In August 2014, California became the first state to impose a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags at large retail stores. In addition, there will be a 10 cent minimum charge for recycled paper bags, reusable plastic bags, and compostable bags at certain locations. The ban is widely supported by environmentalists, who say the bags contribute to litter and pollution. In California, there is particular concern that the bags, when swept out to sea, could harm ocean life.

The state-wide ban was meant take effect on July 1, 2015, but the measure has triggered a harsh reaction from plastic bag manufacturers, who say their product can be easily recycled. An effort to kill the ban on single-use plastic grocery bags advanced this week after bag makers spent several million dollars on a campaign to gather signatures for a proposed ballot initiative to overturn it. Mr. Daniels of Hilex Poly said the plastic bag has been unfairly scapegoated for a variety of environmental ills. Thin plastic bags are reused, he said: They are repurposed as lunch bags and trash can liners, and they come in handy for pet cleanup.

Dozens of cities and counties throughout the state have already implemented local bans. Abbi Waxman, a television writer in Los Angeles, said, "I have, I'm not kidding, about 40 reusable bags at home, because I feel so guilty when I come without them that I buy more each time." Ms. Moya, a telemarketer and a mother of two said she has begun stockpiling plastic bags at home because paper bags "are always breaking. It's stupid, and it makes it really hard for us," she said, as she waited in the rain for a taxi with her disintegrating paper bags.

The most important job inside any cell is making proteins, and they are all made using instructions from DNA. This process is practically gospel in the field of molecular biology, but new research identifies some exceptions. Some proteins, it turns out, can make other proteins.

This isn't a case of a protein going rogue. It seems to be part of the recycling process that occurs when there's a mistake in a protein being built. When an error is introduced, the ribosomes stall and call in a group of quality control proteins, including Rqc2. In observing this process, the researchers saw how Rqc2 links up with the transfer RNA and tells it to insert a random sequence of two amino acids into the chain (out of 20 total amino acids).

The researchers believe that Rqc2's seemingly aberrant behavior might be an integral part of keeping your body free of faulty proteins. It's possible that it is flagging the protein for destruction, or that the string of amino acids could be a test to see if the ribosome is working properly. People with disorders like Alzheimers and Huntingtons diseases have defective quality control processes for their proteins. Understanding the exact conditions where Rqc2 is triggered, and where it fails to trigger, are the next step in this research, and could be important for developing new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

The science world has been mostly fixated on Mars and comets, but some scientists at NASA are starting to talk about Venus -- suggesting a manned mission to our closest neighbor could be simpler and less expensive than a trip to Mars.

Venus is one of the least hospitable places in the solar system. Its close proximity to the sun makes its surface unimaginably hot -- 462 degrees celsius. And its lower atmosphere is a highly pressurized oven of noxious gases. A manned mission to Venus, however, wouldn't have to involve the planet's surface. Researchers say just a few miles higher up and Venus's atmosphere boasts conditions not unlike Earth's, with more a manageable temperature and pressure. A new study by researchers at the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate, part of the NASA Langley Research Center, suggests astronauts could circle Venus in a helium-inflated dirigible -- conducting science experiments as they orbit.

This mission calls for a 129-meter airship floating 50 kilometers above the surface, called the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), which has a small habitat suspended below and solar panels on top for power. At that level, the atmospheric pressure is one atmosphere. The temperature up that high is only 75 degrees Celsius, which is perfectly manageable. Even at 50 kilometers up, Venus' atmosphere offers ample protection from radiation - it's about the same level you'd experience in Canada. Mars, on the other hand, would expose astronauts to 40 times more radiation than on Earth. Power would be no problem as Venus gets 40% more solar energy than Earth and 240 times more than Mars. Since there is a thick atmosphere, the airship could use that electrical power to spin propellers or turbines for propulsion.

T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless carrier, won its bid to change rules for judging whether market leaders AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. charge smaller competitors too much to use their networks for roaming. The Federal Communications Commission in an order released today said it would grant a petition from T-Mobile, and would compare proposed roaming rates with other prices, during disputes.

As usual, Verizon claimed the rule change would "discourage investment". AT&T says T-Mobile "has other options, including building out its own broadband network", and said they will challenge the FCC's decision.

The average data roaming rate paid by T-Mobile in 2013 was 30/MB. With T-Mobile's $30 for 5 GByte per month plan, using your entire quota while roaming would actually cost the company about $1,500 in roaming fees. AT&T drives-up that price, charging 150 percent more than the average rate T-Mobile pays for data roaming elsewhere.

ICANN has reported a major security breach. The organization, which is responsible for managing IP addresses (among other things) for the internet, was hacked late last month. Using basic spear phishing attacks, hackers managed to trick ICANN employees into giving up private credentials upon receiving emails that appeared to come from the organization itself. As a result, several internal systems have been breached.

ICANN reports that not only were internal emails accessed, but also a number of other things including an employee only wiki-page with public data, as well as the database to see who has registered a certain domain. Hackers also accessed the Centralized Zone Data System (CZDS), which allows them access to user names, addresses, emails and other contact/personal data. While certainly the most troubling of them all, the passwords stolen in the CZDS breach were encrypted and not just sitting around as plain text entries.

The organization implemented improved security measures early this year, before the attack. The group now plans to implement additional security measures.

U.S. officials previously announced plans to relinquish the federal government's control over managing the Internet to a "multistakeholder community" in March, following backlash over revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance program. The cyber attack could fuel those wary of ICANN's transition to an international authority, who argue the move would compromise the safety of the Internet. Some opponents doubt the organization's ability to manage the Internet for the entire globe.

New research has revealed that ancient Europeans adapted the ability to digest dairy much later than expected. It's long been known that after humans transitioned from hunter gatherers to farmers, many populations also evolved the ability to tolerate lactose, a sugar found in dairy. But new DNA evidence now shows that this ability evolved much later in certain populations - and for 4,000 years ancient Europeans were eating cheese, despite not being able to stomach it.

Scientists had estimated that lactose tolerance must have evolved around 7,000 years ago or more, when cheese-making first started. But the researchers found that the genes didn't actually appear until 3,000 years ago. The next step is to map the distribution of the lactose-tolerant gene further, and find out more about how our genetics changed in response to our diet.

This seems to show that human evolution doesn't happen as quickly as expected, and lends some credence to the saying: Starving people have no food allergies.

New research demonstrates that an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations thousands of years ago was a key factor in causing substantially more rainfall in two major regions of Africa. It was the most recent time during which natural global warming was associated with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. Following a long dry spell during the glacial maximum, the amount of rainfall in Africa abruptly increased, starting around 14,700 years ago and continuing until around 5,000 years ago. So intense was the cumulative rainfall, turning desert into grasslands and savannas, that scientists named the span the African Humid Period (AHP).

Previous studies had suggested that the AHP was triggered by a ~20,000-year cyclic wobble in Earth's orbit that resulted in increased summertime heating north of the equator. That summertime heating would have warmed the land in such a way as to strengthen the monsoon winds from the ocean and enhance rainfall. Instead, the study revealed the role of two other factors: a change in Atlantic Ocean circulation that rapidly boosted rainfall in the region, and a rise in greenhouse gas concentrations that helped enhance rainfall across a wide swath of Africa.

While the industrialized world looks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to preserve our current climate, Africa could find itself benefiting from increased emissions.

Last week, the Princeton University Press published the Digital Einstein Papers, electronic versions of an enormous number of Albert Einstein's written works, including published papers, popular writings, and even personal correspondence with scientists and family.

The site presents all 13 volumes published to date by the editors of the Einstein Papers Project, covering the writings and correspondence of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) from his youth to 1923.

The volumes are presented in the original language version with in-depth English language annotation and other scholarly apparatus. In addition, the reader can toggle to an English language translation of most documents.

This is an incredible collection. An enormous amount of work has been put in by both projects to collect and translate the works. If you find any documents of particular interest, post a link in the comments!

If you enjoy reading about the history of science, this is a great story: the history of geologist Marie Thorp, whose methodical plotting and cataloging of mid-ocean SONAR data led to the discovery and mapping of the mountainous ridges that bisect the world's oceans. That discovery in turn helped validate the geologic theory of continental drift, which until then had been dismissed by even serious, erudite scientists as a bit of poetry and imagination.

In late 1952, as Tharp was replotting the ocean floor, Heezen took on another deep-sea project searching for safe places to plant transatlantic cables. He was creating his own map, which plotted earthquake epicenters in the ocean floor. As his calculations accumulated, he noticed something strange: Most quakes occurred in a nearly continuous line that sliced down the center of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Tharp had finished her second map-a physiographic diagram giving the ocean floor a 3-D appearance-and sure enough, it showed the rift again. When Heezen and Tharp laid their two maps on top of each other on a light table, both were stunned by how neatly the maps fit.

An interesting read that's surprisingly heart-warming: amazing to see how facts become knowledge and knowledge leads to understanding.

In the movement toward patent reform, the Patent Office, Congress, and the courts aren't the only targets for change. Individual and corporate patent owners have steps they can take to reduce the harmful effects of software patents and disempower patent trolls, largely through alternative licensing schemes. The EFF announces:

We're excited to announce the first set of patents released under one such scheme, the Defensive Patent License (DPL). The 23 patents, owned by EFF cofounder John Gilmore, were created by Pixel Qi, a startup that aimed to advance low-power LCD screens. With these patents under the DPL, anyone can license them royalty-free as long as they license their own patents (and commit to licensing future patents) under the same terms-even if they don't have any patents at all.

The Defensive Patent License, pioneered by a team at NYU and Berkeley law schools with support from EFF, sets out to create an environment where patents aren't bludgeons for offensive litigation campaigns, abused by companies to engage in expensive lawsuits and by trolls to threaten true innovators. Inspired by free software and free cultural license, the DPL allows for patent-owners and developers to benefit from openly sharing their portfolio.

Interested in more? Check out the EFF's Hacking the Patent System Guide [PDF], available from their website. Back under the bridge with you, trolls!