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An outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis, at a Florida preschool in which nearly all the students had been fully vaccinated against the disease, raises new concerns about the vaccine’s effectiveness, a new report suggests. During a 5-month period between September 2013 and January 2014, 26 preschoolers, two staff members and 11 family members of the students or staff at the facility in Leon County came down with whooping cough, according to a report of the outbreak published today (Jan....

It was in 1997 on the 35th floor of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper. Chess master Garry Kasparov ambled off stage in disbelief, arms up in defeat, having just lost to a computer. The famed dethroning of the reigning chess world champion by IBM’s Deep Blue computer signaled a brave new world of computer intelligence—of machines overtaking humanity. Over 20 years on artificial intelligence has barreled ahead. Whereas Deep Blue took down Kasparov via sheer computing power, newer computer technologies actually learn and deduce solutions on their own....

Marine ecologist David Johnston of Duke University and his colleagues have taken a more Wikipedia-like approach. Their app, Cachalot, is available for free on the iPad and was created with the help of volunteers: marine scientists wrote it without charge from lecture notes, a computer science class designed it, and institutions, including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, donated images and video. The project grew out of a class of Johnston’s that focuses on large marine animals such as dolphins, turtles, seals and giant tube worms....

By Bill Berkrot (Reuters) - An experimental drug from Biogen Idec became the first Alzheimer’s treatment to significantly slow cognitive decline and reduce brain amyloid plaque in patients with early and mild forms of the disease, according to a small study likely to reignite hopes of a treatment. Alzheimer’s is expected to strike as many as 75 million people worldwide by 2030 without effective treatments, likely costing billions of dollars year in care....

As any pet owner will tell you, humans aren’t the only animals with personalities. And it isn’t just dogs and cats. In recent years scientists have found that members of many species, from hermit crabs to rats to fish, have unique dispositions, demonstrating consistent behavioral differences over time and across varying situations. But how do social situations affect individual personalities? University of Bristol biologist Christos C. Ioannou and his colleagues sought to find out by turning to a small fish called the three-spined stickleback, which inhabits brackish coastal waters throughout the Northern Hemisphere....

Kids diagnosed with autism often struggle with making eye contact as well as recognizing emotions and social cues exchanged with other people. A handful of tech entrepreneurs hope Google Glass could become a tool to help these children better identify conversational nuances in real time—and one such entrepreneur received a vote of confidence in his work Tuesday, taking home the $15,000 “Cure it!” 2016 Lemelson–MIT Student Prize, which rewards technology-based health care inventions....

Back in 1986 South African biologist Rodney Jackson and his now wife Darla Hillard published three “self-portraits” that would shift the course of conservation. Jackson and Hillard got these images by hiding a camera—equipped with a six-volt battery, flash and pressure pad—in a gorge in Nepal known to be frequented by snow leopards. It took 561 nights to capture three photographs of a species few people had ever set eyes on....

LONDON – The world is far behind on delivering the low-carbon energy it needs, and unless urgent action is taken, calamitous climate change is certain, the International Energy Agency told a meeting yesterday of energy ministers whose countries account for 80 percent of global energy demand. An executive of the world energy watchdog said that renewable power was on track to stop the planet from tipping into the climatic unknown and that industry and transportation had made some progress but had significant room for improvement....

In a world without cooking, we would have to spend half our days chewing raw food, much as the chimpanzee does. Cooking not only makes food more delicious, it also softens food and breaks starches and proteins into more digestible molecules, allowing us to enjoy our meals more readily and to draw more nutrition from them. According to Harvard University biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, cooking’s biggest payoff is that it leaves us with more energy and time to devote to other things—such as fueling bigger brains, forming social relationships and creating divisions of labor....

Bombed. James Bombed. That slight revision to Secret Agent 007’s famous self-introduction may be in order. A study of James Bond’s personal habits, as described in the original series of books by Ian Fleming, finds that Bond drank a lot—way more than is safe. He had a license to kill the entire bottle. In fact, Bond imbibed so much alcohol that he would be at high risk for “malignancies, depression, hypertension, and cirrhosis,” according to the report in the BMJ, preabbreviatedly known as the British Medical Journal....

Custom-designed proteins made with the aid of computers could fight chemical weapons such as nerve gas and help decontaminate toxic-waste sites, scientists say. In recent years, computer design of proteins has made great leaps forward, developing molecules with new kinds of structures and properties. However, few efforts have been made to incorporate metals into these computationally designed molecules. Metals are key, highly reactive parts of many proteins—for instance, the iron in the blood-protein hemoglobin helps it transport oxygen inside our bodies....

Diabetic children that enter the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy, are often full of apprehension about their disease, their diet and the possibility of giving themselves injections. Hospitals have tried introducing pets to calm young patients down. “Pets don’t mind being at hospitals, can reduce patient hospital stays, but are expensive to train and keep, and are not very hygienic,” says Tony Belpaeme of the University of Plymouth in England....

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazineDifficulties in hiring and retaining women scientists and engineers are worrying universities. A study published in the February 17 issue of Science has tracked several thousand science and engineering faculty members over 19 years to unpick where the barriers lie and to provide evidence that can be used to develop policies to tackle the problem. Natasha Gilbert talks to Deborah Kaminski, an engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N....

Unforeseen safety issues routinely emerge after any new medicine or vaccine goes from testing in tens of thousands of volunteers to actual public use on tens of millions. So it was no major surprise when an extremely small percentage of people developed a strange blood clotting problem after receiving either the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine or the AstraZeneca shot, which is widely used outside of the U.S. Rare but dangerous side effects from vaccines can present a tricky dilemma for public health authorities....

The Monterey Shale oil prospecttakes a big hit, but daily extraction rates jump. Word on the streetis that the U.S. Energy Information Administration has reduced how much oil is expected to be technically recoverable from the Monterey Shale in southern Californiaby 96 percent. The new estimate drops the tally from 13.7 billion barrelsto 600 million barrels. At the same time EIA estimates the formation to yield more oil per day. According to the new numbers, the Monterey Shale will produce 57,000 barrels per day between 2010 and 2040 versus 14,000 barrels per day under the old....

By Jeff TollefsonA last-ditch remedy for an ailing planet, or a reckless scheme that could be a greater threat to life on Earth than the problem it aims to solve? Opinions are sharply divided on geoengineering–potential massive interventions in the global climate system, intended to forestall the worst effects of climate change.Last week, participants in the internationalConvention on Biological Diversity (CBD) made their views clear at a meeting in Nagoya, Japan....

By Emma Thomasson BERLIN (Reuters) - Environmental campaign group Greenpeace has found traces of chemicals that can pollute waterways in children’s clothing and shoes made by luxury brands, challenging the sector’s reputation for higher standards than those of mass fashion. In a report issued on Monday just before Milan Fashion Week, Greenpeace said it found the substances in products from Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Versace, Hermes, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs....

Worrying about hackers breaking into your laptop and cell phone is bad enough, but soon your car may be vulnerable, too. With each new model year, the automobile becomes less a collection of mechanical devices and more a sophisticated network of computers linked to one another and to the Internet. Earlier this year a group of researchers proved that a hacker could conceivably use a cell phone to unlock a car’s doors and start its engine remotely, then get behind the wheel and drive away....

When on a hunt for Waldo, that dastardly master of cryptic coloration, you probably try to zero in on the color red, hoping to catch the top of his candy cane–colored hat, or perhaps his distinctive black-rimmed glasses. Similar principles are helpful when trying to find apples in a supermarket or lost keys in our house. Two new studies appearing in this week’s issue of Neuron elucidate the neural mechanisms behind feature-based attention—essentially, the tuning of your visual processing system to specific colors, shapes or motions as a way of formulating an awareness of a scene....

COPENHAGEN—Revolutionizing the energy industry to achieve a target concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere of no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) would require building 17 nuclear power plants a year between now and 2030; 17,000 wind turbines a year; or two hydropower dams on the scale of Three Gorges Dam in China, according to the International Energy Agency. Such an effort would require an investment of $10.5 trillion during the next 20 years but would ultimately yield savings of $8....