Science News

Visions of the future have long revolved around the automobile, from the ubiquitous flying car of sci-fi flicks such as The Fifth Element to the garbage-guzzling, Mr. Fusion–retrofitted DeLorean that Doc Brown pilots through time in Back to the Future . [More]

When envelopes containing the bacterial spores that cause anthrax started arriving in media offices and on Capitol Hill in the fall of 2001, a new era in biological warfare began. To pinpoint the source of the attacks, federal agents quickly sought out specialists to perform cutting-edge molecular fingerprinting on the ultrafine powdered spores. That evidence, which helped the government to finger a lone army scientist as the culprit, is now being reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences. Yet the essential lessons of the episode--that biological weapons are no longer just a battlefield risk and that innovative cooperation between law enforcement and science works--appear to have been forgotten already.

When it comes to countering the threat of biological weapons, most governments, including that of the U.S., are still mired in a decades-old nuclear-arms model geared toward preventing hostile nations from acquiring closely guarded weapons-making materials. It is an approach unsuited to the modern reality wherein nonstate actors are more likely than states to use biological warfare agents and the growth of biotechnology is only making those weapons easier to come by. Security experts have long warned that would-be terrorists no longer need to steal deadly pathogens when commonplace genetic engineering techniques could turn a benign microbe into a killer or synthetic biology tools might be used to build a virus from scratch.

White rice joins the growing list of refined carbohydrates with links to increased risks for diabetes, according to a new large study that quantified odds for consumers of white rice--as well as brown rice. [More]

Chimpanzees may comfort others in distress in ways very similar to how people do, according to what may be the largest study of consolation in animals by far. The new findings in our closest living relatives could help shed light on the roots of empathy in humans.

The spontaneous consolation of someone in distress with a hug, a pat on the back or other friendly display of physical contact has been studied in human children as a sign of sympathetic concern for others for decades. This kind of demonstrative empathy is often thought to be a large part of what sets humanity apart from other animals.

Editor's Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler , Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, has traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster site to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged Macondo 252 well. Kessler, along with David Valentine (an assistant professor of marine sediment geochemistry, biogeochemistry and geomicrobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara) and the rest of his colleagues are hoping to come away with a rough estimate of the spill's size by the time his team returns home on June 20, followed by more accurate estimates as they complete their analysis of the information collected. Other objectives of the expedition onboard the RV Cape Hatteras include trying to determine how the methane might be removed from the water (whether eaten by waterborne microorganisms or released into the atmosphere) and how methane concentrations will change over time. This is his first blog post for Scientific American. [More]