Image: Flickr/Tax Credits Urban legend has it that “all” of our paper currency is tainted with cocaine. These scientists decided to test whether this is true, and if so, how much of the drug is there. By testing over four thousand bills of various denominations gathered from 90 locations over more than a decade, they estimate that the “average” bill carries only 2.34 ng of cocaine (a tiny, tiny amount), but any given bill has ~15% chance of having more than 20 ...read more

And what's happening in the New Arctic is not staying there Another month, yet another record low for Arctic sea ice extent in a warming world. January's average ice extent in the Arctic was 525,000 square miles below the 1981-to-2010 average, making it the lowest January extent in the satellite record. This is an astonishingly large loss of ice — equivalent to 80 percent of Alaska. But what happened in January was equally, if not more significant, for its timing. I ...read more

The oceans are largely unexplored, but if you want to find something interesting, there's no better place to visit than a hydrothermal vent. Often marked by dark plumes gushing into frigid water, the vents mark spots where magma rises close to the seafloor and heats the water to temperatures that can reach over 750 degrees Fahrenheit. Warmth and nutrients from the vents provide the basis for a vibrant deep-sea community, populated by creatures that often never see the sun's light ...read more

When it comes to improving memory, being in the right place at the right time could be key. Scientists are figuring out how to do that. Michael Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and his team developed an experimental brain stimulation technique that improves memory by applying a pulse of electricity directly to the brain when and where it’s needed most. In an early demonstration, they say their approach improved word recall in epilepsy patients by 15 perc ...read more

I, like a lot of other people on the internet, love rain. What can be nicer than a cool, refreshing burst of liquid precipitation, a sound so soothing people can actually pay to hear during dry spells? It’s good for dirty walkways, good for the plants, good for skydiving viruses…wait, what? Yes, it turns out that the rains are particularly rife with falling viruses. A new study out this week in The International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal is a census of the viral invader ...read more

While we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, there's no doubt that human beings are actually quite awful at assessing risk. So I can understand why Ethan Linck thought to contextualize the risk of drinking from backcountry streams with data. "Life is triage, a constant series of negotiations between risks of varying severity," he wrote. "And how we talk about those risks matters." Yes, it does—which is exactly why his piece in Slate last week was so damag ...read more

On February 4, astronomers using the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) detected two asteroids with orbits that take them between Earth and the moon this week. Fortunately, neither object’s trajectory presents a threat to Earth. In fact, the week’s first visiting asteroid — dubbed asteroid 2018 CC — has already completed its closest approach to Earth. The small rocky body zoomed by our planet on Tuesday, February 6, at 3:10 p.m. EST, just 35 minutes before SpaceX ...read more

If you’re an orange juice lover, you should be thankful for the rather bizarre behavior of the Indian tectonic plate. A new and sweeping genetic study, published Wednesday in Nature, has pinpointed the origins and evolution of citrus. The study shows how the fruit emerged at a time of geological upheaval more than 8 million years ago in Southern Asia and spread thanks to genetic mutations that produced more palatable fruit for animals — as well as our human ancestors. Within this n ...read more

From the way you move and sleep, to how you interact with people around you, depression changes just about everything. It is even noticeable in the way you speak and express yourself in writing. Sometimes this “language of depression” can have a powerful effect on others. Just consider the impact of the poetry and song lyrics of Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, who both killed themselves after suffering from depression. Scientists have long tried to pin down the exact relationship betw ...read more

The question of how much wood a woodchuck can chuck may need to be reevaluated — new research published today in Nature reveals a process that can create wood with a strength-to-weight ratio stronger than most metals. Harder, Better, Stronger Many of the high-performance structural materials available today have at least one major drawback. Metals like steel may be strong, but they are also heavy and environmentally damaging. Composites and polymer-based materials work around these drawbac ...read more