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Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going-so far as I can tell-but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I'm not working, I'm as likely as not to be foraging in the Web's info-thickets'reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they're sometimes likened, hyperlinks don't merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

Research being carried out at Carlos III University of Madrid analyzes the key factors in climate change and the risks to public policies that it implies. This study approaches the issue from the perspective of Sociology, Economics and Law.

As Nasa prepares to retire its fleet of space shuttles, it is encouraging private companies to build new rockets to get its astronauts into orbit. Among the firms landing huge contracts to build the next generation of spacecraft is SpaceX. Science correspondent David Shukman visited the company's rocket factory in California for a look inside the prototype capsule.

Britain has brought online a new desalination plant near London capable of providing the city with 150 million gallons (568 million litres) of water per day, should the need arise. At a cost of £270 ($445) million, and built over the past four years, the plant uses reverse osmosis to remove salt from the brackish water pumped in from the Thames Estuary, which it then pumps into local reservoirs, thus staving off the threat of drought.

Amphibian declines around the world have forced many species to the brink of extinction, are much more complex than realized and have multiple causes that are still not fully understood, researchers conclude in a new report.

The high cost of health care is deterring parents from taking their children to the doctor or buying prescription medication, regardless of how much money they make or whether they have health insurance, according to a study to be presented Sunday, May 2, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver.