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A beautiful blue flaw in a gem-quality diamond from Botswana is actually a tiny fragment of Earth’s deep interior—and it suggests our planet’s mantle contains oceans’ worth of water. The flaw, technically called an inclusion, looks like a fish eye: a deep blue center surrounded by a white haze. But it’s really a pocket of the mineral ringwoodite from 660 kilometers down, at the boundary between the upper and lower mantle....

Losing a loved one is always painful, but for most people time eventually heals the wounds. For about 10 to 20 percent of the bereaved, however, accepting and getting over a loss remains extremely difficult, even years later. Now researchers have come a step closer to elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of this condition called complicated grief (CG). An August 15 functional MRI study in NeuroImage shows that in CG patients reminders of the deceased activate a brain area associated with reward processing, pleasure and addiction....

The treatment of laboratory animals at one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious universities came under severe criticism today from an independent review set up in the wake of allegations of malpractice. Imperial College London’s animal-research facilities are understaffed, under-resourced and operating without adequate systems for training, supervision, management and ethical review, according to the report released December 10. “Across a whole number of areas there needs to be significant improvement,” says Steve Brown, director of the Medical Research Council Mammalian Genetics Unit in Harwell, UK, and the man appointed to chair the review....

Because I find it hard to relate to something as small as the structure of the human genome, I like to imagine it scaled up a millionfold. At this size, each DNA molecule—a chromosome—is as wide as a ramen noodle. Laid end to end, all 46 of the scaled-up chromosomes that compose a cell’s genome would stretch from New York to Kansas City, although they instead fold up to fit inside a structure the size of a house—the cell nucleus....

A woman we’ll call Sally lived in a small town deep in the heart of Texas hill country, a long, rippled patch of land wet with creeks and big oaks growing right out of the water. It’s mostly middle class, mostly Christian, the sort of place where you don’t have to lock your doors because you already know all your nosy neighbors. She lived with her husband and her kids were grown....

A searing heat wave was pushing California’s electric grid to the brink of blacking out earlier this month when, in a frantic bid to keep the lights on, officials implored electric car owners to wait a few hours before plugging in their vehicles. That request from the California Independent System Operator came just days after state regulators approved a plan to ban sales of new gas cars in 2035. Conservatives jumped on the apparent dissonance as a sign of Democratic policy failures and the pitfalls of transportation electrification....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Giant beavers the size of black bears once roamed the lakes and wetlands of North America. Fortunately for cottage-goers, these mega-rodents died out at the end of the last ice age. Now extinct, the giant beaver was once a highly successful species. Scientists have found itsfossil remains at sites from FloridatoAlaska and the Yukon....

An asteroid the size of a school bus buzzed by Earth today (Sept. 7) in an exceptionally close—but safe—flyby. Scientists discovered the object on Monday, just two days before its encounter with Earth. The newfound asteroid, named 2016 RB1, is between 13 and 46 feet (4 to 14 meters) wide. The space rock made its closest approach to Earth at 1:28 p.m. EDT (1728 UTC). According to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, RB1 zoomed past Earth at a relative speed of over 18,000 mph (8....

By Environment Correspondent Alister DoyleOSLO (Reuters) - A thaw of Arctic ice and snow is linked to worsening summer heatwaves and downpours thousands of miles south in Europe, the United States and other areas, underlying the scale of the threat posed by global warming, scientists said on Sunday.Their report, which was dismissed as inconclusive by some other experts, warned of increasingly extreme weather across “much of North America and Eurasia where billions of people will be affected”....

BRISBANE, Australia – Environmental groups sounded the alarm when the government of the northeastern state of Queensland announced it would stop funding a zero-emissions power plant. In those circles, rumors had been floating for weeks before the Dec. 19 decision that Queensland’s budget deficit-conscious premier and the coal companies were ready to pull the plug on the $4 billion ZeroGen plant. “Unless you commercialize it, it’s not going to contribute,” Kellie Caught of the World Wildlife Fund-Australia said about carbon capture technology needed to reduce coal plant emissions....

UNITED NATIONS – The world’s leading climate change research organization issued a report yesterday that has renewable energy boosters cheering, as it foresees substantial growth in alternative energy sources over the next 40 years. But the conclusions reached by that report’s authors are colored with multiple caveats and uncertainties not captured by initial media coverage. And what the group chooses to identify as “renewable energy” incorporates one controversial practice while leaving others out....

How do we make real progress on racism? What does it take to face our own biases? How might we actually understand the perspectives and experiences of people whose sex, gender or ethnicity is different from our own? “We need to see people other than ourselves in order to empathize. If we don’t live around others, we do ourselves and our society damage—because our ability to relate becomes impaired,” says Charles Blow, a New York Times columnist and author....

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). As the sun dims over the Pacific’s glassy Solomon Sea, Guillaume Iwankow dons his diving gear and descends from the research schooner Tara into a motorized dinghy. His goal is to bring back a core, an arm’s-length sample of a coral colony that chronicles decades of its lifetime. About 10 minutes after the dinghy leaves Tara, its motor slows. It’s so shallow here that reef fish dart about just inches from the surface....

Live with a dog, and you have most likely met the “guilty look.” You come home. The plants are knocked over, and soil is tracked all over the floor. The dog is abnormally still and averts its gaze as it thumps its tail slowly. But does the dog feel responsible for the mess and sorry about having disobeyed your rules? That is hard to say. Research to date, including an open-access study published earlier this year, suggests that the answer is no....

Most of us have experienced writer’s block at some point, sitting down to write, paint or compose only to find we can’t get the creative juices flowing. Most frustrating of all, the more effort and thought we put into it, the harder it may become. Now, at least, neuroscientists might have found a clue about why it is so hard to force that creative spark. Researchers at Stanford University recently set out to explore the neural basis of creativity and came up with surprising findings....

The western United States is experiencing its worst drought this century, threatening to kill crops, spark wildfires and harm public health as hot and dry conditions are expected to continue this month. More than 93% of the land in seven Western states is in drought conditions, and nearly 59% of the area is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought—the two worst conditions—according to the latest figures released by the U.S. Drought Monitor....

“You wouldn’t voluntarily do it over and over again,” said Kenneth Catania, a professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of a new study about the electric eels’ shocking behavior. To envision how the eel uses its electric charge, try picturing the critter’s long, thin body as a skinny magnet. Like a magnet, the eel has two ends, or poles. When the animal sends out an electric pulse, most of the charge comes from its head, which Catania calls the “positive pole....

As hurricanes slammed into Texas, then Florida, then Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands last summer, the White House said it wasn’t the right time to talk about climate change. Those types of questions politicized present disasters, officials said. Months later, the Trump administration still hasn’t found a voice to discuss the impacts of rising temperatures. Now the omissions are seen by some observers as overtly political as the administration grapples with historic damages from extreme weather without mentioning greenhouse gases....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Let’s say you’re planning your next party and agonizing over the guest list. To whom should you send invitations? What combination of friends and strangers is the right mix? It turns out mathematicians have been working on a version of this problem for nearly a century. Depending on what you want, the answer can be complicated....

When I told my parents I was going vegetarian in my last year of high school, they thought I was crazy. No one had ever been a vegetarian in my family. In fact, my parents had never even known a vegetarian. Needless to say, they didn’t quite take me seriously initially. With my mom being the chef of the household, despite my continued veggie persistence, I’d often appallingly discover a piece of meat or chicken in my food, which brought a very speedy end to mealtimes for me....