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A new long-term simulation study confirms that partial replacement of lead pipes with copper, has caused serious problems in Flint, MI and Washington, DC, and more than doubles the lead released into the water supply. A partial lead and copper pipe approach to service line replacement may increase the risk of lead exposure to harmful levels, as described in the study published in Environmental Engineering Science.

Scientists from the University of South Florida, along with colleagues in Canada and the Netherlands, have determined that the influx of fresh water from the Greenland ice sheet is “freshening” the North Atlantic Ocean and could disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), an important component of global ocean circulation that could have a global effect. Researchers say it could impact the future climate in places such as portions of Europe and North America.

Some storms transport ozone molecules to the canopy of the rainforest, influencing chemical processes that ultimately affect cloud formation, according to an international research team led by Penn State. The team conducted a nine-month study in the central Amazon rainforest of Brazil and their findings could be used to improve climate prediction models to more accurately gauge the Amazon’s impact on future global weather patterns.

No need for hyperdrive: Scientists have released an “expansion pack” for a virtual tour of the universe that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own computer. The latest version of the publicly accessible images of the sky, which can be viewed using an interactive Sky Viewer tool, roughly doubles the size of the searchable universe from the project’s original release in May.

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have discovered that a social laboratory rodent, the prairie vole, shows an empathy-based consoling response when other voles are distressed. This is the first time researchers have shown consolation behavior in rodents, and this discovery ends the long-standing belief that detecting the distress of others and acting to relieve that stress is uniquely human.

The many colors and patterns of bird eggs can provide camouflage and help parents tell their own eggs apart from those of invaders, but a forthcoming study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances suggests another function for eggshell patterns—they can provide information about the health of the mother. The researchers behind the new study found that the patterns of reddish-brown spots on the white eggs of Great Tits reflect the quality and health of the mother bird, with sicker, duller mothers laying eggs patterned with darker spots.

From the polyurethane that makes our car seats to the paper made from bleached wood pulp, chlorine can be found in a variety of large-scale manufacturing processes. But while chlorine is good at activating the strong bonds of molecules, which allows manufacturers to synthesize the products we use on a daily basis, it can be an insidious chemical, sometimes escaping into the environment as hazardous byproducts such as chloroform and dioxin.

Researchers have created nanoribbons of an emerging class of materials called topological insulators and used a magnetic field to control their semiconductor properties, a step toward harnessing the technology to study exotic physics and building new spintronic devices or quantum computers.

This processed image is the highest-resolution color look yet at the haze layers in Pluto’s atmosphere. Shown in approximate true color, the picture is constructed from a mosaic of four panchromatic images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) splashed with Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) four-color filter data, all acquired by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015

Biophysicists have discovered why the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB) are naturally somewhat resistant to antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. Their findings, based on mapping the detailed three-dimensional structure of the drugs interacting with an essential enzyme in the TB germ, also reveal why some TB drugs are more potent than others and suggest how drug developers can make fluoroquinolones more efficacious against mutations that make the lung disease drug resistant.