While Japan is known to have higher than average rates of stomach cancer, the residents of the town of Kaneyama in Yamagata Prefecture appear to be particularly susceptible to the gastric ailment. After a recent report revealed that the municipality had one of the highest stomach cancer fatality rates out of the nation’s 344 “secondary medical districts”, the town officials decided to get its 6,000 residents tested....

The total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, is the first of its kind to go coast-to-coast across the continental United States in nearly a century. While the partial eclipse will start earlier and end later, the total eclipse will travel from Oregon to South Carolina in a speedy 93 minutes. Its narrow, 70-mile-wide, path of totality will begin at Lincoln Beach, OR at 10:15 a.m PDT (1:15 p.m. EDT) and continue through Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina, before ending in Charleston, SC at 11:48 a.m. PDT (2:48 p.m. EDT)....

A massive patch or “blob” of warm water experienced along the usually cool U.S. Pacific coast from 2013 to 2016 wreaked havoc on the marine ecosystem. Fishermen in Alaska reported seeing warm water sharks, while California beachgoers encountered tropical poisonous water snakes. Though the return of cooler temperatures in 2017 rid the area of most unwanted visitors, bioluminescent pyrosomes ((Pyrosoma atlanticum) have decided to stay and are now washing up along the coast in unprecedented numbers....