around Mars in the late 2020s now includes a sleek vehicle to send astronauts down to the surface of the Red Planet. The aerospace company Lockheed Martin late Thursday (Sept. 28) revealed new details for its Mars Base Camp plan, an architecture aimed at building a crewed space station in orbit around the Red Planet that would support long-term exploration at Mars by astronautson 1,000-day missions....

The study’s researchers pin the reason for the lack of rains, as others have, on the absence of the intense rainstorms ushered in by so-called atmospheric rivers, the ribbons of very moist air that can funnel water vapor from the tropics to California during its winter rainy season. Overall, the study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, found that California experiences multi-year dry periods, like the current one, and then periods where rains can vary by 30 percent from year to year....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the status of the hyena in the wild? Though unloved by many, the hyena has always struck me as one of God’s survivors. —Jim Reddoch, Portland, Tex. Among the most intelligent animals on Earth, three species of hyenas still roam in wilder parts of Africa and Asia. Of them, the striped hyena and the brown hyena are most at risk. Both are considered “Near Threatened” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains a “Red List” of at-risk and extinct species around the world....

If a goat and a hippo walk into a watering hole on the savanna, they could end up sharing a lot more than just a drink. Intestinal parasites, transmitted through water and food, can inflict damage ranging from stunted growth to starvation and death. To predict how these worms might spread in places such as central Kenya, where wild and domestic herbivores increasingly mingle, scientists are trying to get a better understanding of which parasites live in which species—and why....

Key Concepts Chemistry Materials Fiber Starch Food science Introduction Have you ever encountered “paper” on your plate—perhaps in the form of thin paper for spring rolls, sushi or cake decorating? Did it make you wonder how this paper relates to the paper you write on? You will find out in this activity! In addition, you can discover the recipe to make the edible paper you like best. Background Paper is made up of plant fibers pressed together into a thin, flexible-but-strong mat....

The 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva was a spectacular vindication of the Standard Model—a framework that describes all known particles and forces in physics. The Higgs, whose existence was first predicted in the 1960s, was the final missing piece of the puzzle. Since then, however, physicists have been stuck. The so-called superpartner particles scientists hoped to find at the LHC—particles whose detection would help solve long-standing problems with the Standard Model—never appeared....

For the next two to three months, passengers randomly selected for additional screening at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport will have the option of a typical pat down by security personnel or a one-minute, full body scan from a new type of x-ray machine that allows screeners to see through clothes. The federal government is testing so-called backscatter x-ray machines there, which can detect potentially threatening objects under a person’s clothes by picking up x-rays scattered by materials....

Two species of sea slugs can pop off their heads and regrow their entire bodies from the noggin down, scientists in Japan recently discovered. This incredible feat of regeneration can be achieved in just a couple of weeks and is absolutely mind-blowing. Most cases of animal regeneration — replacing damaged or lost body parts with an identical replacement — occur when arms, legs or tails are lost to predators and must be regrown....

In years gone by, if colon cancer ran in your family all you could do was wait and worry about whether you might get it, too. Today a genetic test can determine whether you have inherited a greater-than-average risk of the disease and so could benefit from preventive care. The more doctors know about your genes, the better able they are to prevent, treat or cure illnesses. Excitement about such prospects surrounded the start of the Human Genome Project in 1990....

Have you ever heard somebody say that something is light years ahead of its time? Or that some product they’re trying to sell you is light years beyond its competition? Or maybe your kids like to complain in the car that the fun and relaxing family road trip you’re taking isn’t so fun and relaxing because it’s taking light years to arrive at the land-o-fun? I think we’ve pretty much all heard the term “light year” used in one of these ways at least once in our life....