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Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power by Dan Hurley Penguin Group/Hudson Street Press, 2013 Psychologists have long believed that fluid intelligence, or the ability to learn and solve problems, is essentially immutable. That is why in 2008, when Swiss psychologists Susanne M. Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl suggested that they could improve this form of intelligence with a simple working memory task, their findings sent ripples of disbelief among cognitive scientists....

In the language of climate change, we often talk about mitigation—how we can reduce harmful gases in the atmosphere that cause global warming. But there is another pressing climate concept, especially in Africa, called adaptation. Adaptation is about coping with the negative effects of global warming, such as destruction of property by floods or food insecurity caused by severe drought. Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the effects of global warming, and adaptation is a critical step for it and other developing regions hoping to survive climate change....

A large, almost-blind shark that lives in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans is officially the world’s longest-living vertebrate, scientists say. The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) has a lifespan of at least 272 years, and might live as long as 500 years. That is older than the 211-year lifespan of the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus), the previous record-holder in the scientific literature. It also beats the popular — but unconfirmed — tale of a famous female Koi carp called Hanako, who supposedly lived to 226 years old....

Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, or Peace-Kingdom Hundred-Water, as his name translates, was anything but conventional. Known for bright colors, curved lines and organic forms–as well as performances in the nude–his work often generated controversy. A low-income housing block of his design in Vienna is no exception: the Hundertwasser Haus, planned in 1977, features undulating floors, a grass- and soil-covered roof and huge trees growing inside rooms, their branches reaching out from the windows....

Solution: Each judge places all the students from one school in a single row and all the students of each major in a single column. The judge assigns ranks by affixing the appropriate rank to the blank side of each card. Then the judge turns the cards over so that the name, high school and major are showing. To verify that the judge is telling the truth, a “verifier” first makes sure that each row represents a single school and each column represents a single major....

Wait a minute. There’s something unusual about the subway seat you just claimed. It’s awfully warm, and a peculiar odor seems to hover in the air nearby—a stale, musty odor tinged with something as acrid as mothballs. You know this aroma: it’s “old person smell.” Anecdotally, the unique scent of the elderly lingers wherever they live and in any confined spaces they have recently occupied, such as taxis and elevators. Many different cultures have recognized the phenomenon—the Japanese even have a word for it, kareishuu—but the biological truth of old person smell remains uncertain....

Less than a decade after the first full human genome was mapped, technology has arrived to decode the full genome of a single sex cell. The ability promises to offer new insight into the causes of infertility, the development of mutations and the diversity of the human genome. Sperm and egg cells differ from other bodily cells in that they have a single—rather than double—set of chromosomes. Researchers have successfully amplified and sequenced 91 sperm cells from a single individual, a 40-year-old man whose genome has already been sequenced and analyzed—an important factor for checking the accuracy of the sperm sequencing....

The undersea cable connecting Tonga to the global Internet and phone systems was finally restored in late February. The archipelagic nation’s access had been cut off since January 15, when the largely submerged Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai volcano unleashed a gargantuan blast and tsunami. Powerful underwater currents, perhaps triggered by the volcano’s partial collapse, severely damaged a 50-mile stretch of the 510-mile-long undersea cable that linked Tonga to the rest of the world....

Not too long ago three aliens descended to Earth to evaluate the status of intelligent life. One specialized in engineering, one in chemistry and one in computation. Turning to his colleagues, the engineer reported (translation follows): “All of the creatures here are solid, some segmented, with capacities to move on the ground, through the water or air. All extremely slow. Unimpressive.” The chemist then commented: “All quite similar, derived from different sequences of four chemical ingredients....

A new and lucrative standard in global connectivity is the impetus for these sprawling swarms of spacecraft. Blanketing our planet in satellites to beam high-speed Internet to any location on Earth around the clock could banish the days of struggling with spotty Wi-Fi and cellular connections, while also transporting the estimated three billion people who are currently offline into the digital age. If these companies are successful, the entire world could be suddenly interlinked as never before, with the Internet becoming truly omnipresent for essentially every human on the planet....

The midterm elections ushered in a new era of climate politics in Washington. It’s going to be messy. Republicans were favored to win the House in Tuesday’s elections — but early results signaled a drastic underperformance. House control was still undetermined as of 5 a.m., and any Republican majority would be slim. Democrats also flipped a Senate seat, giving them a greater chance of retaining the upper chamber. But the election results, which will take weeks to finalize, already have clear consequences for President Joe Biden: Months after passing the biggest climate bill in U....

By Keith CoffmanDENVER (Reuters) - Voters in three Colorado communities have decided to suspend or ban an oil and gas production process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, according to unofficial election returns on Wednesday.Boulder, Lafayette and Fort Collins passed measures with solid margins, but a fourth community, Broomfield, about 12 miles east of Boulder, narrowly rejected a fracking moratorium.Seventy-eight percent of Boulder residents voted to suspend fracking within city limits for five years, while a similar measure won 56 percent support in Fort Collins....

The wind power boom in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Gorge is both a renewable energy success story and a cautionary tale. Engineers packed the gorge with thousands of wind turbines that power two million to three million homes. The carbon-free energy, however, regularly causes migraines for operators at the Bonneville Power Administration, based in Portland, Ore., who manage the regional electricity grid. Changing weather shifts winds across the broad span of turbines, creating huge power swings....

By Osamu TsukimoriTOKYO (Reuters) - The operator of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will double the pay of contract workers as part of a revamp of operations at the station, after coming under criticism for its handling of clean-up efforts.Hazard pay for the thousands of workers on short-term contracts will be increased from 10,000 yen ($100) to 20,000 yen a day, Tokyo Electric Power Co said in a statement on Friday....

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia’s Great Barrier Reef remains under threat despite efforts to rein in major sources of damage to the World Heritage-listed icon, the government said on Tuesday. Canberra released a five-yearly review of the reef and moves to protect it, to address concerns raised by UNESCO and persuade the world body not to put the key tourist attraction on its “in danger” list next year. “Even with the recent management initiatives to reduce threats and improve resilience, the overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is poor, has worsened since 2009 and is expected to further deteriorate,” the government said in its outlook report....

Australian universities and researchers have condemned the actions of a government minister who vetoed projects that had been selected for funding by expert panels. Academics say that the government’s interference has undermined the integrity of the peer-review system and could damage the country’s reputation as a desirable place to do research. Last week, it emerged that in June 2018 and November 2017, Simon Birmingham, the then-minister for education, used his ministerial powers to stop funding for 11 humanities research projects, worth a combined AUS$4....

UNITED NATIONS—President Obama and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli told a landmark global warming summit yesterday that their countries stand ready to make serious new commitments to tackling climate change. The separate statements fell well short of the joint U.S.-China announcement many hoped to see from the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluters, which for decades have been adversaries in international climate negotiations. Each also was short on specifics and peppered with demands for what must be included in a new global deal....

In the end, President Obama won the coveted endorsement of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But it wasn’t Obama’s visits or entreaties that sealed it. It was Hurricane Sandy’s. Bloomberg endorsed Obama in an op-ed yesterday, arguing that Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events may not be directly caused by climate change, but that the risk that they are requires action by elected officials. Republican nominee Mitt Romney has backed off his previous pledges to act on climate change, Bloomberg said, making Obama the preferred choice....

When U.S. President George W. Bush urged the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to follow his administration’s lead in confronting climate change at the end of September, listeners could easily view the speech as a lot of hot air about a lot of hot air. After all, during most of President Bush’s time in office, he has consistently cast doubt on any human role in global warming and rejected the international Kyoto Protocol on reducing such emissions as an unacceptable drag on economic development....

Sophisticated tool-making skills more widespread than previously thought.By Rex DaltonHand axes from southern Spain have been dated to nearly a million years old, suggesting that advanced Stone Age tools were present in Europe far earlier than was previously believed.Acheulian axes, which date to at least 1.5 million years ago, have been found in Africa, and similar tools at least 700,000 years old have been found in Israel and China. But in Europe, sophisticated tool-making was thought to stretch back only around 500,000 years....