100 EVAs, 100 Days to Earth and other top stories.

• 100 EVAs, 100 Days to Earth

  

  The crew working together on EVA 100. It's one hundred and seven days to mission's end. Sometimes, it seems like we're a few days from home instead of 15 weeks. Most days, it feels like we just marked the first 100 days on sMars. I can see us all sitting around the couch downstairs wearing scarves, balancing our musical instruments while arranging radios and rock samples to spell out "100". Then, just like that, it's day 258 and we're coming up on the 4th quarter. The better part of a year -..

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• Ancient tools and bone found in Florida could help rewrite the story of the first Americans

  

  The researchers say the find is unequivocal proof that people were in Florida more than 1,000 years earlier than anyone had imagined. (FloridaState/YouTube) Thousands of years ago, some of the first Americans knelt beside a pond in what is now Florida. Clutching sharp stone knives, they hacked at the tusk of a slain mastodon, slicing meat away from the long bone. Then, with their work completed, they got up and walked away, leaving behind some tools and the stripped carcass . Centuries pas..

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• White House Goes With Its Gut, Launching Microbiome Initiative

  

  Ladies and gentlemen, put down that hand sanitizer: The microbiome has finally arrived.The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)—along with other federal agencies, leaders in the private sector and medical research institutions—has announced the launch of the National Microbiome Initiative (NMI). Its mission is to advance scientific understanding of microbial diversity in ways that may prove beneficial to health care, food production and environmental safety.At a press event..

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• Carbon capture is substantial in secondary tropical forests

  

  Secondary tropical forests consume substantial amounts of carbon, but are often neglected in climate change policy. Credit: Robin Chazdon et al. One of the most effective methods for capturing carbon from the atmosphere in the tropics of Latin America ...

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• Dung Beetles Navigate Poop-Pile Getaways Using Celestial 'Snapshots'

  

  Scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden have shown that dung beetles use mental "snapshots" of the Milky Way to navigate. E. Baird / Lund University hide caption toggle caption E. Baird / Lund University Scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden have shown that dung beetles use mental "snapshots" of the Milky Way to navigate. ..

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• Tiny ingestible robot could work wonders inside you

  

  It's a little known but often dangerous problem: each year, 3,500 people in the U.S. -- mostly young children -- swallow button batteries. Normally, these batteries pass through the body without incident. But if they come into prolonged contact with esophagus or stomach tissue, the results can be harmful: the batteries can cause an electric current that produces hydroxide, which burns through body tissue.A postdoctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shuhei Miyashita broug..

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• Critics attack Harvard's secret meeting on human genome synthesis

  

  Stanford University scientist Drew Endy. (Courtesy of Den Haag) STANFORD -- Prominent Stanford scientist Drew Endy is denouncing a secret meeting held at Harvard University this week to discuss creating a synthetic human genome -- essentially, constructing human life from scratch using chemicals.In an essay criticizing the proposed project, Endy and Northwestern University bioethicist Laurie Zoloth said human genome synthesis is a scientific development with enormous moral implications, so dis..

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