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In our psychological backpack, we all carry around beliefs that shape how we move through our days. They may be about the world, with positive beliefs like “People are generally trustworthy” or not-so-positive ones like “Life isn’t fair.” We also carry around beliefs about the future. Again, they may be good, like “Things usually work out for me” or not so much, like “Things will never get better.” But the heaviest weight in our backpack is the beliefs about ourselves....

You probably think you’re doing everything you can to stay healthy: you get lots of sleep, exercise regularly and try to avoid fried foods. But you may be forgetting one important thing. Relax! Stress has a bigger impact on your health than you might realize, according to research presented yesterday at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association in Boston. Ohio State University psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her partner, Ronald Glaser, an OSU virologist and immunologist, have spent 20-odd years researching how stress affects the immune system, and they have made some startling discoveries....

Centuries after the search began for the fundamental constituents that make up all the complexity and beauty of the everyday world, we have an astonishingly simple answer–it takes just six particles: the electron, the up and the down quarks, the gluon, the photon and the Higgs boson. Eleven additional particles suffice to describe all the esoteric phenomena studied by particle physicists [see box at right]. This is not speculation akin to the ancient Greeks’ four elements of earth, air, water and fire....

Back in March the press went crazy for Martin A. Nowak’s study on the value of punishment. A Harvard University mathematician and biologist, Nowak had signed up some 100 students to play a computer game in which they used dimes to punish and reward one another. The popular belief was that costly punishment would promote cooperation between two equals, but Nowak and his colleagues proved the theory wrong. Instead they found that punishment often triggers a spiral of retaliation, making it detrimental and destructive rather than beneficial....

Timothy Doran’s 11-year-old daughter is allergic to eggs. And like about 2% of children worldwide who share the condition, she is unable to receive many routine vaccinations because they are produced using chicken eggs. Doran, a molecular biologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Geelong, Australia, thinks that he could solve this problem using the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9. Most egg allergies are caused by one of just four proteins in the white, and when Doran’s colleagues altered the gene that encodes one of these in bacteria, the resulting protein no longer triggered a reaction in blood serum from people who were known to be allergic to it....

Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease that is expected to kill 600 people. Government officials have proposed two alternative programs to combat the disease. Under program A, 200 people will be saved. Under B, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that nobody will. Confronted by this choice, 72 percent of people choose A, preferring to save 200 people for certain rather than risking saving no one....

It may seem incredible that a substance can be both nourishing and lethal. But that’s the case in the explosion at the fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, which witnesses likened to a nuclear blast. The substance that killed up to 15 people, injured 180 and wrecked the buildings in a five-block radius is the same stuff that makes the beans and barley grow. But not all fertilizers are equally dangerous....

As sea levels rise along U.S. coasts, it may soon get easier for people and local governments to obtain federal permits to build what are known as “living shorelines,” natural or nature-based structures designed to protect communities and infrastructure from extreme storms and flooding even as they protect habitat. The Army Corps of Engineers is considering a new category to its nationwide permits that would allow speedier approval of living shorelines, which include wetlands with sea and marsh grasses, sand dunes, mangroves, and coral reefs....

1971 Antievolution Evolves “In recent months the teaching of evolution has come under attack in a number of states. The revival of fundamentalism in biology takes a somewhat new form: the emphasis is on opposition to current theories of the origin of life and the diversity of species not by theologians but by scientists. The movement is led by the Creation Research Society, whose members have appeared before state boards of education and textbook committees in California, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee....

Evolutionary biologists have long wondered why the eardrum—the membrane that relays sound waves to the inner ear—looks in humans and other mammals remarkably like the one in reptiles and birds. Did the membrane and therefore the ability to hear in these groups evolve from a common ancestor? Or did the auditory systems evolve independently to perform the same function, a phenomenon called convergent evolution? A recent set of experiments performed at the University of Tokyo and the RIKEN Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory in Japan resolves the issue....

Humanity generates about 16.3 zettabytes (one trillion gigabytes) of data each year. By 2025, that figure could rise tenfold. For doctors, more data could lead to deeper insights on patient populations, which could lead to more effective clinical trials and streamlined drug development. This influx of data, while important for drug development, also poses some big challenges. To be valuable, data needs to be consistent, accurate and clear, but for most clinical teams drawing data from different sources and systems, these are rare commodities....

It sounded like a miracle of science and convenience: swab your cheek and drop the saliva sample in the mailbox and GeneLink Biosciences, a personal genetics company, would analyze your DNA and send back nutritional supplements customized to your personal genome. The regimen, the company promised, was good for diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, insomnia and other ailments. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), however, thought it sounded like false advertising and brought a lawsuit against the company, charging its claims were misleading and not founded in sound science....

Climate change is threatening dozens of Alaskan towns and villages, according to a new study, and local officials said the findings are another sign that additional funds and research are needed to help communities respond to the danger. The study, conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, found that Alaskan communities faced a variety of problems. Of the 187 communities surveyed statewide, 29 faced a high threat from erosion, 38 faced a high threat from flooding and 35 faced a high threat from thawing permafrost....

(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday signed state legislation requiring drug companies to report certain price hikes for prescription medicines in a move that could set a model for other states could follow. The law, which aims to provide more transparency around pharmaceutical and biotech company pricing methods for their medicines, requires drug manufacturers to give a 60-day notice if prices are raised more than 16 percent over a two-year period....

How to Get Through This Election Stop arguing with people about what is true. Instead ask how they are voting The Roots of Vaccine Mistrust It’s not just “antiscience thinking” Truth Activism What 1990s Internet protest movements share with today’s disinformation campaigns Power Play Simulation games help newsrooms prepare for covering a chaotic election season COVID-19 Misinformation That Won’t Go Away From a human-made virus to vaccine conspiracy theories, we rounded up the most insidious false claims about the pandemic...

Ford Motor Co. nearly tripled its electric vehicle sales last month, according to a company report. The auto giant increased its EV and hybrid sales this May by 184% compared to May 2020, marking a record number of 10,364 EVs sold in a given month, the sales report found. The significant increase is due in part to low sales last April and May during the height of the pandemic. Ford had also not started selling its electric Mustang Mach-E, which this year totaled 10,510 sales with 1,945 last month....

Welding bits and pieces from various microbes and the camphor tree into the genetic code of Escherichia coli has allowed scientists to convince the stomach bug to produce hydrocarbons, rather than sickness or more E. coli. The gut microbe can now replicate the molecules, more commonly known as diesel, that burn predominantly in big trucks and other powerful moving machines. “We wanted to make biofuels that could be used directly with existing engines to completely replace fossil fuels,” explains biologist John Love of the University of Exeter in England, who led the research into fuels....

With U.S. commuters spending an estimated 500 million hours per week in their vehicles, carmakers, software companies and content providers are trying to figure out how to take advantage of new high-speed wireless network technologies to help drivers have better Internet access during this often idle time. One idea is to turn the automobiles themselves into conduits for the Internet, giving drivers and passengers access to navigational help, streaming movies, video games and other online services via touch screens embedded into the dashboard and seats....

Secretary of State John Kerry made climate change a central theme of his attendance at a major business conclave in India this weekend as other Obama administration aides worked behind the scenes to tee up clean energy deals that could be announced when President Obama visits the country later this month. Speaking at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit yesterday in Gandhinagar, an event that drew global investors and heads of state as well as U....

The fast-growing economies of China and India are driving a global increase in meat consumption, cancelling out decreases elsewhere, according to a comprehensive study of global food consumption. The work, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, takes a detailed look at what people eat, as well as trends from one country to the next. It is also the first time that researchers have calculated humanity’s trophic level, a metric used in ecology to position species in the food chain....