Scientific American Online

Editor's Note: Vienna, Austria-based science writer Chelsea Wald is taking part in a two-week Marine Biological Laboratory journalism fellowship at Toolik Field Station , an environmental research post inside the Arctic Circle. To see the current conditions in Toolik, check out the Webcam .

Walking over Eriophorum, Watch your step of you'll fall off 'em. [More]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released preliminary data Wednesday from its own toxicity testing for eight dispersants in a bid to corroborate potentially suspect industry-provided results. But questions remain about the safety of these chemicals that can be used to break up oil spills, including COREXIT 9500 , which is being employed on a massive scale by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. The agency's results showed broadly similar impacts on silverside fish ( Menidia beryllina ) and mysid shrimp ( Americamysis bahia ) across a range of concentrations. And none of the dispersants showed significant capacity to disrupt the hormonal systems of animals, at least at the cellular level. [More]

Four years ago Amanda Wang, then 27 years old, was at a rehearsal dinner for a close friend. At the start of the evening, she felt content, eager to enjoy the wedding ­festivities. But shortly after she sat down to dinner, she was struck by “a tidal wave” of negative emotions. Her mind began to race with disturbing thoughts about her own marriage, which was unstable, and feelings of self-loathing. Suddenly, Wang says, it was as if someone had draped a heavy cloth over her, suffocating her and cutting her off from the conversation. Overcome by anxiety and dread, she excused herself from the dinner table and escaped to the bathroom. Desperate to dull her feelings, she removed her belt, tied it around her neck and pulled it tight to stop herself from breathing. She performed this act several times, until the pain offered her some relief from her emotions. After about 10 minutes, she returned to the table, feeling much better.

At the time, Wang felt she was the only person in the world who battled such extreme mood swings--being content one moment and nearly suicidal the next--and who harmed herself to cope with them. “Self-harm was one of the things that I did to myself to stop feeling crazy, to stop all the arguments in my head, the edginess and anxiety,” she says.

A restful night’s sleep might make a cup of coffee less of a desperate need first thing in the morning. But pharmaceutical companies are looking into whether the latest pills to promise sound, natural sleep could also play an active role in overcoming even the most powerful addictions.

The new sleep aids block the activity of brain peptides called orexins. These tiny proteins keep us wide awake and attentive during the day, and they also govern some stimulating effects of addictive drugs. Orexins do not cause addiction or relapse directly, but neither happens without the peptides’ participation.

LINDAU, Germany--Play hard. Learn to explain what you do to people who know nothing about science. Put your collaborators’ needs first. A Thursday panel here at the 60th annual Nobel Laureate Lectures at Lindau gave young scientists tips--sometimes counterintuitive--about what it takes to succeed.

Play Hard . “I really don’t think you have to work hard,” said Oliver Smithies, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007, whose charming lecture earlier in the week showed many pages of handwritten notes jotted over five decades, often dated on Saturday mornings. “You should choose a field of work that is not work, that is so fun” that you won’t mind the time it takes. Added John C. Mather (2006 Nobel in Physics), “Since childhood I dreamed of building telescopes and I’ve continued to pursue that.”

By Steve Gorman and Ernest Scheyder

LOS ANGELES/FORT JACKSON, Louisiana (Reuters) - Despite the images of oil-soaked pelicans flooding the media in recent weeks, wildlife experts say the toll on sea birds from BP's Gulf Coast oil spill is smaller than was anticipated, so far.

Over the years, people have put forth a lot of theories to explain why intelligence differs, from person to person and even around the world. Health, wealth, schooling, nutrition, and even climate have all come up. Now, researchers at the University of New Mexico suggest that parasites might play a role. They find that the prevalence of infectious diseases can be a powerful predictor of regional smarts. Their work appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society . [Christopher Eppig, Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill, http://bit.ly/c2E4wD ] [More]

Anyone who's ever seen a dog move around on three limbs knows that canines are remarkably resilient creatures. Scientists are now wondering whether such adaptability could likewise be programmed into robots, in the event they experience damage or malfunction far from a repair shop (look no further than NASA's Mars Spirit rover to see why this is important). [More]

By Daniel Cressey

A study suggesting that organic agriculture gives better pest control and larger plants than conventional farming is sure to reignite longstanding debates about the merits of organic versus conventional agriculture. [More]

Well that didn't take long: Just six months after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down requests to close the locks between Chicago area waterways and Lake Michigan to stop the spread of invasive Asian carp the giant, voracious fish has almost made its way to the Great Lakes.

Last week, a one-meter-long, nine-kilogram bighead carp (pictured) was found in Lake Calumet, along the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS), just six miles from Lake Michigan. According to the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee , this is the first carp that has been found in the CAWS above the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's Electric Barrier System, a system put in place to try to control the spread of the fish.

Students from across the globe converged on the University of Hawaii at Hilo last week to test their abilities to build and pilot remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) at the ninth annual Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center's 2010 International ROV Competition. A team from Russia's Institute of Marine Technology Problems in Vladivostok took first place in the advanced "Explorer" division, while North Carolina's First Flight High School in Kill Devil Hills topped the intermediate "Ranger" division. [More]

Your hair contains a record of everywhere you've been. That's because your body uses the hydrogen and oxygen from water (and other beverages and foods) to make proteins--like the keratin in your hair. Because the ratio of the exact isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen varies depending on location--for instance, Denver's isotopic signature in liquids is quite different from Dallas's--forensic scientists may have a new way to piece together your past travels. [More]

The large leviathan that was the bane of Ahab's existence in Herman Melville's Moby Dick has a new ancient relative that might have lived up to the fictional beast's monstrosity . [More]

Editor's Note: Marine biologist William Gilly is on an expedition to study Humboldt squid on the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System research vessel New Horizon in the Gulf of California. He and other scientists are learning about the giant squid, their biology and ecology on this National Science Foundation-funded expedition. This is his seventh blog post about the trip. [More]

By Melissa Gaskill

Far from the tar-coated beaches and clean-up crews seen on nightly news programs, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is exacting an ongoing and largely unknown toll. [More]

The campaign to conserve electricity in the home needs to pay more attention to consumers and not just fix on the gee-whiz technology of smart meters , a leading energy conservation advocacy organization says.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released a report yesterday summarizing 57 pilot tests of household energy conservation strategies in this country and abroad, finding that annual electricity savings ranged from 4 to 12 percent.

LINDAU, Germany--Quick: What do MRI machines, rockets, fiber optics, LCDs, food production and welding have in common?

They all require the inert, or noble, gas helium for their use or at some stage of their production. And that helium essentially could be gone in less than three decades, Robert C. Richardson, winner, along with Douglas Osheroff and David Lee, of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics, said at the 60th annual Nobel Laureate Lectures at Lindau today. “Once it is released into the atmosphere, say, in the form of party balloons, it is lost to the Earth forever--it is lost to the Earth forever ,” he added.

It’s a plotline worthy of an action film--galaxies, violently torn apart, smashing into one another, leaving remnants of themselves behind billions of years later. That’s the scene that accounts for some of the oldest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy, according to work published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. [Andrew Cooper et al., http://bit.ly/9hMtBZ ]

Researchers ran a huge computer simulation of the evolution of the universe starting shortly after the big bang, more than 13 billion years ago. It’s the most detailed model ever produced, and allowed a close examination of the make-up of the Milky Way’s stellar halo. The stellar halo is debris that surrounds our familiar white swirl of stars. The halo is much larger and much older than the Milky Way itself.

In the first-ever global survey of indoor fungi scientists report that geography rather than building design and function has the greatest effect on the fungal species likely to be found indoors. The study suggests that the types of mold and other fungi most likely to be found in a dwelling may be largely unaffected by features like HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) filters and weather stripping.

The results of the study were published online June 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .