Paleontologists have found more solid evidence that volcanoes likely set off the Guadalupian mass extinction in the Middle Permian about 260 million years ago.

Previous studies have pointed to volcanoes as likely instigators of large-scale extinctions, such as the Siberian Traps that might have kicked off the subsequent Permian-Triassic extinction (in which as many as 70 percent of Earth's species disappeared). But, note the authors of the new study, published online today in Science, the link between volcanism and extinctions has been difficult to confirm.

A site in the Emeishan province in southwest China has turned up a telling layer of volcanic rock between sedimentary layers of old shallow seabed, reports the paper. An analysis of fossils in the sedimentary rock directly above (i.e. after) the volcanic layer shows a sharp change in the number and types of marine life, namely algae and foraminifers.

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Animals are born to roam. So when they find themselves living on small patches of land surrounded by housing developments or cornfields, their movement is unnaturally confined. They may never find that other patch a mile down the road that is full of food, nesting grounds, even mates with differing genes (a very good thing for the health of a species.) What’s more, the plant seeds and pollen that naturally hitchhike with them are also stuck.

But, as conservationists discovered more than 40 years ago, if you connect these fragments with skinny strips of natural land, called “corridors,” plants and animals can more naturally spread. Now, results published online last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest the strategy’s benefits for biodiversity may even extend beyond the borders of these linked patches of land.

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North Korea has continued to draw international ire following a nuclear test Monday by reportedly testing several short-range missiles and threatening to set aside the Korean War armistice of 1953.

The underground test this week was the country's second, following its 2006 entry into the nuclear club, and was about five times more powerful than its predecessor, according to an analysis by seismologists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Lamont's Paul G. Richards and Won-Young Kim, who wrote a feature for Scientific American in March on nuclear monitoring, estimate that the blast was several kilotons in force. The action drew condemnation from across the globe, even from China, a traditional ally.

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You remember the time as a kid when you set an ant on fire. You positioned your dad’s magnifying glass a few inches above the ground, adjusting the angle ever so slightly until the spotlight of refracted rays rested precisely on your target.* Then you waited. 

It was innocent fun—except for some of us more sensitive folk—a sort of right-of-passage, backyard science experiment. But would you recall that lesson twenty years later while placing Fido’s clear glass water bowl on your deck? 

Investigators of a house fire in Bellevue, Wash., last week are suggesting an elevated 11-inch wide glass bowl of water magnified the sun’s rays onto a wood deck, sparking a blaze that caused more than $200,000 worth of damage.  Fortunately, nobody—including the two dogs—was injured.

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Some parents who RBTL are worried that text messaging is G4N and a WOTAM that has ruined their kids' ability to engage in D&M conversations, and has become a new tool for KPC. Other parents see texting as PANS and find NBIF to physicians' and psychologists' concerns that it may trigger "anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation," as The New York Times reported earlier this week.

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What if we didn’t try to cure cancer, but simply kept tumors from growing too big? That’s what radiologist Robert Gatenby of the Moffitt Cancer Center proposes this week in the journal Nature.

Gatenby argues that high doses of powerful chemotherapies wreak havoc on a patient’s immune system and foster the rapid regrowth of chemoresistant cancers that doctors have no hope of fighting.  So instead of curing cancer, he suggests doctors aim to stabilize the tumor at a tolerable size.

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President Barack Obama nominated former astronaut and retired Marine Corps general, Charles Bolden, to lead NASA, confirming speculation that began before Obama took office. Bolden, 62, served more than three decades in the military and flew on four space shuttle missions, including the 1990 flight that put the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit.

Obama also nominated Lori Garver, a former NASA official and a member of the president's transition team, to be second in command of the space agency as deputy administrator.

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Now that President Obama has named Sonia Sotomayor as his choice for the nation's highest court, he is expected to this week select a "cyber czar" to act as the U.S.'s highest-ranking cyber security official, The Washington Post reports today. The person assuming this newly created position will be responsible for protecting the country's government-run and private computer networks and will likely get a seat on the National Security Council.

Obama announced today that he is folding White House staff focusing on homeland security and counterterrorism into the National Security Council, The Boston Globe reports. The cyber czar will likely report both to the national security adviser and the senior White House economic adviser, a move that would indicate a desire to protect private networks without threatening economic growth, according to the Post, citing anonymous sources.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will likely bring on geneticist Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project, as its new director, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.

The agency, which has been run by acting director Raynard Kington since October 2008 after Elias Zerhouni stepped down, is in late stages of screening Collins, noted Bloomberg.

The 59-year-old candidate was director from 1993 until 2008 of the National Human Genome Research Institute (which produced the map of the human genome in 2003) and received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 for his genetic research, which is the highest U.S. civilian honor.

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Increasing temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the world’s oceans may actually speed the growth of starfish, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The results contrast with previous findings of global warming’s negative effects on the five-armed fish’s relatives.

“Mollusks, bivalves, clams and mussels respond negatively to increased carbon dioxide,” says Rebecca Gooding, a doctoral student in zoology at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the paper. On the other hand, she says, compared to their invertebrate cousins, “starfish are growing faster, getting bigger faster, and they’re eating more.”

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