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The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting brings a wealth of scientific minds to the shores of Germany’s Lake Constance. Every summer at Lindau, dozens of Nobel Prize winners exchange ideas with hundreds of young researchers from around the world. Whereas the Nobelists are the marquee names, the younger contingent is an accomplished group in its own right. In advance of this year’s meeting, which focuses on physics, we are profiling several promising attendees under the age of 30....

Since the launch of the Human Genome Project 30 years ago, genomics has become deeply woven into research, medicine and, increasingly, daily life. In roughly 10,000 days, genomics has blossomed from a boutique discipline associated with a moonshot project into a scientific area now vital for areas as diverse as microbiology and oncology. Numerous genomic applications—noninvasive prenatal genetic testing, DNA-based forensics, direct-to-consumer ancestry sleuthing, genetic disease diagnostics and SARS-CoV-2 virus surveillance, among others—are common practice....

Saturn’s massive rings and its icy moon Enceladus have long been known to interact with the gas giant’s magnetic field via energy-rich waves of plasma, or ionized gas. Now, for the first time, researchers have detected the gas giant sending similar signals back toward its rings and moon, closing the magnetic loop. The new observations were made in the final days of NASA’s Cassini mission, as the spacecraft danced inside the planet’s rings en route to its fiery rendezvous with the planet....

Just as every planet in the solar system orbits the sun, so every star in the Milky Way orbits the big black hole at our galaxy’s center. But how far out does the Milky Way extend? Astronomers are closer to answering that question with the discovery of two remote giant stars. “They’re the most distant stars that we’ve ever seen in our Milky Way,” says John Bochanski of Haverford College, the astronomer who found them....

NEW HAVEN, W.Va.—A 100-story smokestack belches a roiling, white cloud of water vapor, carbon dioxide and other leftover gases after burning daily as much as 12,000 tons of coal at the Mountaineer Power Plant—a total of 3.5 million tons a year. The facility just outside the town of New Haven boasts a single 65-meter-high boiler capable of generating enough steam to pump out 1,300 megawatts of electricity—enough to power nearly one million average American homes a month—continuously....

By Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski IWAKI Japan (Reuters) - Like many of her neighbours, Satomi Inokoshi worries that her gritty hometown is being spoiled by the newcomers and the money that have rolled into Iwaki since the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost three and a half years ago. “Iwaki is changing - and not for the good,” said Inokoshi, 55, who echoes a sentiment widely heard in this town of almost 300,000 where the economic boom that followed the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl has brought its own disruption....

This item probably did not make the front page of your local news­paper, but researchers at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University recently produced the heaviest silicon isotope ever observed. After slamming a beam of calcium ions into a tungsten target, scientists analyzed the reaction products and identified three silicon 44 ions, each with 14 protons and 30 neutrons. (Ordinary silicon has 14 neutrons.) Given that the hefty nuclei survived for only a tiny fraction of a second before decaying, the achievement may not sound earthshaking, but this kind of nuclear research is vitally important....

North America is windy. If the U.S. and Canada had enough wind turbines, they could produce all the electricity they need, and then some, from wind alone. The same is true of solar energy, with even bigger power surpluses. The U.S. Southwest’s deserts get enough sunlight to sustain the country’s thirst for electricity—20 times over. But both these sources are inherently erratic: winds wane and clouds show up with little notice....

Scientific American presents Savvy Psychologist by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Last week on the Savvy Psychologist show, we discussed tips and tricks to get you on a plane and to your destination without the aid of the airport bar or having a panic attack. Check out How to Overcome Your Fear of Flying (Part 1) for more. This week, we’ll tackle the reasons behind your flying fears, plus some more tips on how to manage them....

“Hi! I’m Gabe. What’s your name?” “Seung-heon. Nice to meet you, Gabe.” Uh-oh. “Sorry, I missed that. What’s your name again?” “Seung-heon.” This is bad. “Sung-hon?” “Seung-heon. It’s okay—just call me Jerry. Everyone does.” I hate it when this happens. I have every intention of learning this person’s name, and my brain is simply not cooperating. I can’t seem to hear what he’s saying, I can’t pronounce it correctly, and there’s no way I’m going to remember it for more than five seconds....

In one bold stroke, the secrets-divulging group WikiLeaks underscored just how easy technology has made it to both steal confidential information and disseminate it globally. Its release of more than 250,000 U.S. embassy cables online November 28 represents the largest set of confidential documents ever leaked to the public. These headline-grabbing secrets hint that modern information technology is shifting news leaks away from traditional media such as newspapers. But rather than kill off mainstream media, such a shift could lead to a novel symbiosis, transforming how the public gets information....

By Amanda Mascarelli of Nature magazine Climate change, with its associated melting ice caps and shrinking glaciers, is the usual suspect when it comes to explaining rising sea levels. But a recent study now shows that human water use has a major impact on sea-level change that has been overlooked. During the latter half of the twentieth century, global sea level rose by about 1.8 millimeters per year, according to data from tide gauges....

The prehistoric farmers of southern Mexico must have longed for a miracle. A tropical climate made their fertile valleys nearly ideal for planting, despite elevations approaching 2,000 meters, and heavy rains ensured bountiful crops during the six-month monsoon season. Under such favorable conditions, this region became the cradle of New World agriculture and the birthplace of corn. Yet these early agriculturalists faced one crucial limitation: during half the year, the weather was too dry for farming....

His finalist year: 1998 His finalist project: Building a model of how nerve cells function in people with an autoimmune disorder What led to the project: When New York City native and Stuyvesant High School student Jesse Anttila-Hughes needed a Westinghouse project mentor, the school paired him with an applied mathematician at New York University who introduced him to the idea of modeling events through equations. Anttila-Hughes used a computer to construct a set of equations that described how neurotransmitters work in the body....

Ever since a father and son managed to draw four whiskey barrels of oil from a hand-dug hole near California’s Kern River 121 years ago, productive oil and gas wells have multiplied like mushrooms across the area. Though such wells are expected to emit minimal amounts of greenhouse gases during the oil-extraction process, scientists from a space-related research group were shocked by the size of the methane plumes they detected when they flew an infrared sensor over Kern County in 2015....

The removal of top predators has been called “humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature,” and it is as detrimental in the sea as it is on land. Consumers prefer predatory fish like grouper, tuna, swordfish and sharks to species lower on the food chain such as anchovies and sardines, providing strong incentives for fishermen to catch the bigger fish. Going after the more valuable predators first, fishing them until there aren’t enough left to support a fishery and then moving on to species lower in the food chain, a pattern sometimes observed in global fisheries, has been called “fishing down the food web....

In March 2010 police in South Korea arrested a husband and wife in a tragically ironic case that gained international notoriety: the couple let their three-month-old daughter, Sarang, starve to death in their apartment while they spent up to 12 hours a day nurturing a virtual daughter as part of a 3-D fantasy online role-playing game known as Prius Online. A documentary to be released this month uses the story as the starting point for an examination of a high-tech culture’s fascination with the blending of virtual and real worlds....

Orchids are experts in the art of seduction. They have acquired all manner of adaptations aimed at tricking insects into helping them propagate. Photographer Christian Ziegler captures these sex symbols of the plant world in 150 portraits taken on five continents in environments ranging from tropical cloud forest to semidesert. World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement by Robert P. Crease. W. W. Norton, 2011...

There’s much more to come in this category, which offers benefits and savings to just about everybody (except, of course, the entrenched interests like taxi companies). So here, with tongue only partway in cheek, are my suggestions for the Next Great Success Stories in the sharing economy. SplitMyPool.com: On my street—this is not a joke—four families installed swimming pools the same year. I made an offer to each one: I’d pay for half the expenses, chemicals and maintenance each summer if I could bring my kids over to swim when the pool is otherwise unused....

Scientists have known for more than 150 years that sharks get cancer. And yet the belief persists that the animals don’t suffer from the disease. That misconception is promoted in part by those who sell shark cartilage, who claim that the substance will help cure cancer, said David Shiffman, a shark researcher and doctoral student at the University of Miami. But no studies have shown that shark cartilage is an effective treatment, and the demand for the material has helped decimate shark populations, researchers say: Humans kill about 100 million sharks per year, according to a March 2013 study (although many factors contribute to the killing of sharks, including demand for shark-fin soup)....