Science

Bright lights are part of a city's ecosystem. Think of Times Square or the Las Vegas Strip or right outside your bedroom window.

Electric lighting is ubiquitous in most urban and suburban neighborhoods. It's something most people take for granted, but appreciate, since it feels like well-lit streets keep us safer. But what if all this wattage is actually causing harm?

"We're getting brighter and brighter and brighter," warns Paul Bogard, author of the upcoming book, End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light.

The Dragon has been captured. The SpaceX unmanned craft connected with the International Space Station at 5:31 a.m. ET, NASA tweeted. The spacecraft arrived a day late due to mechanical problems after Friday's launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

An estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year, "largely due to their inherent vulnerability, and an increasing demand, particularly for their fins, in the Asian market," a new report finds.

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.

The State Department released its environment assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday. Melissa Block talks to Elizabeth Shogren.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

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 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.

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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.