Vitamin B12 as Protection for the Aging Brain

Here is the latest Science News from The New York Times.

Personal Health: Vitamin B12 as Protection for the Aging Brain
Depression, dementia and mental impairment are often associated with B12 deficiency.

Obama Unlikely to Vow No First Use of Nuclear Weapons
Aides have told the president that such a guarantee would undermine allies and embolden Russia and China.

Hopes Rise That Staten Island’s Young Eagle Is a Native New Yorker
If it’s not a tourist, the juvenile bird would be the first bald eagle hatched in the city in more than a century.

Osiris-Rex: Chasing Asteroid Bennu
NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft will hunt down an asteroid and return a sample to Earth.

NASA Aims at an Asteroid Holding Clues to the Solar System’s Roots
The robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex, to be launched Thursday, will chase down Bennu and then, hopefully, return with a sample from its surface.

Global Health: Doctors on Lookout for Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever in Spain
A hospital patient in Madrid died of the illness, the first finding of the fever in Western Europe in someone who had not traveled to an endemic area.

Letters to the Editor
Readers react to articles in Science Times.

Trilobites: Calculating a Bias in Neuroscience: Women Asked to Speak
Noticing the skewed lineups at conferences, a Princeton neuroscientist and colleagues launched a website to compare the gender ratios at conferences to those in a particular field over all.

No Longer Missing: Rosetta’s Philae Spacecraft Located on Comet
Scientists have found the space lander, which disappeared in 2014 after a rough landing on the surface of a comet.

Sinosphere: Gentler Chicken Slaughter? Chinese Province Thinks It’s Worth a Try
New voluntary guidelines in Shandong Province are motivated at least as much by commercial considerations as by concerns for animal welfare.

Q&A: The Mystery of Sweating Buckets
The overlapping factors that affect an individual’s heat tolerance are many, ranging from age and body mass to circulatory efficiency and hydration.

ScienceTake: The Mystery of a Bee’s Buzz
Researchers at Arizona State University experimented to find out whether a bee’s technique to cull pollen from flowers was learned, or instinctual.

ScienceTake: Bees Buzz for Their Supper
The insects innately use vibration to cause the release of pollen from some flowers.

SpaceX’s Explosion Reverberates Across Space, Satellite and Telecom Industries
Last week’s setback is raising new questions about the private space launch company that has risen rapidly by offering lower costs and promising accelerated schedules.

Oysters Are Nearly Extinct in New York Waters. Meet the Team Trying to Coax Them Back.
The city’s Environmental Protection Department and the Billion Oyster Project are placing tens thousands of oysters in Jamaica Bay to renew their population.

Roger Y. Tsien, Nobel Winner for Use of Glowing Proteins, Dies at 64
The biochemist at the University of California, San Diego, transformed a green fluorescent protein from jellyfish into a ubiquitous biological tool.

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun
Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline are no longer theoretical.

Trilobites: Juno Offers New Look at Jupiter’s North Pole
NASA released new pictures taken by the spacecraft’s camera as it finished its first of 36 orbits around our solar system’s biggest planet.

Hurricane Season Is Heating Up. So Is the Planet. Coincidence?
As Hermine churns up the Atlantic and two other storms threaten Hawaii, a look at what role scientists think global warming may be playing.

More Bad News for Africa’s Elephants: A Super-Slow Reproduction Rate
Even if all poaching ceased immediately, researchers calculate that it would take 90 years for forest elephant populations to return to pre-2002 levels.

F.D.A. Bans Sale of Many Antibacterial Soaps, Saying Risks Outweigh Benefits
The agency said manufacturers had failed to prove the products were safe to use over the long term or more effective than using ordinary soap and water.

Gray Matter: Why Facts Don’t Unify Us
Even accurate information can increase political polarization.

Trilobites: New Hope for Tasmanian Devils in Fight Against Contagious Cancer
Scientists believe that genetic variation in some animals that may make them resistant to cancer.

N.Y.C. Nature: Atlantic Silversides Know the Wisdom of Crowds
Silversides, rife all along the Atlantic Coast, are like popcorn to larger fish, and even the smallest bits flung into the waters are eagerly devoured.

Works in Progress: A Manhattan Museum Looks at Cuba’s Exotic Fauna and Flora
An alignment of scientific research and political changes led to “iCuba!,” a bilingual exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History starting in November.

Opinion: Second Thoughts of an Animal Researcher
A scientist who stepped away from experimenting on monkeys says society needs to rethink the ethics of animal research.

Aimed at Zika Mosquitoes, Spray Kills Millions of Honeybees
Officials in Dorchester County, S.C., neglected to warn all beekeepers of a plan to spray pesticide from the air. The results were devastating.

Obama Visits Midway, Highlighting Monument and Commitment to Environment
The president, an eye on his legacy, recognized the expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the remote reaches of the Pacific.

Tests Confirm Mosquitoes in Miami Beach Are Carrying Zika Virus
Florida announced on Thursday that for the first time mosquitoes in Miami Beach had tested positive for the virus, showing the virus was still active in the area.

SpaceX Rocket Explodes at Launchpad in Cape Canaveral
The fiery blast also destroyed a satellite that Facebook had planned to use to expand internet services in Africa.

SpaceX Rocket Destroyed on Launchpad
An explosion was seen from the site of a SpaceX rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Thursday morning.

African Elephant Population Dropped 30 Percent in 7 Years
The decline is accelerating: Largely because of poaching, the African elephant population is dropping 8 percent a year.

Out There: A Call From Outer Space, or a Cosmic Wrong Number?
Everybody plans to keep looking, but for now the radio signal from the constellation Hercules seems destined to join the other false alarms.

Explosion Reported at SpaceX Launch Site in Cape Canaveral
The impact could be felt blocks away from the site in Florida.

Hundreds of Pounds Lighter, and Now Shedding Another Burden of the Past
Paul Mason, once known by the dismaying title of the world’s fattest man, had the second of two surgeries to eliminate the excess skin enveloping his body.

The Big Sort: A Question About Friends Reveals a Lot About Class Divides
How many of your closest friends didn’t graduate from college?

Trilobites: A ‘Ring of Fire’ Eclipse Starts Thursday
Thursday’s event will be visible from Gabon, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.

Study Finds Increase in Temporary Paralysis Accompanied Zika Outbreaks
The analysis adds to substantial evidence that Zika infections — even asymptomatic ones — may bring on a paralysis called Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Obama to Guest-Edit Wired Magazine
When President Obama takes over the November issue, it will be, by Wired’s estimation, the first time a sitting president has guest-edited at a magazine.

How to Win Friends and Influence People (on Fake Mars)
When six researchers were released after spending a year in a Mars-like habitat in Hawaii, they said they spent a lot of time trying to get along.

World’s Oldest Fossils Found in Greenland
The find, thought to be layers of sediment packed together by microbial communities living in shallow water, could alter our understanding of how life evolved.

James Cronin, Who Explained Why Matter Survived the Big Bang, Dies at 84
Dr. Cronin shared a Nobel Prize for discovering, with Val Fitch, “a fundamental asymmetry between matter and antimatter,” repudiating a basic principle of physics.

Trilobites: How Did Lightning Kill More Than 300 Reindeer?
Four hooves on the ground create more potential pathways for electrical current to flow.

Their Soil Toxic, 1,100 Indiana Residents Scramble to Find New Homes
In a situation echoing the crisis in Flint, Mich., a housing complex’s poor, mostly black residents are being resettled because of high lead and arsenic levels.

Beautiful Mind, Valuable Medal: John Nash’s Nobel to Be Auctioned
Mr. Nash, whose life inspired the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1994; Sotheby’s will hold the auction on Oct. 17.

With Dogs, It’s What You Say — and How You Say It
New research suggests that dogs respond to meaning and intonation in human voices.

Zika Can Be Transmitted by Female Mosquito to Her Eggs, Study Says
Researchers say such transmission is probably not key to the current spread of the virus, but is rather a mechanism for it to survive.

Trilobites: A NASA Satellite Ends the Silent Treatment
The signal from STEREO-B, one of twin crafts put in orbit to study the sun, was lost for almost two years before it was heard from last week.

Trilobites: You Say Tomato, These Moths Say Dinner
Tomato crops worldwide are being ravaged by a moth no larger than an eyelash. It was introduced to Europe in 2006 via a container of infested tomatoes

Take a Number: Stuck in Traffic, Polluting the Inside of Our Cars
According to a study, pollution levels in vehicles at red lights or in traffic jams are up to 40 percent higher than when traffic is moving.

Like Tens of Millions of Matchsticks, California’s Dead Trees Stand Ready to Burn
A complex convergence of factors — the drought, bark beetles, a pathogen spreading sudden oak death, and human failings — has devastated huge, breathtaking forest areas.

Japan’s ‘Hail Mary’ at Fukushima Daiichi: An Underground Ice Wall
The project is designed to keep water out of the damaged reactor buildings at the nuclear power plant, and radioactive water from reaching the Pacific. Critics say it may not work.

Q&A: Why Do Algae Grow in Ponds in Warm Weather?
The usual suspects are not common algae but a kind of microorganism once called blue-green algae and now usually referred to as cyanobacteria.

Global Health: In Reaction to Zika Outbreak, Echoes of Polio
New York’s polio epidemic a century ago had many of the problems found in the response to Zika: false rumors, ethnic prejudice and ineffective measures.

Letters to the Editor
Readers react to articles in Science Times.

Matter: A 3.2 Million-Year-Old Mystery: Did Lucy Fall From a Tree?
A team of scientists recently concluded that Lucy, a hominid whose skeleton was discovered in 1974, died from a long fall — but their study has divided experts.

Trilobites: A Summer Evening in Texas Isn’t Complete Without a Bat Show
Every night, millions of bats emerge in the middle of the state, including more than 15 million from a sinkhole near San Antonio.

Harnessing the Firenado
A new, blue, whirling shape of fire, inspired by bourbon, could one day help clean up oil spills.

ScienceTake: New Form of Fire, Inspired by Bourbon, Might Help With Oil Spills
Scientists turned a fire whirl, sometimes called a firenado, into a new form — a blue whirl — that burns clean and soot-free.

Adopted Koreans, Stymied in Search of Birth Parents, Find Hope in a Cotton Swab
Many are turning to DNA testing after years of frustration with bureaucratic hurdles and flawed records.

Trilobites: The Accidental Plagiarist in All of Us
To differing degrees, we’ve all been guilty of cryptomnesia, the process of claiming an original thought already encountered elsewhere.

Trilobites: A ‘Skylight’ Made From Two Mirrors
The periscope, commonly found in submarines and spy novels, was an innovative solution to a dark art studio.

All Donated Blood in U.S. Will Be Tested for Zika
Donated blood and blood components should be screened by blood banks for contamination with the virus, the Food and Drug Administration said.

Trilobites: Meet Octobot: Squishy, Adorable and Revolutionary
The world’s first soft-bodied fully autonomous robot, created by Harvard researchers, has eight arms and is not tethered to a power source.

Obama to Create World’s Largest Marine Reserve Off Hawaii
The president is set to vastly expand an sanctuary northwest of the Hawaiian Islands, part of efforts to burnish his environmental legacy before leaving office.

About New York: Migrant Lizard, Having Made It in New York, Heads Elsewhere
The Italian wall lizard, a reptile native to Europe that has been in the New York area for decades and is moving north, is a cast study in foreign species’ adaptability to urban life.

Snakes in the Garden (but These Are Welcome)
Snake Day will be the highlight of an entire garden weekend starring these animals at Wave Hill in the Bronx.

Seattle’s Potential Solution for Heroin Epidemic: Places for Legal Drug Use
A city task force endorsed the idea of safe consumption facilities, which would allow addicts to take drugs without fear of being arrested.

Op-Ed Contributor: What’s So Special About Another Earth?
We’re excited about the latest exoplanet because of what it says about our own celestial home.

Federal Officials Seek Ban on Swimming With Spinner Dolphins in Hawaii
Human interference may harm the dolphins when they are supposed to be resting, but a proposal seeking a 50-yard buffer zone may hurt the tourism industry, some say.

Mylan to Lower EpiPen Cost for Some Patients
But the company, which has raised the price of a two-pack of the allergy attack drug to about $600 from $100 in 2007, is not changing the list price.

Why the Italy Quake Was So Severe
A shallow fault and the presence of centuries-old, unreinforced masonry buildings combined to produce widespread, deadly destruction.

Gene Tests Identify Breast Cancer Patients Who Can Skip Chemotherapy, Study Says
Researchers found that nearly half of women with early breast cancer can safely avoid the treatment with little risk of cancer recurring or spreading in five years.

Life Expectancy Falls by 5 Years for Syrian Men, New Analysis Finds
Mortality rates had improved in recent decades, but years of war knocked the life expectancy back to to 69 from 74 for men and to 76 from 79 for women.

Crusader Without a Cape Sends Out the Bat Signal in New Jersey
Batstock is an annual series of events in Bergen County created by Joseph D’Angeli, who is known in some quarters as the Batman of New Jersey.

One Star Over, a Planet That Might Be Another Earth
Scientists have detected a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest neighbor to our solar system. It might someday be possible to reach.

In Florida Keys, Some Worry About ‘Science and Government’ More Than Zika
Officials want to test genetically modified mosquitoes built to blunt the spread of dengue and Zika, but many Key Haven residents fear the experiment more than the viruses.

Florida Investigates New Zika Cases on Gulf Coast and in Miami
Officials announced a new case in Pinellas County, on the Gulf Coast, and confirmed four new cases near Miami, where the majority of local cases have been found.

Zika, a Formidable Enemy, Attacks and Destroys Parts of Babies’ Brains
The virus not only causes smaller heads and brains — the signature microcephaly — but disrupts development, scans show.

Got a Thyroid Tumor? Most Should Be Left Alone.
A new report in The New England Journal of Medicine confirms what many cancer researchers have known — that an “epidemic” can be traced to overdiagnosis.

New Clues in the Mystery of Women’s Lagging Life Expectancy
A new state-by-state study of the impact of economic and social environments on mortality found that where a woman live matters as much as who she is.

July Heat: How Hot Was It in July? Hotter Than Ever.
A string of global heat records continued last month. El Niño contributed to it, as did overall warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions.

Trilobites: Carving the Meat Before Meals, 250,000 Years Ago
In Jordan, researchers have found blades and hand axes with bits of rhinoceros and other animals on them, but aren’t sure whether the tools were used to kill.

Trilobites: A New Dolphin Species, Long Gone, Found in a Drawer
A skull that had spent decades at the National Museum of Natural History belonged to a previously unknown species with a flexible neck.

Trilobites: Seeing Through to a Mouse’s Nervous System
Neuroscientists have developed a way to turn mice into transparent images, allowing them to trace neurons from the brain to fingers and toes.

Trilobites: Ötzi the Iceman’s Patchwork Ensemble
A man who lived 5,300 years ago wore a mix-and-match wardrobe, including a bear fur hat, a sheepskin loincloth and a goat coat, DNA shows.

Q&A: Why Do Schools of Fish Seem to Know One Hand From the Other?
The synchronized behavior of schools of fish fascinates researchers, who have yet to fully determine what factors determine the direction they go.

Raw Data: The Known: Cancer Is Really, Really Old. The Unknown: How Common It Was.
A fossilized bone tumor in South Africa is the oldest known case of cancer, researchers say. The extent of the disease so long ago remains elusive.

By Degrees: America’s First Offshore Wind Farm May Power Up a New Industry
A just-completed project off the coast of Rhode Island, though relatively tiny, is at the forefront of a sea-based transition to renewable energy.

Ang Lee Embraces a New Faster Film Format, but Who Will See It?
“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” will be shown in a new format at the New York Film Festival, but Sony is still figuring out how to best show it beyond New York.

Whose Lives Should Be Saved? To Help Shape Policy, Researchers in Maryland Ask the Public
For the past few years, researchers have been holding forums to see how people would ration limited medical resources during disasters or pandemics.

The New Health Care: The Life-Changing Magic of Choosing the Right Hospital
Traveling a little farther for a higher-quality place can have a measurable difference in outcomes.

Dr. Donald A. Henderson, Who Helped End Smallpox, Dies at 87
Starting in 1966, Dr. Henderson, known as D.A., led the World Health Organization’s war on the smallpox virus, and achieved success astonishingly quickly.

New York City Wages War on the Zika Virus
Health officials are preparing for the arrival of locally transmitted cases of the virus by laying traps, spraying and conducting lab tests.

English Village Becomes Climate Leader by Quietly Cleaning Up Its Own Patch
In Ashton Hayes, residents have banded together to cut greenhouse emissions with solar panels, wine-and-cheese nights and no politicians.

The Beat, and the Bug Spray, Go On in South Beach Despite Zika Threat
There was some worry, but not enough to dim the party atmosphere. Said one man: “Maybe it’s only a problem if there’s a big swarm. I’m pretty chill.”

Poverty, Drought and Felled Trees Imperil Malawi Water Supply
The practice of depleting the forest for precious fuel during hard times has been taking a toll at taps in the capital city, Lilongwe.

Why Do You Want a Pet? Can You Afford It?
The question of whether to get a pet is more complex than you’d think. The needs of the animal are as important as the needs of the owner, experts say.

Pregnant Women Advised to Avoid Travel to Active Zika Zone in Miami Beach
Federal health officials issued a broad advisory after Florida identified 5 new infections from local transmissions. This means the state now has two areas considered active Zika zones.