[Note:  Since the creation of footnotes and cross references can be so tedious on this site, I shall go ahead and publish this version of this article without such, at first.  However, I shall endeavor to add such in as I can find the time.  I apologize for the lack of "polish" or completeness this will produce, at this time, but feel it will help me get this out to you in a more timely mann

The federal government's proposal to discontinue protection for the gray wolf across the United States could have the unintended consequence of endangering other species, insist academics who don't actually live in places where wolves are running wild, threatening animals and people.

There are many pests in the world which attack plants or compete with them for the resources they need to grow.  This is true for plants growing in natural stands, but also for the plants that people grow as crops.  If pests are left unchecked, crop productivity is compromised.

Without good pest control, it would take a lot more land to feed humanity - land we simply don't have. Pest damage can also compromise the storage or shelf-life of foods leading to more wasteful inefficiencies. Pests can also make foods dangerous through the production of mycotoxins (see contaminated corn below)

Physicists at Yale and Harvard have thrown a new curve at Supersymmetry, the popular hypothesis about what lies beyond physics' reigning model of fundamental forces and particles, the Standard Model. And it involves the electron's almost perfect roundness.

The researchers have reported the most precise measurement to date of the electron's shape, improving it by a factor of more than 10 and showing the particle to be rounder than predicted by some extensions of the Standard Model, including Supersymmetry. Supersymmetry posits new types of particles that help account for ideas like dark matter, a mysterious, unknown substance estimated to make up most of the universe.

Though table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), is one of the best-known and most studied chemical compounds known, it still has a few mysteries.

Under ambient conditions, it crystallizes in a cubic unit cell and is very stable with one sodium atom (Na) and one chlorine atom (Cl). According to the octet rule, all chemical elements strive to fill their outermost shell with eight electrons, which is the most stable configuration, found in noble gases. Sodium has one extra electron and chlorine is missing one, so sodium donates one electron to chlorine, leaving both atoms with an outer shell containing eight electrons and forming a strong ionic bond.  

An antioxidant called MitoQ, which was designed to try and fight damage within human cells about a dozen years ago, significantly helps symptoms in mice that have a multiple sclerosis-like disease.

Multiple sclerosis affects more than 2.3 million people worldwide and occurs when the body's immune system attacks the myelin, or the protective sheath, surrounding nerve fibers of the central nervous system. Some underlying nerve fibers are destroyed. Resulting symptoms can include blurred vision and blindness, loss of balance, slurred speech, tremors, numbness and problems with memory and concentration.

A systematic review of 66 research papers focused on the treatment of skin ulcers suggests that most are so technically flawed that their results are unreliable, and even of those that aren't flawed only weak evidence that alternative treatments work better than standard compression therapy or special stockings. 

Zaballa (Iruña de Oca) was a medieval settlement abandoned in the 15th century due to urban flight. Prior to that it had a manor monastery and later became something of a specialized factory location before its demise. 

Zaballa is one of the more than 300 deserted settlements known in Alava-Araba - rural spaces abandoned in historical times but now being studied by the UPV/EHU's Cultural Heritage and Landscapes Research Group.