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By Lisa Maria Garza(Reuters) - Tiny plastic beads from beauty products are showing up in North America’s Great Lakes, and an environmental group is calling upon companies to stop using the plastic particles.Scientists have already been found the particles, known as microplastic, floating in the oceans but recently reported the same contamination in the largest surface freshwater system on the Earth. The particles are often less than a millimeter (0.04 inch)....

The psychologist smiles at Manuela, a new mother in her late thirties. “Please play with your baby for two minutes,” the therapist instructs her and then leaves the room. Two video cameras film Manuela (which is not her real name) and her three-month-old daughter. In the next room, a split-screen monitor shows the mother’s profile on the left and her infant in a baby chair on the right. At first, Manuela appears to be at a loss for what to do....

FLASHY FOSSILS Dinosaurs have certainly become a lot prettier in the decades since I was a child. But I wonder if these splashes of color, such as seen in the images in “Triumph of the Titans,” by Kristina A. Curry Rogers and Michael D. D’Emic, have gone too far. Among living creatures today, none of the larger land animals sport elaborate color schemes. And in the smaller critters, color has evolved as a camouflage, something that would have little or no success on an animal the size of an elephant—or an Apatosaurus!...

It was the result that most scientists didn’t want. The United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union has plunged it into political and economic uncertainty—and left researchers worried over the future of their funding and collaborations, the UK’s participation in major European research programmes, and the freedom of movement and employment status of thousands of scientists. Many researchers in the UK expressed shock and dismay as the result of the 23 June referendum—with 52% of people voting in favour of ‘Brexit’ to 48% against—sank in....

Scientists have long dreamed of launching a constellation of detectors into space to detect gravitational waves – ripples in space-time first predicted by Albert Einstein and observed for the first time earlier this month. That dream is now a step closer to reality. Researchers working on a €400 million (US$440 million) mission to try out the necessary technology in space for the first time—involving firing lasers between metal cubes in freefall – have told Nature that the initial test-drive is performing just as well as they had hoped....

Many tadpoles ward off predators with potent poisons—but those toxins also seem to help win battles with their own kind, a new study finds. Tadpoles of common toads (Bufo bufo) are more poisonous when raised in crowded conditions, which may give them a competitive edge, according to the work published on September 23 in Functional Ecology. Many noxious plant species are known to modulate their defences to fend off different threats, but it is less clear whether animals possess similar toxin-tuning abilities....

Truths should be stubborn things, right? Not in today’s society. A set of polls conducted this summer revealed about 70 percent of Republican voters still believe that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election, despite extensive bipartisan investigations into voter fraud that validated the trustworthiness of the election. Online, the YouTube suggestion algorithm has been shown to steer viewers toward more extreme or far-fetched videos, spreading conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs....

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose by 4 percent in the first quarter, as American drivers hit the road in record numbers during the first three months of the year. U.S. motorists logged 753 billion miles on the road through March, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s the highest first-quarter tally since the federal authorities began keeping track in 1970. The extra miles highlighted the continued recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and came in the face of a run-up in gasoline and diesel prices....

From the forthcoming book PHI: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul, by Giulio Tononi Copyright © 2012 by Giulio Tononi Integrated Information: The Many and the One In which is shown that consciousness lives where information is integrated by a single entity above and beyond its parts When is an entity one entity? How can multiple elements be a single thing? A question simple enough— but one, thought Galileo, that had not yet been answered....

This month the new nature documentary series Our Planet will be released on Netflix, from the same team that created Planet Earth and The Blue Planet. The companion book by co-producers Fothergill and Scholey can certainly stand on its own, with many images leaving the viewer wondering, “How’d they get that shot?”: A lone polar bear treks along the ridge of a jagged, blue and glistening ice cap in the Russian High Arctic (above)....

That maximum extent was 595,000 square miles above the 1981-2010 average extent, the NSIDC said in a statement, and broke the consecutive records set in 2012 and 2013. The record had been expected and follows a trend over the last three years of anomalously high winter ice extents around the southernmost continent — a trend that provides a stark contrast to the inexorable decline of Arctic sea ice, which it’s sixth lowest summer extent on record last month....

Lightbulbs break all the time. So why would a single broken bulb in a Maine household trigger the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to refer the homeowner to a decontaminator? The answer lies in the type of bulb that broke—a compact fluorescent lightbulb—and what was inside that bulb. Compact fluorescents, like their tubular fluorescent precursors, contain a small amount of mercury—typically around five milligrams. Mercury is essential to a fluorescent bulb’s ability to emit light; no other element has proved as efficient....

Many physicists were disheartened at the news that the apparent discovery of gravitational waves from the big bang was likely an error. But a cosmologist from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario felt a bit vindicated. Neil Turok has been betting all along that primordial gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—would never be seen. Turok expressed little surprise that new results from the Planck satellite observing light from the big bang show that the supposed observation of gravitational waves from the South Pole’s BICEP2 experiment in March was probably contaminated by a haze of dust in our galaxy....

Former Secretary of State John Kerry would become the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to have a portfolio exclusively devoted to climate change when he joins President-elect Joe Biden’s White House next year. The new title for Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee who represented Massachusetts in the Senate for 28 years: special presidential envoy on climate change. While Biden’s transition team offered few specifics about Kerry’s role yesterday, he’ll be the first climate official ever with a seat on the National Security Council....

Gerald Carter spends hours watching vampire bats share their meals with one another. While feasting, the animals—just slightly bigger than mice—huddle together in a small group and appear to lick each other’s faces. In fact, they’re sharing a meal of regurgitated blood. Despite their intimidating name, vampire bats don’t suck blood—they use their razor-like teeth to make a small cut and lap blood from unsuspecting birds and livestock that live in the tropical regions of Mexico, Central America, and South America....

Canada’s bird populations have a new predator: climate change. According to “The State of Canada’s Birds,” the first comprehensive report on the state of Canadian avian species, Canadian bird populations have declined by an average of 12 percent since 1970. While some species are thriving, 44 percent of Canada’s more than 460 bird species are losing numbers. Grassland birds, migratory shorebirds and birds that eat insects in flight are in the steepest decline....

When people hear that they might have cancer, perhaps the only thing more frightening than the C word is the M word. Metastatic disease—in which the malignancy has traveled beyond its primary site to other spots in the body—is responsible for nine out of every 10 cancer deaths. Recently an unexpected player in this process has emerged: a common bacterium. Fusobacterium nucleatum, which normally lives harmlessly in the gums, appears to have a role in the spread of some cancers of the colon, esophagus, pancreas and—possibly—breast....

Love has inspired countless works of art, from immortal plays such as Romeo and Juliet, to architectural masterpieces such as the Taj Mahal, to classic pop songs, like Queen’s “Love of My Life”. This raises the obvious question: why is love such a stimulating emotion? Why does the act of falling in love – or at least thinking about love – lead to such a spur of creative productivity? One possibility is that when we’re in love we actually think differently....

The atmosphere inside mission control at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this Saturday was electric as scientists watched their life’s work—a NASA satellite—slowly lift off on a Delta 2 rocket. It was the third try; the first attempt, Thursday, was scrubbed due to high winds and the second, on Friday, due to minor rocket repairs. The rocket’s cargo was precious. The satellite—SMAP, or the Soil Moisture Active Passive—has been in development for more than two decades....

Just as my office would not stay empty for long were I to move out, nature’s real estate changes hands all the time. Potential homes range from holes drilled by woodpeckers to empty shells on the beach. A typical example of what economists call a “vacancy chain” is the housing market among hermit crabs. To protect its soft abdomen, each crab carries its house around, usually an abandoned gastropod shell. The problem is that the crab grows, whereas its house does not....