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You won’t hear them say it, but some of the world’s most acclaimed astronomers have been frustrated for the better part of two decades. In that time they and their colleagues have found thousands of exoplanets—planets orbiting stars other than our sun—and have statistically surmised that hundreds of billions more await discovery in our galaxy alone. Swat any star hard enough with state-of-the-art instrumentation, it seems, and it will eventually spill out new worlds like candy pouring from a split piñata....

Much of intel’s success as a microprocessor manufacturer over the past four decades has come from the company’s ability to understand and anticipate the future of technology. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore famously asserted in 1965 that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit would double every two years. This assessment, which came to be known as Moore’s Law, proved to be a highly accurate prediction of what his business could accomplish with generous research and development investments and a meticulous product road map....

During the last decade researchers have labored intensively to find new methods to photograph the complex networks of nerve cells that make up the brain and spinal cord, an attempt to overcome the severe limitations of earlier imaging technologies. The emerging science of connectomics, intended to map such connections, will be made possible by deploying these techniques. In 2007 Jeff Lichtman, Joshua Sanes and colleagues at Harvard University came up with one of the most notable examples of the new brain-cell imaging methods....

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self. –Benjamin Franklin A teenage violinist applies to music school based on her notions of her musical virtuosity. A military officer volunteers to command a dangerous mission because he is confident about his bravery, leadership and grace under pressure. A healthy elderly woman decides not to get a flu shot because she feels that it is unlikely she will fall ill....

Warning: this article contains a word that you might find offensive. In fact, some readers might find it so deeply unsettling that they might begin to wonder about the cause of their aversion. What is it about this word that generates such a visceral experience of revulsion and discomfort? Is it something about the particular combination of sounds it forces us to utter? Maybe something about the conceptual associations that it evokes?...

Scientists are developing a practical method to convert water and sunshine into fuel — a key step in someday powering cars with the sun. Experts have long been experimenting with techniques to create solar fuels, which allow all the advantages of conventional fossil fuels along with the environmental benefits of renewable energy. However, this requires a “photoanode” — a sort of catalyst that can set the ball rolling — and researchers have had a tough time identifying them in the past....

Like witnessing a bullet’s supersonic trail through the air, astronomers have discovered a vast ultraviolet contrail streaming from the red giant variable star Mira A, about 420 light-years away. Spanning a full two degrees of sky as viewed from Earth, the muddied wake may consist of cold hydrogen and heavier elements that have sloughed off from the star over the past 30,000 years and interacted with interstellar dust in the object’s path....

By the time they reach school age, about 90 percent of children will have experienced a condition in which fluid fills the middle ear, muffling sound and sometimes triggering infection. Diagnosis usually requires a visit to a specialist—but researchers have now developed an app that detects this fluid just as accurately, with only a smartphone and a paper funnel. “Based on the size of the problem, we really wanted to design a technology that could detect it accurately, and also be accessible to a wide audience,” says Justin Chan, a doctoral student at the Paul G....

Whenever scientific findings threaten people’s sense of control over their lives, conspiracy theories are never far behind. The emergence of novel viruses is no exception. New pathogens have always been accompanied by conspiracy theories about their origin. These claims are often exploited and amplified—and sometimes even created—by political actors. In the 1980s the Soviet KGB mounted a massive disinformation campaign about AIDS, claiming that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had created HIV as part of a biological weapons research program....

Frisson. What a strange word. It evokes that peculiar intermingling of excitement and fear that can attend momentous events. The spark of electricity when you lock eyes with someone who is yet unknown to you, but who might just be ‘the one.’ The queasy sensation of anxious adrenaline when a big news story breaks. The fearful joy as you plunge downhill on a vertiginous rollercoaster. The word ‘thrill’ perhaps comes close....

Dear EarthTalk: As I understand it, “clean” coal really isn’t—yet the Bush Administration gushed strongly for it. What is Obama’s take on it? – John Zippert, Eutaw, AL Barack Obama and George W. Bush differ in many ways, but both have embraced so-called “clean coal” for providing an ongoing supply of cheap and readily available energy for electricity generation. The term “clean coal” is loosely defined as coal that is washed or processed to remove pollutants, so as to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the leading greenhouse gas, when the coal is burned....

By Julie Steenhuysen Experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are heading to Puerto Rico this week to study whether the mosquito-borne Zika virus will cause an increase in cases of a rare neurological disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome as the outbreak intensifies in this U.S. territory. The World Health Organization last month predicted that Zika would spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile....

Most people who celebrate Christmas can drag their holiday tree to the curb (literally) when they’re done with it. Needless to say, it will be a bit more difficult to get rid of the eight-ton, 72-foot (22-meter) Norway spruce now gracing New York City’s Rockefeller Center. So what’s to become of this year’s piney green giant when it’s hauled from its pedestal on January 9? It will be donated to Habitat for Humanity International to furnish wood for some of the Americus, Ga....

Of course New York City needs the microbes in the soil and the roots from the trees and plants of the Catskill Mountains to clean up its drinking water. And Central America needs mangroves, marsh grass, and coral reefs to slow down the hurricanes that can ravage its eastern coast. But what about Las Vegas? Certainly it doesn’t need nature. Drive down the strip at 11 p.m. on a Thursday night and the hotels that line Las Vegas Boulevard look like amusement park rides filled with customers....

A little more than a decade ago the editorial and business executives at Scientific American noticed a curious trend. Readers always snapped up issues that featured the brain. A German sister publication had picked up on this enthusiasm as well and had recently launched a magazine on the brain sciences, called Gehirn & Geist. The team at Scientific American decided to release its own test issue on the mind and brain in early 2004....

At one time or another, we’ve all heard bits of romantic advice like “nice guys finish last” or “treat em’ mean, keep em’ keen,” which suggest that being too “nice” will leave you disadvantaged in the world of mating. These old tropes continue to be played out in mainstream dating culture – remember the recent popularity of ‘negging’? Essentially this refers to offering a backhanded compliment such as “I like your eyes … are you wearing colored contacts?...

Bees quickly master an insect version of football — with a sweet reward at the end — just by watching another bee handle the ball, suggesting that the tiny pollinators are capable of sophisticated learning, says a study in Science1. Bumblebees watched a fellow bee tugging a ball into a goal, which earned the athlete a gulp of sugar water. The observing bees could soon do the task themselves. They even figured out how to nab the reward with less effort....

By Bill Berkrot A new unified system to facilitate sharing of genomic and clinical data among cancer researchers to help promote advances in personalized treatment for the many forms of the disease was launched on Monday, the U.S. National Cancer Institute said. Details of the project, known as Genomic Data Commons (GDC), were set to be announced by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Imagine walking down the street and seeing advertising screens change their content based on how you walk, how you talk, or even the shape of your chest. These screens rely on hidden cameras, microphones and computers to guess if you’re male or female. This might sound futuristic, but patrons in a Norwegian pizzeria discovered it’s exactly what was happening: Women were seeing ads for salad and men were seeing ads for meat options....

Severe thunderstorms aren’t just a risk to people on the ground. Scientists suspect intense storms also contribute to climate change, and a new NASA experiment aims to better understand that dynamic. The effort—which is scheduled for this summer and next—looks to more closely examine a meteorological phenomenon known as “overshooting storms.” These severe storms feature a protrusion that rises above the main part of the storm. The intense thunderstorms are of interest to scientists for how they can affect the atmosphere....