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Ectogenesis, that is the gestation outside of a biological womb, sounds like science fiction. But one of the top stories of 2017 was the success of one group in making artificial wombs a reality—at least for lamb fetuses in later stages of their gestation. The science is in large part motivated by the high, and steadily rising, number of babies born preterm or before 37 weeks of gestation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in ten babies are born prematurely in the United States....

Efforts to study the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic have received help from a surprising source. A biologist in the United States has ‘excavated’ partial SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from the beginnings of the pandemic’s probable epicentre in Wuhan, China, that were deposited — but later removed — from a US government database. The partial genome sequences address an evolutionary conundrum about the early genetic diversity of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, although scientists emphasize that they do not shed light on its origins....

About 112 million years ago, a long-necked sauropod dinosaur traversed some intertidal flats near what is now Glen Rose, Texas. Coming after it — perhaps hours or days later, or perhaps hot on its tail in a dinosaur chase scene — a meat-eating theropod followed, overlaying some of the sauropod’s footprints with its own. This snippet of the Cretaceous ended up frozen in rock, and paleontologists discovered the prints as early as 1917....

As the weather warms, many of us would prefer to look like we passed our winter days lounging by the pool instead of hunched before a computer screen or lab bench. But soaking up the rays to acquire a so-called “base tan” does not fool the sun or a tanning bed. Simply put, the benefits of being sun-kissed are not even skin-deep. Scientists came to this conclusion after studying the tanned buttocks of dozens of volunteers....

Offering more depth (literally) than any anatomy textbook can deliver, the Visible Body is a Web-based 3-D interactive model of the human body available free to students, educators and health and medical professionals. The software, developed by Newton, Mass.-based Argosy Publishing, visualizes the human body using sophisticated computer graphics to show how more than 1,700 anatomical structures–including major organs and systems–work together. The images at times isolate different organs or body parts to enhance their clarity, which is useful when studying anatomy or explaining an injury....

With the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States this past weekend and the dissenting marches that followed, there’s one type of science that is dominating the news cycle, and that’s crowd science, or the science behind estimating the number of people in a large crowd. Crowd scientists can have a range of expertise, including census work, remote sensing, geospatial analysis, and even cartography, all of which can help with the daunting task of crowd counting....

Renewable energy, such as from photovoltaic electricity and ethanol, today supplies less than 7 percent of U.S. consumption. If we leave aside hydroelectric power, it is under 4.5 percent. Globally, renewables provide only about 3.5 percent of electricity and even less of transportation fuels. But increasing that fraction for the U.S.—as seems necessary for managing greenhouse gases, trade deficits and dependence on foreign suppliers—has at least three tricky components. The obvious one is how to capture the energy of wind, sun and crops economically....

“I’m fine!” “I’m not the crazy one—you are!” “I don’t need help!” Too often, encouraging a loved one to seek mental health treatment turns into a stalemate with long-lasting hard feelings, and no one gets the help they need or deserve. How to circumvent a standoff? Enter mental health advocate Gabe Howard. Gabe is an award-winning writer, speaker, and mental health advocate who lives with bipolar and anxiety disorders. Gabe is the host of the award-winning podcast, The Psych Central Show, as well as co-host of another podcast, A Bipolar, A Schizophrenic, and a Podcast—it’s pretty easy to guess what that one’s about....

You take a deep breath, rub your tired eyes and prepare to push away from your personal computer after a lengthy instant message exchange, video viewing or analysis of your monthly budget—maybe all three. But before you exit cyberspace, a decision must be made: Should you shut the machine down, place it into “sleep” mode or do nothing at all? How you end a computer session depends on how often you use the computer, your views on energy conservation (the amount of juice it uses while sitting idle), and what you have been told about how your decision will affect your investment’s longevity: Will frequent starting and stopping cause its circuits to burn out sooner?...

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) has never had a conversation with former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt—but she’d like to question him soon about his handling of science at the agency. It’s been a week since Democrats won enough seats in midterm elections to take control of the House, and Johnson is starting to discuss preliminary ideas for the Science, Space and Technology Committee if she becomes chairwoman, which is expected. She’s “hoping” Rep....

Hospitals offered a record number of residency positions and more doctors than ever will start their medical careers this summer, according to data released Friday. The new figures from the National Resident Matching Program arrive on Match Day, when thousands of medical students in the United States and around the world learn where they’ve “matched” for a residency program, after finding out on Monday whether they matched at all. One figure of note: There was a small decline in the number of people, US citizen or otherwise, who graduated from medical school abroad and tried to match....

A patient recovering from a head injury in a neurological intensive care unit (ICU) might be surprised to learn that the nurses caring for him had little training in neuroscience beyond the typical four hours of lecture in nursing school. Some leading caregivers are trying to change that. Joanne V. Hickey, a neuroscience nurse scholar and clinical expert at the Methodist Neurological Institute in Houston, and Ann Quinn Todd, nursing director of the institute’s Eddy Scurlock Stroke Center, joined forces to organize the institute’s inaugural symposium on neurological nursing....

Eating beef from an animal infected with mad cow disease can lead to an untreatable condition that attacks the brain and is universally fatal, but symptoms can take decades to emerge. Thankfully, a new blood-screening technology can spot the condition, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with 100 percent accuracy, perhaps years before it attacks. Misfolded proteins called prions cause both mad cow and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Once they invade the brain, they begin recruiting normal proteins and forcing them to adopt the same abnormal shape....

Face it: Looks can kill—and also give away lovers’ intentions British researchers confirm what both sexes have always suspected: Men generally prefer flings to romance, whereas women are searching for true (long-term) love. But they add a new wrinkle to the equation. You can be tipped off to a potential mate’s intentions by their facial features. Researchers report in Evolution & Human Behavior that they gave 700 volunteers composite images of men and women in their 20s who had previously been polled on their sexual attitudes....

Let us assume what most mathematical readers would take for granted anyway: There are mathematical objects such as numbers and functions and there are objective facts about these objects, such as 3 < 5 and the set of primes is infinite. Truth on this view is banal. ‘‘3 < 5’’ is true because the objects 3 and 5 are in the less than relation to one another, just as ‘‘Bob is shorter than Alice’’ is true, because Bob and Alice stand in the shorter than relation....

Excitement is building over European plans to launch a new space-weather satellite that would drastically improve forecasts of how solar storms will affect Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) hopes to send the probe to a gravitationally stable point in space known as Lagrange point 5 (L5) by around 2023, where it would provide a unique, side-on view of streams of charged particles heading towards Earth. The strongest of such eruptions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can knock out navigation and communications satellites, interfere with aeroplane navigation systems and disrupt power grids....

Two children, perhaps similar to ones you know, enjoy cake and mathematics. For this reason, Marie and Jeremy decide to play the following game on their two identical rectangular cakes. Jeremy will cut the first cake into two pieces, perhaps evenly, perhaps not (in which case the first piece will be larger). After seeing the cut, Marie will decide whether she will choose the first piece or the second. If she goes first, she will take the larger piece....

A crucial clue in the search for extraterrestrial life is just around the corner, in cosmic terms. Discovered in 2016, the planet called Proxima b circles our Sun’s nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri. Revealed by the telltale wobbles its gravitational tug elicits upon its star, this world is slightly more massive than Earth, and, like the Earth, resides in Proxima Centauri’s “habitable zone,” a circumstellar region in which warmth from starlight could conceivably allow liquid water to exist upon a rocky planet’s surface....

An influential step in the years-long amble toward the most anticipated climate pact in nearly 20 years was taken on Tuesday. The U.S. informed the United Nations how it will fight global warming under a post-2020 agreement that’s due to be finalized during talks in Paris in December. America’s dutiful filing of an administrative letter on Tuesday, detailing a type of commitment known by an unfamiliar acronym, produced no surprises. Yet it garnered a flurry of global media interest....

Some say the secret to losing weight is forgoing greasy, fatty foods like French fries; others swear that shunning carbs in favor of all-protein grub is key. Many popular weight loss plans recommend that dieters consume specific ratios of fat, protein and carbohydrates. (The Zone diet, for instance, prescribes 40 percent carbs, preferably complex carbs like veggies and whole grains, 30 percent protein and 30 percent fat). But a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the smartest way to lose weight is to eat heart healthy foods (think: Mediterranean diet—lots of veggies and fish, limited amounts of red meat) and reduce your caloric intake....