Abstracts: Zika’s Structure, Leaking Gas Pipes, and More

A roundup of science news from around the Web — and around the world.

• The manufacturer of a pain-relief cream full of opioids bribed doctors and pharmacists $25 million to prescribe it. The cream then led to the death of an injured worker’s child. (Reveal News)

• HIV patients have a high risk of organ failure. For the first time, a team of Johns Hopkins surgeons managed to transplant a kidney and liver from one HIV patient to two others. (NPR)

Bat USFWS Midwest CC BY 2-0

A northern long-eared bat. North American bats are threatened by the fast-spreading white nose syndrome. Visual by USFWS Midwest

• The immune response that’s linked to schizophrenia may also play a role in Alzheimer’s. The race is on to translate this knowledge into a new drug. (STAT)

• The stomachs of beached sperm whales in Germany held a car engine cover and a plastic bucket: “a horrible indictment” of the way humans treat the seas. (National Geographic)

• Twenty-five independent psychology teams replicated the same 10 experiments before they were published, in an effort to solve psychology’s replication problem. (The Atlantic)

• A random sample of leaking natural gas pipes in Boston found that 15 of them presented an immediate explosion hazard, and others were seeping methane. (InsideClimate News)

• Scientists at Purdue University have discovered the structure of the Zika virus, providing a clearer target for potential vaccines or antiviral medicines. (Science News)

• The bat-killing fungus called white nose syndrome reached the West Coast, moving faster than biologists expected. (Los Angeles Times)

• Looking at 30 years of data, a team of astronomers suggest our theory of gamma ray bursts — which may have caused mass extinctions — needs updating. (New Scientist)

• And finally: Geologists are planning to drill to the bottom of the Chicxulub crater to figure out how the 8.6-mile wide asteroid that killed the dinosaurs could have pushed the Earth’s crust over 12 miles down. (Nature News)

Conor is a science writer from St. Louis, Mo. His work has appeared in The Atlantic online, NOVA Next, and Technology Review. He attends the Graduate Program in Science Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously, he worked as a biology research assistant, studying sensory neuroscience, urban bird conservation, and environmental chemistry. He earned his B.S. in biology and B.A. in English at Truman State University. His poetry and criticism have appeared in the Chariton Review, Mochila Review, and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.