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Since its discovery in the early 1990s, functional MRI has been the basis for more than 19,000 studies of the living, working brain. The technique allows scientists an unprecedented glimpse of the brain regions that are most active during particular tasks or states of mind, but it does not do so directly: the scans measure blood flow, which seems to increase around neurons that are firing. Neurons are not directly connected to blood vessels, however, so until now the mechanism underlying fMRI’s robust success has been a mystery....

Dawn Higginson thought it was strange when she learned that some diving beetles produce sperm that fuse together at the head like Siamese twins. But when the postdoctoral researcher from the University of Arizona began asking why such conjugate gametes form, things only got even stranger. The sperm of the diving beetle, which gets its name from its ability to swim underwater, occur in many shapes and forms. Whereas a few species make standard tadpole-shaped swimmers, others generate sperm that stack together like traffic cones to form long, many-tailed filaments....

The human gut teems with bacteria. There are 10 microbes in the body for every human cell thanks mainly to the profusion of colonies in the intestines. Yet babies are born without any such germ populations; rather they develop them in fits and starts over time. Now researchers have mapped this development for the first time in 14 California babies, including a set of fraternal twins.Researchers collected an average of 26 stool samples from each baby from their very first bowel movement to subsequent ones, including those following major events such as travel, illness or treatment with an antibiotic....

A federal advisory panel that’s supposed to provide scientific information to the National Flood Insurance Program is entering a five-month work stoppage, even as property losses mount against the backdrop of severe inundation related to climate change. The Technical Mapping Advisory Council, or TMAC, is composed of 20 experts tapped by the FEMA administrator to answer complex questions about flood dynamics and flood risk in areas across the United States that are experiencing higher temperatures....

As coronavirus has swept through the United States, finding the true number of people who have been infected has been stymied due to lack of testing. Now, official counts of coronavirus deaths are being challenged, too. In Colorado, for example, a Republican state legislator has accused the state’s public health department of falsely inflating COVID-19 deaths; in Florida, local media have objected to the State Department of Health’s refusal to release medical examiner data to the public, alleging that the state may be underreporting deaths....

By Ros Krasny and Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline began racing through the U.S. Congress on Wednesday as Democrats and Republicans appeared to be coming together in a challenge of President Barack Obama’s oversight of the project. In a series of rapid developments that unfolded just hours after Congress returned from a seven-week recess, there were indications the measure could pass and be sent to Obama sometime next week....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. As with every World Cup, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar the players will be using a new ball. The last thing competitors want is for the most important piece of equipment in the most important tournament in the world’s most popular sport to behave in unexpected ways, so a lot of work goes into making sure that every new World Cup ball feels familiar to players....

By Natasha Gilbert The rising tide of scientific evidence–and public protest–against mountaintop mining looks set to claim its first major victory. By the end of this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to revoke a permit allowing mining company Arch Coal to extract coal from the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia. This would be the first time a permit for the controversial mining practice, long suspected of causing environmental damage, has been vetoed by the agency....

After a week of intense interest in what Google has been building on barges in the San Francisco Bay and in Maine’s Casco Bay, the mystery may well be over: The tech giant is developing a reconfigurable, invite-only showroom for Google X-related projects and products. According to a report from CBS’ San Francisco affiliate KPIX, Google has been working on the project for more than a year, and the plan is to make the showroom movable and also capable of being taken apart and reassembled as needed....

All but one of the Republican candidates for president have been asked about their views on climate change in New Hampshire. And conservatives are doing the asking. Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions is following candidates around the first primary state to get them on the record, and often video, about rising temperatures and cleaner power. Their answers won’t appear in ads attacking them as science deniers. Instead, the small group asks disarming questions in friendly tones, sometimes with the cooperation of the campaigns....

Editor’s note: This story was originally posted in the August 1999 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long intertwined history of the Nobel Prizes in Scientific American. In 1996 Japan’s Inamori Foundation asked Mario R. Capecchi to review his life and work in an acceptance speech for the prestigious Kyoto Prize. Capecchi dutifully described his pathbreaking research on a precision method for insertion or deletion of genes in mice....

If wind turbines and solar panels are the celebrities of the clean energy revolution, then energy efficiency is its workhorse. U.S. electricity demand has stagnated in recent years, as building codes have become more stringent and more efficient appliances like LED lightbulbs have become commonplace. Americans used less electricity in 2017 than they did a decade earlier. That has helped spur a dramatic decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the engine of U....

Classifying birds by plumage and other anatomical features served scientists well over the centuries, but genetic analyses have opened up a world of detail about avian family ties. An international group of researchers recently developed a tree based on the full genomes of 48 species, representing every major bird lineage—the most thorough genetic study of a large branch on the tree of life to date. The massive effort, with more than 200 collaborators, includes investigations of the emergence and disappearance of teeth, the origin of vocal learning, and the timing of the explosion of bird diversity....

Tomorrow, history and the hopes of the Arab world will hang on the endurance and independence of six engines charged with steering an SUV-sized spacecraft into orbit around Mars. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched that spacecraft, dubbed Hope, in July 2020, lofting its first interplanetary mission a little more than a decade after becoming a spacefaring nation at all. Now, after a smooth seven-month cruise, the UAE is preparing for Hope’s arrival at the Red Planet on Feb....

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. health experts estimate that as many as 270 babies in Puerto Rico may be born with microcephaly caused by Zika infections in their mothers during pregnancy. The estimate is the first to project the potential impact of Zika on Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory located in the Caribbean that has borne the brunt of the outbreak in the United States. Puerto Rico had 10,690 laboratory-confirmed cases of Zika, including 1,035 pregnant women, as of Aug....

Last week, the BepiColombo spacecraft successfully began its seven-year journey to Mercury—only the third-ever mission sent to the planet. The day before, scientists said that NASA’s next Mars rover—intended to be first to gather and return rock samples to Earth—should visit as many places on the red planet as possible. So which of our Solar System’s planets has proved most, and least, popular with space scientists—and why? Over the past few decades, dozens of missions to other planets have been initiated....

Bob Radocy finished screwing a light bulb into a lamp perched on the desk … and the crowd went wild. Radocy, who lost his arm in a car accident several decades ago, had just used a prosthetic device to complete a task at the inaugural Cybathlon, held last weekend at the SWISS Arena in Kloten, Switzerland. The event involved more than 60 teams formed by research institutions and companies competing in six assistive technology categories: brain-computer interface (a device that connects the brain to a computer), functional electrical stimulation bike (a bicycle powered by electrical stimulation of the muscles), arm prosthesis, leg prosthesis, exoskeleton (a powered robotic suit) and wheelchair....

Apple’s policy of requiring its retail store employees to undergo two mandatory bag searches per day has now become grounds for a class action lawsuit. Two former workers from Apple stores in New York and Los Angeles filed a complaint in San Francisco federal court on Thursday regarding this policy. These employees claim that they had to stand in lines up to 30 minutes long every day for store managers to check their bags and ensure they weren’t smuggling home stolen goods....

A number of unusual atmospheric phenomena combined to form the massive “Frankenstorm” that was Superstorm Sandy. While many have said global warming fueled the storm’s strength, it is unclear exactly how it played a role. But scientists are starting to see evidence that warm weather in the Arctic led to conditions that made the hurricane so incredibly powerful. An article in the March issue of Oceanography, authored by scientists from Cornell and Rutgers universities, points to 2012’s unprecedented Arctic sea ice melt as the root cause of the events that transformed a relatively modest storm into a destructive force (ClimateWire, Sept....

Eric Rey pulls a plastic container half full of cooked rice out of his briefcase. The fat, brown grains look like normal rice. They smell like normal rice. When I gingerly raise a few grains to my lips, they even taste like normal rice: soft, chewy and a little bland. I have to stop myself from reaching for a bottle of soy sauce here in the kitchen of Arcadia Biosciences’ offices in Seattle—Rey is the chief executive of the biotechnology company—to add a little salt....