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Intuitively, it makes sense Splatterhouse and Postal 2 would serve as virtual training sessions for teens, encouraging them to act out in ways that mimic game-related violence. But many studies have failed to find a clear connection between violent game play and belligerent behavior, and the controversy over whether the shoot-‘em-up world transfers to real life has persisted for years. A new study published on October 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tries to resolve the controversy by weighing the findings of two dozen studies on the topic....

By Earth standards, Hurricane Irene is a monster storm. But it’s just a baby compared to the massive cyclones of Jupiter and Saturn. Our planet is not the only one in the solar system that boasts huge, hurricane-like storms. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, for example, churn out spinning squalls that can be bigger than the entire Earth. While these storms aren’t fed by warm ocean water the way terrestrial hurricanes are, they’re similar in a lot of ways, scientists say....

You ease open the refrigerator door to take stock after returning to town from your summer home. The situation isn’t so grim after all: there’s that romaine lettuce you bought six months ago, still looking fresh and crisp. A chunk of Parmesan, picked up–what year is this again? And down on the bottom shelf: vegetables of various vintages and, there it is, that nice piece of cooked, shrink-wrapped synthetic chicken. It has been in your refrigerator longer than some of your neckties have been in your closet....

Where do great ideas come from—and how do we recognize their significance when they appear? Danny Hillis, Applied Minds co-founder and a Scientific American adviser, and I were discussing these questions recently as we prepared for a talk in late October at the Compass Summit (compass-summit.com). “Ideas are a product of society,” an emergent phenomenon, Hillis told me, “which are almost inevitable.” That’s why, he said, our admiration for individuals who have come up with such ideas is “almost giving too much credit....

We may be one step closer to cracking the Mars methane mystery. NASA’s Curiosity rover mission recently determined that background levels of methane in Mars’ atmosphere cycle seasonally, peaking in the northern summer. The six-wheeled robot has also detected two surges to date of the gas inside the Red Planet’s 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater—once in June 2013, and then again in late 2013 through early 2014. These finds have intrigued astrobiologists, because methane is a possible biosignature....

MAUNA LOA, Hawaii A crew of six “astronauts” returned to Earth Sunday (Aug. 28), after a yearlong mock mission to Mars. At about 9 a.m. HDT (3 p.m. EDT, 1900 GMT), on the barren slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano, the six crewmembers emerged from the domed white habitat they’ve called home for the last 12 months. The crew had no physical contact with anyone but each other, and had limited communication with friends, family and the outside world....

On 6 September, NASA plans to send a vacuum cleaner to the Moon. Called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), the orbiter will collect dust and gas molecules to figure out what floats above the Moon and how it got there. “These mysteries have not really been addressed since the Apollo missions,” says Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California....

Every year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) send a series of surveys to students and researchers around the country. The surveys are used to monitor changing demographics and track levels of financial support for scientific research, and filling them out is required for anyone who receives NSF funding. There are limited gender options in these surveys: male, female and, on some surveys, “do not wish to disclose....

By Joseph Milton Orangutans can now be added to the list of species that have had their genomes sequenced, offering conservationists a wealth of data in their efforts to save the endangered great ape. A group of researchers in the United States and Europe has published a draft of the genome of a captive orangutan called Susie, and less complete copies from ten wild individuals.“We’ve developed a resource that could allow conservationists to prioritize populations for saving based on genetic diversity,” says Devin Locke at the Genome Center at Washington University in St Louis, Mo....

The placenta that supports a fetus for nine months is thrown away after birth, but its influence on health lasts a lifetime. Now, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is launching a major effort to unlock the mysteries of this poorly understood organ. The US$41.5-million Human Placenta Project (HPP), announced on February 26, seeks to fund the development of new technologies to help researchers to monitor the placenta in real time....

A quantum effect named after an ancient Greek puzzle has been observed in diamond, paving the way for the use of diamond crystals in quantum computer chips. The quantum Zeno effect gets its name from the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, who lived in the fifth century bc and suggested that if the position of a flying arrow is well-defined for a moment of time, then it makes no progress in that moment, and so can never reach its destination....

Comets are pristine remnants left over from the solar system’s formation 4.6 billion years ago, rather than younger fragments created by collisions between larger bodies, a new study suggests. The finding could lead to a better understanding of how the solar system took shape and evolved, researchers said. “Comets really are the treasure troves of the solar system,” Matt Taylor, project scientist for the European Space Agency’s comet-hunting Rosetta mission, said in a statement....

NEW YORK—There are signs that the federal stimulus might be pumping a little life into the alternative-energy industry. Financiers and law firms specializing in renewable energy say they see growing interest in reviving moribund projects and breaking ground on new deals. And while big banks that have braced the industry’s backbone are still on the fence, some hedge funds and private equity and venture capital firms are cautiously looking to take advantage of stimulus provisions that temporarily eliminate the need for tax equity financing, which has long been a mainstay for renewable energy projects....

How much can one simple number tell you about your health? A growing body of research over the past few years has highlighted the shortcomings of the body mass index (BMI), a basic measure of rotundity, as a predictor of well-being. The latest—and in some ways most comprehensive—of these reports appeared in August in the journal Science. The BMI formula, developed in the 1800s by a Belgian statistician and sociologist, divides a person’s weight, in kilograms, by the square of his or her height, in meters....

In Harry Potter, the young wizard is given a piece of parchment called the Marauder’s map on which is a detailed layout of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The magical map reveals the movements of people (and ghosts) through the school with evanescing ink footsteps. In the hippocampus—a small horseshoe-shaped area of mammalian brains—there is a kind of Marauder’s map, which keeps track of other individuals’ movements. Two new studies published last week in Science show the hippocampus is not only responsible for figuring out an animal’s own position in space—something previously known—but also that of others....

Meera Yadav gave birth to her first baby in 2013, when she was a 23-year-old living in a slum in Mumbai, India, with her husband’s family. She was filled with joy and hopes for a bright future. But four months later she began having fevers and coughing up blood. Yadav’s husband took her to a private hospital, where a doctor prescribed blood tests, a chest x-ray and a sputum test. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a disease at least 9,000 years old that has likely killed more people than any other plague—as many as one billion in the past 200 years....

Guns, many people believe, protect us from harm and crime. Moreover, guns themselves are protected: There is a clause in the U.S. Constitution that is often interpreted as a right to bear arms; there is a powerful gun lob-by that takes aim at any attempt to restrict firearm use; there are hunters who enjoy having weapons; and there are politicians who fight for more and easier gun ownership. Despite epidemics of shootings, including massacres of schoolchildren, many think the good in guns outweighs the danger....

Being a control freak isn’t all bad. Indeed, if you’re a control freak, you’re probably super competent and super efficient. You have high standards. You’re a go-getter. You get things done right the first time. Plus, when things are spiraling, a little extra control can be healthy coping. If you’ve lost your job, strict structure and discipline around finding another one is good. If your child is seriously ill, knowing every inch of her medical chart is a natural reaction....

Even the infrequent flier might have noticed that when the flight attendant comes around collecting passenger detritus, all the empty cans, cups, bottles, newspapers and napkins usually end up in the same garbage bag. The U.S. airline industry discards enough aluminum cans every year to build nearly 58 Boeing 747s and enough paper to fill a football field–size hole 230 feet deep—that’s 4,250 tons of aluminum and 72,250 tons of paper....

BEIJING (Reuters) - Choking smog all but shut down one of northeastern China’s largest cities on Monday, forcing schools to suspended classes, snarling traffic and closing the airport, in the country’s first major air pollution crisis of the winter.An index measuring PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), reached a reading of 1,000 in some parts of Harbin, the gritty capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province and home to some 11 million people....