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IBM researchers this week announced they’ve made major strides in nanotechnology by studying how to build storage and other computing devices out of components no bigger than a few atoms or molecules. Researchers at the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., report in Science that magnetic anisotropy could eventually be used to store information in individual atoms, paving the way to pack as much as 150 trillion bits of data per square inch, 1,000 times more than current data storage densities....

PERU A study found that epigenetic changes (chemical modifications that control DNA activity) help Quechua people who spent their childhood in the Andes Mountains endure high altitudes. CANADA Researchers reconstructed the mitochondrial genome of a mummified wolf pup buried in permafrost for more than 50,000 years. They found that the way it is related to both North American and Eurasian wolves suggests the populations maintained a connection over an ancient land bridge....

In their quest to build a computer that would take advantage of the weirdness of quantum mechanics, physicists are pursuing a number of disparate technologies, including superconducting devices, photon-based systems, quantum dots, spintronics and nuclear magnetic resonance of molecules. In recent months, however, teams working with trapped atomic ions have demonstrated several landmark feats that the other approaches will be hard-pressed to match. A quantum computer operates on quantum bits, or qubits, instead of ordinary bits....

“America’s ecosystems have evolved since the Pleistocene; the consequences of introductions of exotic megafauna to the continent cannot be predicted.” —Dustin Rubenstein et al. Rewilding Rebuttal In “Restoring America’s Big, Wild Animals,” C. Josh Donlan reiterates a proposal to populate the American West with species (lions, cheetahs and elephants) he considers “proxies” for extinct megafauna present there in the Pleistocene. Donlan mentions some of our concerns, published in Biological Conservation in October 2006, but dismisses them unfairly....

Mosquito-borne diseases kill about 700,000 people every year. Lives can be spared by applying insect repellents, including a chrysanthemum flower extract called pyrethrum that humans have used for thousands of years. A new study in Nature Communications finally shows how pyrethrum works, with two components acting synergistically to deter the pesky bloodsuckers. Mosquitoes tend to develop resistance to a specific repellent over time, notes the study’s senior author Ke Dong, a Duke University neurotoxicologist....

An atmospheric river—a long, narrow conveyor belt of rainstorms—flows about 1.5 kilometers above the ocean surface and can extend thousands of kilometers toward land from out at sea, carrying as much water as 15 Mississippi Rivers. It strikes a coast as a series of storms that move from west to east with prevailing winds and arrive for days or weeks on end. Meteorologists have had some difficulty predicting the amounts and types of precipitation from these systems and, therefore, possible flooding....

The discovery of carvings on a snake-shaped rock along with 70,000-year-old spearheads nearby has dramatically pushed back the earliest evidence for ritual behavior, or what could be called religion. The finding, which researchers have yet to formally publish, comes from a cave hidden in the Tsodilo Hills of Botswana, a mecca of sorts for the local people, who call it the Mountain of the Gods. “It’s very big news,” says Sheila Coulson, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo in Norway and leader of the study....

Previous studies have vastly underestimated the carbon footprint of the Canadian oil sands by not considering the industry’s impact on peatlands, according to new research. Scientists from the University of Alberta found that 10 operational oil sands mining projects would destroy enough peatlands to release 11.4 million to 47.3 million metric tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere. That release is the equivalent of seven years’ worth of emissions from the oil sands mining region....

Martian soil around NASA’s Phoenix Lander is slightly alkaline and has enough different minerals that it could support Earthly plants and—more to the point—microbes beneath the Martian surface, according to the first results from the probe’s wet chemistry experiment released today. Mission scientists say the soil has a pH between 8 and 9, which places it somewhere around seawater or baking soda in alkalinity. It also contains the minerals magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride....

DARPA wants to assemble the world’s biggest “red team”—a group of outsiders that can help the Department of Defense get ahead of terrorists looking to attack military personnel, equipment or operations. DARPA will evaluate proposals it receives as part of Improv and within the next month dole out up to $40,000 per proposal to help the proposers study the feasibility of their idea. Once the feasibility studies are completed, DARPA will award another $70,000 to each project it wants to see developed into a basic working prototype that the U....

In an era of changing climate and sinking economies, Malthusian limits to growth are back—and squeezing us painfully. Whereas more people once meant more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation, today it just seems to mean less for each. Less water for every cattle herder in the Horn of Africa. (The United Nations projects there will be more than four billion people living in nations defined as water-scarce or water-stressed by 2050, up from half a billion in 1995....

YEARNING FOR STIMULATION The research on boredom as described by James Danckert in “Chronic Boredom May Be a Sign of Poor Health” is interesting in a number of ways, but it also shows that there are limitations to research that concentrates on a single emotion. Instead emotions should be viewed as parts of a more general system of experience. For example, one model called reversal theory posits that boredom can only be fully understood as one of a set of four related emotions: boredom, excitement, relaxation and anxiety....

Atlantic saury, pearlsides, sand lances—you’ve probably never tasted any of these fish (or heard of them). But they and other “forage” species play a vital role in our oceans—they’re food for the fish we eat. In fact, these lowly forage species are so essential to the health of marine ecosystems that some people are taking extra steps to protect them—especially as the global demand for seafood soars. Last week the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing in U....

Developed countries’ dominance in climate research may make it harder for poorer nations to participate effectively in the Paris climate agreement, according to a report published last week in Nature Climate Change. That imbalance is overwhelming: Researchers from industrialized countries published 10,442 scientific and technical journal articles in 2011, compared with only 1,323 by researchers from the developing world, according to World Bank data. The 14 authors of last week’s paper say that state of affairs could complicate poor countries’ ability to appropriately participate in agreements like the Paris deal, which calls on nations to formulate and fulfil their own commitments....

Edward Snowden’s video feed may have been a bit muddled on Monday but his message to a South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive audience was quite clear. Privacy and digital security are not dead, despite massive surveillance programs that the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor exposed last year. Snowden addressed the hip technology crowd via a Google+ Hangout on Air. The signal bounced between his undisclosed location in Russia and the conference in Austin, Texas, through a series of proxy servers designed to make it more difficult for anyone to disrupt his Web feed....

The oceans near Antarctica that absorb carbon and protect our planet from climate change have been working robustly in the past decade, finds a new study published yesterday in Science. The study contradicts earlier inferences that the Southern Ocean’s carbon sink has been weak in the 21st century. The earlier studies were based on modeling, while the new study is based on observations. The Southern Ocean encircles Antarctica and is home to a unique upwelling current that cycles carbon between the atmosphere and deep water....

The microbial mats that thrive in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park are a rainbow of red, orange, yellow, green and brown. Within these thick growths live millions of microbes, busily thriving on the energy provided by the volcanic activity, their peers and, of course, the sun. Five of the 25 phyla of bacteria—such as the ubiquitous, oxygen-tolerant Cyanobacteria that contribute the largest share of photosynthesis on Earth—produce chlorophyll, the magic molecule that helps organisms convert sunlight into food....

One of the great challenges of sustainable development is to combine society’s desires for economic prosperity and social security. For decades economists and politicians have debated how to reconcile the undoubted power of markets with the reassuring protections of social insurance. America’s supply-siders claim that the best way to achieve well-being for America’s poor is by spurring rapid economic growth and that the higher taxes needed to fund high levels of social insurance would cripple prosperity....

Whenever there’s a problem in the modern world, we try to solve it by building barriers. Music piracy? Copy protection. Hacked Web sites? More complicated passwords. Unfortunately, these barriers generally inconvenience the law-abiding citizen and do very little to impede the bad guys. Serious music pirates and Web hackers still find their way through. Maybe all the hurdles are enough to thwart the casual bad guys. That seems to be the thinking behind the Web blockades known as Captchas....

At the southern tip of the island of Santa Cruz in the Galápagos, a gorge known as Las Grietas is home to a species of parrot fish: a brilliantly colored creature about 18 inches in length. The pool where the fish live was created long ago, when large waves spilled over the island’s raised edge and into a deep crevice. Today it is refreshed by rainwater that seeps through the porous volcanic rock that forms the steep gorge....