Science

The way Americans get their electricity is changing. Coal is in decline. Natural gas is bursting out of the ground in record amounts. And the use of wind and solar energy is growing fast. All this is happening as power companies are trying to choose which kind of energy to bet on for the next several decades.

Until recently, half of these plants burned coal to make electricity. Now, that's down to about one-third. Since 2010, about 150 coal plants either have been retired or it's been announced they will be retired soon.

Audie Cornish talks with AP correspondent Vanessa Gera about Polish inventor Wojciech Inglot, who died last weekend. Inglot invented a "breathable" nail polish, which became a surprise hit among Muslim women. The special polish allows them to fulfill the religious obligation of hand-washing before prayers, and still keep their manicures.

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And I'm Melissa Block. We've reported a lot on the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline. It would carry oil from the tar sands of Canada all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. And today, there's a development in this story. The State Department has released a new analysis of environmental impacts of the pipeline.

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And I'm Melissa Block. Late last night in Sefner, Florida, near Tampa, a giant sinkhole opened up suddenly under the home of Jeffrey Bush. The hole measures some 30 feet across. It's at least 20 feet deep. Five people escaped the home, but Mr. Bush was plunged into the sinkhole and is feared dead.

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Scientists have known for some time that genes play a role in disorders like major depression, bipolar disorder, autism, schizophrenia and ADHD. But a major new study published in the journal Lancet suggests that those five disorders may actually share some of the same genetic links. The study analyzed the DNA of more than 60,000 people around the world. Jordan Smoller is a professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. And he helped lead the study. I asked him what the study set out to find.

The other day I got an email from a friend. It began: "Am suffocating and overwhelmed. Impossible to list everything that's going on. It's all work related. By next week should be out of the darkest of woods."

My 11-year-old son exclaimed the other day that he felt overwhelmed. I think what he meant was that the demands of school and home life, compounded by baseball-practice and karate class, are just too much.

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Far above the Earth's surface, two doughnuts of radiation surround the planet, charged particles zipping around in stable belts - that's the shape of them - and they were discovered in 1958 by James Van Allen and now bear his name. They are the Van Allen Belts.

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Robert Langer is sort of a modern-day Thomas Edison. He holds over 800 patents. He's launched two dozen startups making an eclectic variety of stuff from tumor-zapping nanoparticles to biosensors and blood tests, synthetic spinal cords, even anti-frizz hair products, all of this originating from the same lab. And recently, President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. He's already won the National Medal of Science, after all.