You can see it through a telescope, or watch a documentary about it, but you can't stick your nose out and take a whiff. Speaking of Chemistry returns this week to answer the very important question, "What does space smell like?" Matt Davenport, Ph.D., reveals the stinky secrets of the cosmos from the people who have been there.

Only 14% of young women who enter university for the first time chose science-related fields of study such as engineering, manufacturing and construction. This is one of the headline findings of a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that examines gender equality in education across 64 countries and jurisdictions. In comparison, 39% of young men who entered university chose to pursue one of those fields of study.

Ocean tides have changed significantly over the last century at many coastal locations around the world, according to a paper in Earth’s Future, and increases in high tide levels and the tidal range were found to have been similar to increases in average sea level at several locations.

Average sea levels are rising but tide levels have undergone little change on decadal time scales, nor will they change much over the next century, so long-term changes in tides are not a concern in computer models trying to predict the effects of rising sea levels.

From 2009 to 2013, ESA’s Planck satellite took measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), radiation that originated approximately13 billion years ago, around 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

Due to the expansion of the universe, this light is still observable today at microwave wavelengths across the entire sky so Planck surveyed the sky to map this ancient light.

One result is that the standard model of cosmology remains an excellent description of the universe, unless the Planck data is combined with other astronomical observations, where several deviations emerge. Are the anomalies due to measurement uncertainties or undiscovered physical correlations, which would challenge Einstein’s theory of gravitation?

Four billion years ago, a young Mars had enough water to bury its whole surface under 400 feet of ocean, but it is more likely that, as on Earth, it pooled. In the case of Mars, it probably formed an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, reaching a mile deep in some places.

This new finding is based on detailed observations of two slightly different forms of water in Mars’s atmosphere. One is the familiar form of water, made with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen, H2O. The other is HDO, or semi-heavy water, a naturally occurring variation in which one hydrogen atom is replaced by a heavier form, called deuterium. 

A synthetic nasal formulation of the hormone oxytocin reduced caloric intake in healthy men, particularly consumption of fatty foods, after a single treatment, a new study finds. The results, to be presented Sunday at The Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting in San Diego, confirm those of animal studies showing oxytocin reduces food intake.

Oxytocin nasal spray reportedly lowered the number of calories men consumed at a subsequent breakfast whether they were normal weight or overweight. In addition, the researchers found that oxytocin improved metabolic measures, such as insulin sensitivity, which is the body's ability to successfully clear glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream.