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Pres. Donald Trump’s administration moved quickly this week to shore up its control over communications with the public and the press, as officials at the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture e-mailed staff to inform them that they may no longer discuss agency research or departmental restrictions with anyone outside of the agency—including news media. Both agencies also told their scientists and other staff that press releases and external communications about taxpayer-funded work would stop until further notice....

Biologists have “learned so much about how embryos grow that we have tentatively begun to tailor the process to our bidding,” says Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte of the Salk Institute in the November Scientific American. As a result, he and other researchers have begun genetically modifying pig embryos with the hope they will eventually give rise to pigs that contain one or more human organs—the subject of his feature-length article “Human Organs from Animal Bodies....

Observed every December 1, World AIDS Day is a grim reminder that while we’re trying to constrain COVID-19, humanity is still in the midst of multiple pandemics—and one of them has already killed about 33 million people over four decades.
In 2019, according to UNAIDS, an estimated 38 million people were living with HIV globally and “around 690,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide.” The encouraging news—as encouraging as such lethal news can be—is that 2019’s mortality marked a 60 percent reduction since 2004, the peak year of AIDS deaths....

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK – If you’ve hiked in the Northern Rockies above 9,000 feet, you’ve hiked among a whitebark pine forest. And if you’ve hiked in the Rockies since 2009, you’ve likely hiked through a dead and dying forest, felled by a widespread outbreak of the mountain pine beetle. At a scientific conference Tuesday at Mammoth Hot Springs, near Yellowstone’s northern boundary, biologists cited climate change as a major driver. From the 1980s to today, temperatures have only gone one direction: Up....

ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, a smile conveys a universal point: “I’m friendly, and we can get along.” Shared laughter goes even further, implying a kind of secret bond among the participants. For each of us personally, mirth affords a certain distance from our defeats. Comedian Bill Cosby hit the nail on the head when he said, “If you can laugh at it, you can survive it.” And as research on the subject grows, it is becoming more evident that laughing can make us healthier physically as well as mentally....

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners are the most valuable diagnostic tool we have for assessing brain injuries and disorders. Yet around two thirds of people worldwide do not have access to MRI technology, and more than 90 percent of the devices are located in high-income countries. Expense is the big reason: a typical MRI machine costs around $1 million to $3 million. They need a purpose-built room to shield the scanner from outside signals and to contain the powerful magnetic fields generated by their superconducting magnets, which require liquid helium cooling systems that are pricey to run....

With Greenland’s glaciers melting and on the move while vast ice sheets in Antarctica continue to shatter, the proportion of water in the seas continues to grow. And with the climate at the poles expected to continue to warm rapidly in coming decades, many researchers are trying to determine how much and how quickly sea levels might rise. Now newly excavated reefs in Mexico may have provided an answer: high and fast....

Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in New Orleans at the American Chemical Society’s meeting to present more than three dozen reports on lithium-ion battery technology, highlighting improved components, better performance and more efficient production cycles. This year’s theme for the meeting is food and energy. Lithium-ion technologies make up a large part of the proceedings because energy storage is a crucial enabling technology for clean energy systems, such as powering electric vehicles and smoothing out electricity from wind and solar generators....

Top lawyers for Oakland and San Francisco in California announced yesterday that they filed lawsuits against five of the world’s biggest oil companies for damages related to climate change. Barbara Parker, Oakland city attorney, said the legal action is meant to make the companies pay the “cost of protecting the people and the property of Oakland.” And Dennis Herrera, San Francisco’s city attorney, said the case is part of the municipality’s long-term effort to address the costs of sea-level rise....

For Teresa, the first plate of scrambled eggs was a transcendent experience. The Stanford University Medical Center nurse coordinator, 41 years old at the time, had completely lost her appetite in the days after her surgery. She consumed only liquids and only at her surgeon’s request. Yet when her interest in eating returned, it was as though something about her relationship with food had fundamentally changed. The eggs, Teresa’s first solid meal in four weeks, were a revelation: simple, soft and buttery....

What if science, with a shake of a test tube, could circumvent the ethical objections to embryonic stem cell research? Several proposals would in principle let scientists obtain precious embryonic stem cells without harming embryos (equally precious to some) in the process. For eager biotechnologists, that arrangement would sound almost too good to be true–and indeed, it most likely is. William B. Hurlbut of Stanford University, a member of the US President’s Council on Bioethics who is a firm believer in the “implicit moral dignity” of the embryo, has attracted attention by suggesting a combination of genetic engineering and cloning called altered nuclear transfer....

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new drug combination helped stave off a monkey version of HIV for nearly two years after stopping all treatments, raising hopes for a functional cure for HIV, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. The treatment involved standard antiretroviral therapy (ART) plus an experimental antibody that hits the same target as Takeda Pharmaceutical’s Entyvio (vedolizumab), a drug approved in more than 50 countries for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease....

Doing small things consistently over time—if enough people participate—can make a dent, even in a global problem. Here are a few suggestions: Check your sinks, indoor and outdoor faucets, pipes, toilets, even your meter for leaks. Run your high-efficiency (Energy Star) washing machine or dishwasher for full loads only. Purchase a front-loading washing machine—it uses significantly less water than a top-loading machine—and purchase a dryer with a moisture sensor. Install a dual-flush toilet (which uses less water for liquid waste) or a low-flow unit as well as a gray-water recycling system....

A picturesque cobbled street in the center of Modena, a city in Emilia-Romagna, the culinary region of Italy, is the home of Osteria Francescana, a 3-Michelin star restaurant which reached the top of the Best Restaurants in the World list for both 2016 and 2018. Though the restaurant got there by virtue of its exceptional food, there’s something else that’s quite remarkable about the business: the diversity of its staff. The chef and owner, Massimo Bottura, hired people not only from Italy, but from across the globe....

The heat wave in which much of the nation remains mired comes as a handful of communities across the country take their first steps toward implementing smart grid technology. The new meters, electricity distribution management systems, network management software and other technologies are designed to add intelligence to the way power is generated, distributed and used. Already, smart grid pilot projects are up and running in places such as Harrisburg, Pa....

Don’t worry, it can’t hurt you—yet. Scientists have identified Reston ebolavirus—a member of the deadly Ebola group of hemorrhagic viruses—in domestic swine from the Philippines. The virus, which looks like a piece of yarn with a slight bend, is the only Ebola pathogen not known to cause disease in humans. Even so, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta considers it a biosafety level 4 pathogen, reserved for the most dangerous and exotic diseases....

Researchers report that a molecule produced by the immune system prolongs the life of immune cells that would normally self-destruct as a result of HIV infection. The finding adds weight to the case for clinical trials to study whether the molecule interleukin-7 (IL-7) when combined with antiretroviral drugs can beef up the immune systems of HIV sufferers. “It’s not just the drugs that battle HIV,” says researcher Paolo Lusso, a virologist and immunologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID)....

By Dave Sherwood and Colleen Jenkins BRUNSWICK Maine/WINSTON-SALEM N.C. (Reuters) - The state of Maine and a nurse who had treated victims of the Ebola virus in West Africa reached a settlement deal on Monday, allowing her to travel freely in public but requiring her to monitor her health closely and report any symptoms. The settlement, filed in nurse Kaci Hickox’s home town of Fort Kent, in Maine’s far north, where she returned after being briefly quarantined in New Jersey, keeps in effect through Nov....

Scientists onboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth research vessel anticipated a routine cruise along the Alaska Peninsula in summer 2011. Columbia University seismologist Anne Bécel and her colleagues had set out to map the area’s tectonic plates. But what they found alarmed them. The team discovered undersea plate alignments resembling the faults that gave way in March of that year to the Thoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan that killed more than 15,000 people, displaced some 228,000 more and caused about 127,000 buildings to collapse....

Sky watchers both amateur and professional will soon have a new system to alert them to the spectacular death throes of stars in our galaxy. A revamped version of the SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS), a software program hosted on servers at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, will soon provide more reliable, precise and timely notice of any star going supernova in the Milky Way—an event that promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime display....