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In one of the swiftest examples of evolutionary adaptation ever observed, scientists have discovered that male blue moon butterflies (Hypolimnas bolina) on the Samoan island of Savaii developed resistance to the selectively male-killing bacteria Wolbachia within 10 generations that spanned less than a year. An international team of researchers reports in Science today that they found that the number of male butterflies on Savaii jumped from 1 to 39 percent of the island’s butterfly population between 2005 and 2006, thanks to this rapid-fire adaptation....

Cats can be infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and spread it to other cats, but dogs are not really susceptible to the infection, according to researchers in China. The team, at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in China, also concludes that chickens, pigs, and ducks are not likely to catch the virus. Scientists say the findings are interesting, but that cat-owners should not be alarmed just yet. The results are based on lab experiments in which a small number of animals were deliberately infected with high doses of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, and do not represent real-life interactions between people and their pets, says virologist Linda Saif at The Ohio State University in Columbus....

One of the world’s biggest industries—and a leading producer of greenhouse gas emissions—may finally be making moves to combat climate change. The World Cement Association recently held its first-ever global climate change forum, where industry leaders and scientists discussed strategies to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. It will help inform the development of a climate action plan, which the WCA intends to release in September, aimed at outlining pathways for low-carbon cement production....

We invite you to dive in and explore a database of words that appeared prominently in the print history of Scientific American. Below, each year of that history is represented by a single word, which was selected through a text-analysis project that started with all 5,107 issues of the magazine. Words whose relative frequency peaked in each individual year were identified. Among those top contenders, the single noun, verb, adjective or adverb that was used most often was deemed the winner....

On August 18, 2017, a new age in astronomy dawned, appropriately, with a tweet: “New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!” One astronomer had jumped the gun, tweeting ahead of an official announcement by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). The observatory had detected an outburst of gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime, and an orbiting gamma-ray telescope had simultaneously seen electromagnetic radiation emanating from the same region of space....

Dear EarthTalk: What would you recommend as a non-toxic/non-lethal way to keep squirrels, gophers and groundhogs away? —Faye Gillette, Coarsegold, CA Keeping unwanted critters away can be tricky business, and options are somewhat limited. For starters, make sure exterior garbage, recycling and compost containers are shut tight, and pick up and remove any fallen fruit that your apple, pear or plum trees may have discarded. Of course, these measures will go only so far in deterring unwelcome critters, so you may need to employ a repellent or more proactive strategy....

Mark Twain, it is claimed, observed that everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. A modern-day Twain might remark that everybody talks about climate change, but nobody is taking serious action. One big reason is economics. Reducing the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—the major human-based driver of climate change—requires an expensive shift away from coal and oil as our prime sources of energy. Or it requires costly technology to capture CO2 as industry emits it and then store the gas where it will stay put for centuries to come....

Stomach growling, but have no time for a meal? A snack will do. Drowsy and unable to concentrate? A short nap can be reviving when a good night’s rest is unavailable. But what should you do when you are alone and feeling lonely? New psychological research suggests that loneliness can be alleviated by simply turning on your favorite TV show. In the same way that a snack can satiate hunger in lieu of a meal, it seems that watching favorite TV shows can provide the experience of belonging without a true interpersonal interaction....

Last summer people across North America were captivated by one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena: a total solar eclipse. Some traveled thousands of miles to witness the blotting out of the sun’s light, if only for a few moments. When the moon passes in front of our star, we can glimpse a rare sight: the outer atmosphere of the sun. Known as the corona, this shimmering haze encircling our star is the target of NASA’s next space mission....

Originally posted on the Nature news blog Astrophysicist France Anne Cordova has been tapped to head the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which has been run by an acting director since March 2013. President Barack Obama announced the pick on 31 July. If confirmed, Cordova would fill the gap left by Subra Suresh, who announced his resignation in February, after serving less than half of his six-year term leading the US$7 billion agency....

With her knack for fixing household appliances in early childhood, Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, was practically born an engineer. And fortunately, she had a family that nurtured her atypical interest—even when the segregated South made pursuing it almost impossible. With a librarian mother and a physician father, Y.Y. was brought up in a supportive, educated and prosperous Black enclave of Louisville, Ky. Her parents nurtured her knack for engineering....

A shift is afoot in the search for COVID-19 therapies: some researchers are turning their attention towards drugs that could be used to treat mild illness, even in people who are not at high risk of severe disease. Such drugs could fill a yawning gap, says infectious-disease expert Oriol Mitjà at Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain. High-risk people have treatment options, he says, but moderate-risk people who don’t quite qualify for existing treatments are left fearing for their safety....

The first time Fred Gillis noticed something was wrong he was on the ice, holding his hockey stick but somehow unable to shoot the puck. Was middle age catching up with him, or was it something more serious? Over the following months Gillis’s arms continued to weaken. Soon it took two hands to brush his teeth, and he couldn’t lift a plate to clear the dinner table. Gillis was 52 in 2015 when he got the diagnosis he dreaded most: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the deadly motor neuron disorder sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Hurricane Ian strengthened into a major hurricane on Tuesday as it headed for Florida and was on track to bring dangerous storm surge to the coast and flooding rainfall to large parts of the state. Several areas, including around Tampa Bay, were under evacuation orders. After a slow start to the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, Ian formed in ideal conditions, with minimal vertical wind shear, which can tear apart a storm, and warm ocean surface waters providing fuel....

Central America, and especially its Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, are front and center in the Biden administration’s foreign policy priorities. These countries face major challenges in terms of insecurity, corruption, joblessness and vulnerability to natural disasters, which collectively drive mass migration of Central Americans to the United States. As we continue to face a refugee crisis on the U.S. southern border, it is imperative to address the destabilizing threat posed by environmental degradation in the region....

Disaster-struck communities tend to rebuild from floods and violent storms using decisionmaking tools that rely too much on past data, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday. But that won’t be helpful with sea-level rise and other unpredictable climate change-related risks of the future. “The lesson we keep learning is that past data is not keeping up with changing environmental trends, population densities, technology,” said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate during a gathering at the National Academy of Sciences focused on resilience....

Celestial cartography is in for a dramatic upgrade. The Gaia spacecraft, which was launched in late 2013 by the European Space Agency, is on a mission to chart the heavens in unprecedented detail. By the end of its five-year-long run it will pinpoint the positions of one billion stars on the sky with an uncertainty as small as five micro–arc seconds—roughly twice the size of a quarter sitting on the moon as seen from Earth—hundreds of times better than today’s best catalogue....

Have you heard the news? Brain training is a scam: overhyped and understudied—a waste of time worse than Angry Birds. That, at least, is the gist of news reports that ran in 2016, when the country’s best-known brain-training company, Lumosity, was fined $2 million by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for making exaggerated claims in its advertisements. The FTC action came 15 months after the release of a statement from more than 70 neuroscientists who said they objected to unsubstantiated claims from the burgeoning brain-game industry....

In the fictional universe of Star Trek characters use a medical tricorder to scan ailing individuals from any species to figure out what’s making them sick. We’re not quite there yet, but 21st-century bioengineers have developed a machine that can identify about 1,000 of the most common disease-causing bacteria, viruses and fungi within a few hours of taking a patient’s blood sample. The technology is based on rapidly determining the genetic fingerprints of the pathogens and comparing them against a reference database....

It was a good night for abortion rights at the ballot box. Five states had abortion measures on their ballots in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Michigan, California and Vermont all voted to pass ballot measures that protect abortion rights in their constitutions, ensuring that the procedure remains legal in those states. Montana voters rejected a ballot measure that would have weakened such rights, and even in Kentucky—where abortion is currently illegal—citizens voted down a measure that would have further solidified the ban....