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By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton PAWNEE, Okla. (Reuters) - One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Oklahoma rattled the area northwest of Pawnee on Saturday, fuelling growing concern about seismic activity linked to energy production, a federal agency said. The magnitude 5.6 quake, which was felt from South Dakota to Texas, prompted the closure of some 35 wastewater disposal wells in the area, officials said. It shallow quake struck 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Pawnee in north-central Oklahoma at 7:02 a....

The article, “Religious factors and hippocampal atrophy in late life,” by Amy Owen and colleagues at Duke University represents an important advance in our growing understanding of the relationship between the brain and religion. The study, published March 30 in PLoS One, showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation. It is a surprising result, given that many prior studies have shown religion to have potentially beneficial effects on brain function, anxiety, and depression....

A new study of one of the universe’s fundamental constants casts doubt on a popular theory of dark energy, scientists say. Dark energy is the name given to whatever is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. One theory predicts that an unchanging entity pervading space called the cosmological constant, originally suggested by Albert Einstein, is behind dark energy. But a popular alternative, called rolling scalar fields, suggests that whatever’s causing dark energy isn’t a constant, but has changed through time....

Mobile health care apps now number in the thousands on the Apple and Google online stores, and many of these are targeted toward mental health. The need is real: in both the U.S. and U.K. lack of mental health services and an ongoing stigma are barriers to receiving help. Apps that are both accessible and affordable have the potential to fill this void. In addition to providing treatment using methods like cognitive behavioral therapy, portable devices can help with diagnosis and symptom monitoring by passively gathering a constant stream of personal data, such as sleep patterns and physical activity....

Discovery lies at the core of science, but rediscovery can be just as important. Indiana University Bloomington researchers combed through 22 million scientific papers published over the past century and found, to their surprise, dozens of “Sleeping Beauties”—studies that sat dormant for years and then suddenly got noticed. The top finds—the ones that languished in obscurity the longest and later got the most intense attention from the scientific community—came from chemistry, physics and statistics....

Because terrorism educes such strong emotions, it has led to at least five myths. The first began in September 2001, when President George W. Bush announced that “we will rid the world of the evildoers” and that they hate us for our “our freedoms.” This sentiment embodies what Florida State University psychologist Roy F. Baumeister calls “the myth of pure evil,” which holds that perpetrators commit pointless violence for no rational reason....

As children, we all learn about numbers. We start with counting, followed by addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. But mathematicians know that the number system we study in school is but one of many possibilities. Other kinds of numbers are important for understanding geometry and physics. Among the strangest alternatives is the octonions. Largely neglected since their discovery in 1843, in the past few decades they have assumed a curious importance in string theory....

One scorching summer day in 1991, having spent hours surveying the biodiversity of sacred groves in southern West Bengal, India, I approached Raghu Murmu’s hut to rest. Raghu, a young man of the Santal tribe, sat me under the shade of a huge mango tree while his daughter fetched me cold water and sweets made from rice. As I was relishing these, I noticed that Raghu’s pregnant wife was drinking a reddish liquid....

In many ways, the most important scientific battlefields have become the forums and meetings of local government. During the first year and a half of the pandemic, while I and many others were participating in local county council and board of education meetings virtually, a misinformed group was showing up in-person and dominating the public comments section of these forums. The group members’ wild conspiracy theories went completely unchecked as this vocal minority applied pressure to elected officials to go against accepted science....

Light is one of the most important and versatile phenomena in nature. Like a courier, it can transfer information from one point to another. Like an alchemist, it can alter matter. More specifically, it can initiate and moderate key processes in chemistry, biology and condensed matter. And of course, without it one could not see. The versatility of light comes about because of the many forms it can take: brief flashes, focused spots, broad continuous beams, dim or intense light, polarized light, low- or high-frequency light, and light containing many frequencies at once....

By Toni Clarke and Sharon Begley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has proposed analyzing genetic information from more than 1 million American volunteers as part of a new initiative to understand human disease and develop medicines targeted to an individual’s genetic make-up. At the heart of the initiative, to be announced on Friday by President Barack Obama, is the creation of a pool of people - healthy and ill, men and women, old and young - who would be studied to learn how genetic variants affect health and disease....

With much of the country grinding to a halt in a desperate attempt to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, many people are wondering when the U.S. will be able to “reopen.” The American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank, recently released a report co-written by former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb that offers a four-phase “road map to reopening.” The first phase—which the U.S. is currently in—involves slowing the spread of new infections with physical distancing measures, such as closing schools and having people work from home....

Recently, my husband endured a mild case of COVID—a cough, a sore throat, some aches and fatigue. Fortunately, he is vaccinated and boosted, and he recovered quickly. On day 10 after infection, he produced a negative rapid antigen test. Cool! So when can we have sex? This, it turns out, is a more complicated question than it might appear. And although Omicron appears to be loosening its grip on the U....

Why is it impossible to stop thinking, to render the mind a complete blank? —John Hendrickson, via email Barry Gordon, professor of neurology and cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, replies: Forgive your mind this minor annoyance because it has worked to save your life—or more accurately, the lives of your ancestors. Most likely you have not needed to worry whether the rustling in the underbrush is a rabbit or a leopard, or had to identify the best escape route on a walk by the lake, or to wonder whether the funny pattern in the grass is a snake or dead branch....

Manta rays and whitetip reef sharks glide past socially distanced visitors at Rio de Janeiro’s hangar-sized AquaRio aquarium. In a laboratory upstairs, above the main gallery, a new experiment is underway, one that marine scientists hope will enhance the survival prospects of the world’s coral reefs. Twenty rectangular aquarium tanks, each about 20 centimeters wide, are arranged in a grid on the fourth floor. Each one houses a colorful assortment of coral fragments....

CHICAGO – Coming off one of the most tumultuous years in its recent history, the U.S. wind power industry has emerged stronger and more confident of its future, industry leaders gathered here for the American Wind Energy Association’s national conference said yesterday. But for wind power to solidify its standing in a highly competitive energy market, it must shift its focus from federal tax policies to seek a broader agenda that plays to wind energy’s inherent strengths while fighting back against those who argue that wind cannot compete with fossil fuels for electricity generation....

Anyone who has tried to find an urgent e-mail amid masses of advertisements for dubious stock opportunities and sexual-enhancement drugs understands the critical importance of being able to filter out distracting information. That e-mail you seek may be in there, but it is lost among irrelevant clutter. Although the capacity of our computer’s e-mail in-box is limited only by disk space, our mental “in-box” of working memory—the brain regions and processes that create temporary storage—is much more constrained....

The expansion of solar-powered electricity in the U.S. broke major records last year, accounting for nearly 40% of all new generating capacity. And total installed photovoltaic (PV) power is expected to more than double in the next five years, according to an annual report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie, a global energy research and consulting firm. The U.S. growth, a 23% jump over 2018, was led by California, where concern over forest fires and solar requirements for newly built homes pushed up PV demand....

Scientific American presents Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Although most of us don’t spend much time thinking about math during the Super Bowl, the truth is that the big game is full of it. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since, as we’ve discovered over and over again, math is always all around us…if we take the time to see it....

THE GREAT RENAISSANCE scholar and artist Leonardo da Vinci left a legacy of paintings that combined beauty and aesthetic delight with unparalleled realism. He took great pride in his work but also recognized that canvas could never convey a sense of motion or of stereoscopic depth (which requires that two eyes simultaneously view slightly different pictures). He recognized clear limits to the realism he could portray. Five hundred years later the limits of depicting depth in art remain true (except of course for “Magic Eye”–style prints, which, through multiple similar elements, basically interleave two views that the brain sorts out for each eye)....