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In the U.S., people eat more protein than they need to. And though it might not be bad for human health, this excess does pose a problem for the country’s waterways. The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests....

The period between 2008 and 2009 saw the largest decrease in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 20 years, according to U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report. While the 6 percent decrease correlates with the constriction of the global economy that followed the financial crisis in 2008, it was not the only reason for the drop, the report says. Advances in technology, efficiency and reuse of scrap industrial material also decreased energy use in key sectors....

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned after a tumultuous 17 months in office. His deputy, Andrew Wheeler, is taking over as acting director. Wheeler is a career consultant, energy lobbyist and political aid. Pres. Donald Trump announced Thursday on Twitter Pruitt would be resigning from the post, making Wheeler the newest chief of the nearly 50-year-old agency. Just a few hours before the announcement the EPA had released a draft rule on coal plants to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan....

The moment of truth for Europe’s interplanetary ambitions arrived this morning at 10:42 a.m. Eastern time, when the Schiaparelli lander entered Mars’s atmosphere to attempt a nail-biting six-minute descent to the surface. After bleeding off speed and altitude in the thin Martian atmosphere with a heat shield, parachutes and rocket thrusters, the kiddie-pool-sized Schiaparelli spacecraft was set to plop down on the surface atop a honeycomb-like cushion, which is similar to a car’s crumple zones and designed to protect the craft’s instruments....

Protective gear has come a long way since the days of medieval armor. But engineers still have trouble shielding joints like elbows and knees, which requires material tough enough to prevent injury but flexible enough to allow motion. Toward this end, researchers are imitating an inconspicuous sea animal whose covering strikes a remarkable balance between protection and flexibility. Certain species of marine mollusks called chitons are encircled by girdles of tough tissue capped with overlapping scales of calcium carbonate, the rigid compound that encases many shellfish....

Justin Birch lost his ability to speak in 2003 as the result of a brain aneurysm, but these days he is such a facile conversationalist he can ask for his favorite dinner—Ruby Tuesday Minis with fries and a raspberry iced tea—as well as harass his opponents after he defeats them at Texas Hold ’em. Of course, Birch, who turns 34 this week, is a polite resident of Cape Coral, Fla., who would never intentionally annoy anyone, but it is nice to have the same speech options as those who can speak on their own....

As a child, Cathryn Nagler broke out in hives when she ate eggs. She reacted to penicillin. Working in labs after college, she developed a severe allergy to mice that caused wheezing, swelling and trouble breathing — twice landing her in the emergency room. Today, Nagler is an immunologist at the University of Chicago and is helping to pioneer an emerging research field: studying how bacteria in the gut can be harnessed to help people with food allergies....

The physics buzz reached a frenzy in the past few days over the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is planning to release what is widely expected to be tantalizing—although not conclusive—evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle hypothesized to be the origin of the mass of all matter. Many physicists have already swung into action, swapping rumors about the contents of the announcement and proposing grand ideas about what those rumors would mean, if true....

As a result of climate change, saltwater is predicted to soon swallow much of a North Carolina swamp forest and its biodiversity. But certain denizens of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge might get a ticket out in time. Some of the lichens that embellish local tree bark there could be carefully plucked and transported to a new habitat under a plan now being developed by a team of lichenologists. The stakes are high for some of these unusual organisms....

As a college professor, I have the privilege of advising young women and men as they make decisions about course selections, major areas of study, and life directions. Like other college students around the country, many of my advisees are searching for content they find interesting and meaningful, for work that is fulfilling and purposeful. Many are eager to “find their passion.” On the surface, these goals seem laudable. Instead of seeking power, status or personal wealth, some students are motivated to discover their interests and uncover the path that excites and drives them....

Why do people have two ears? We can, after all, make sense of sounds quite well with a single ear. One task, however, requires input from both organs: pinpointing the exact direction from which a sound, such as the cry of a baby or the growl of a dog, is emanating. In a process called binaural fusion, the brain compares information received from each ear and then translates the differences into a unified perception of a single sound issuing from a specific region of space....

Genetic-testing firm Myriad Genetics is facing a legal challenge from people who say the company refused to give them access to their own genomic data, in violation of a US government rule on medical records. Although Myriad has now agreed to release the data to those individuals, the patients are pressing ahead with their complaint to the US government. The skirmish is the latest in a long-running war between Myriad and data-sharing advocates, and it could ultimately force the company to provide genetic information that patients could then share with scientists....

By Eric Beech UPPER MARLBORO, Maryland (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday directed federal agencies to develop higher fuel standards for medium-sized and heavy trucks, another step in his efforts to slash oil consumption and carbon emissions blamed for global warming. Obama made the announcement in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, about 20 miles from Washington, at a distribution center for Safeway grocery stores, next to a trucking rig that had been redesigned to increase fuel economy....

Scott Gaudi is tired of the fighting. An astronomer at Ohio State University in Columbus, he specializes in the notoriously fractious field of exoplanet research, in which battles have included bitter fights over data access and epic rifts between teams searching for planets outside our Solar System. On January 4 in Seattle, Washington, Gaudi will take a tentative first step towards corralling this rowdy bunch. As chair of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group, he will try to nudge a roomful of US exoplanet scientists into generating a coherent, specific vision for where the field should go....

The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can’t Count On by Julian Havil Princeton University Press: 2012 ($29.95) The insides of this book are as clever and compelling as the subtitle on the cover. Havil, a retired former master at Winchester College in England, where he taught math for decades, takes readers on a history of irrational numbers—numbers, like √2 or π, whose decimal expansion “is neither finite nor recurring....

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released its decision Friday on banning 19 active ingredients in antibacterial soaps. The ruling, 40 years in the making, caps a decades-long debate over whether these germ-busting chemicals are safe and offer any advantage over ordinary soap. The ban includes the most widely used antiseptic in hand soaps, triclosan—after a large number of studies have fallen short of manufacturers’ claims about its health benefits. “Consumers may think antibacterial washes are more effective at preventing the spread of germs, but we have no scientific evidence that they are any better than plain soap and water,” said Janet Woodcock, M....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Annual property losses from hurricanes and other coastal storms of $35 billion; a decline in crop yields of 14 percent, costing corn and wheat farmers tens of billions of dollars; heat wave-driven demand for electricity costing utility customers up to $12 billion per year. These are among the economic costs that climate change is expected to exact in the United States over the next 25 years, according to a bipartisan report released on Tuesday....

A vaccine that trains the immune system to attack a hormone thought to control appetite has shown promise in preventing weight gain in a small pilot study in rats. If supported by subsequent research, the vaccine could help win the battle of the bulge–the large and growing problem of human obesity. Using a technique first employed to battle drug addiction, chemist Kim Janda at the Scripps Research Institute and his colleagues synthesized a vaccine that would convince a rat’s immune system that ghrelin–a hormone secreted by the stomach in humans and thought to induce hunger–was an invading antigen....

On a recent weeknight, biochemist and postdoctoral researcher Emilia Arturo read to her two children, tucked them into bed, then slipped into her car and drove 15 minutes to the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, arriving just after 10 P.M. In the lab, Arturo prepared grids of viral proteins to better visualize a particular pathogen—a type of arenavirus—and discover how to neutralize it. She did not leave until nearly 4 A....

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The world’s oceans are clogged with plastic debris, but how much of it finds its way into the seas annually? Enough to place the equivalent of five grocery bags full of plastic trash on every foot (30 cm) of every nation’s coastline around the globe. That’s according to scientists who released research on Thursday estimating that a staggering 8 million metric tones of plastic pollution enter the oceans each year from the world’s 192 coastal countries based on 2010 data....