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Imagine seeing life through one eyeball but then being given the ability to view the world through two or even three eyeballs at once. You would be greeted with not just more data about your surroundings but a better perspective of how all of that data fit together. This is the explanation that photographer Rick Smolan gave to his 10-year-old son when asked the meaning of “big data,” according to a story he recounted Tuesday at an event he organized in New York City to announce his latest social experiment: The Human Face of Big Data....

Children exposed to higher levels of mercury or lead are three to five times more likely to be identified by teachers as having problems associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, according to a scientific study published today. The study – of Inuit children in Arctic Quebec – is the first to find a high rate of attention-deficit symptoms in children highly exposed to mercury in the womb. In addition, the Inuit children more often had hyperactivity symptoms if they were exposed to the same low levels of lead commonly found in young U....

The dawn of the Biden administration and its focus on climate change is attracting more industries to a solution that was, until recently, thought to be more trouble than it’s worth: the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The idea of collecting CO2 from the sky and trapping it in valuable products before it can warm the Earth is a seductive marketing strategy. Especially for an industry that sells precious items that last “forever....

It’s spring, and monarchs are on the move. Every year the butterflies leave their dense winter clusters near Mexico City and head for northern latitudes. It will take four months and three generations to get there. Once they arrive, the butterflies will get busy boosting their company enough to survive next year’s winter. It’s a Sisyphean task—eastern monarch numbers have dropped 80 percent in the past 20 years because of habitat degradation (including fewer flowers)—throughout their range, says Iman Momeni-Dehaghi, a biologist at Carleton University in Ottawa....

President Obama emphasized advances in efficient lighting yesterday in a campaign narrative that connects his clean energy goals with American job growth. He visited election-important North Carolina to underscore the improvements to light-emitting diode (LED) technology since his last presidential campaign in 2008 – when he appeared at Cree Inc. for the first time, a few months before capturing the state’s Electoral College votes. Since then, the company has doubled the efficiency of its lighting products and expanded its manufacturing capacity, hallmarks of an improving technology that analysts say is becoming cheaper in the stores....

From its earliest days as a science, physics has searched for unity in nature. Isaac Newton showed that the same force responsible for the fall of an apple also holds the planets in their orbits. James Clerk Maxwell combined electricity, magnetism and light into a single theory of electromagnetism; a century later physicists added the weak nuclear force to form a unified “electroweak” theory. Albert Einstein joined space and time themselves into a single spacetime continuum....

On December 1, 1969, Jersey Central Power & Light initiated fission in the fuel rods of the nation’s first boiling-water nuclear reactor—one of 31 ultimately built in the U.S. The first “turnkey” plant, Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey was sold for less than $100 million in 1964—a price well below what it would ultimately cost to build the reactor. The point was to prove that a nuclear power facility could be built as cheaply as a coal-fired power plant, and the key to that was a smaller safety system....

The crisis of American governance goes much deeper than political divisions and ideology. The U.S. is in a crisis of policy implementation. Not only are Americans deeply divided on what to do about health care, budget deficits, financial markets, climate change and more, but government is also failing to execute settled policies effectively. Management systems linking government, business and civil society need urgent repair. The recent systems failures are legion and notorious....

HIS FINALIST PROJECT: Measuring the movement of cosmic ray particles WHAT LED TO THE PROJECT: Roald Hoffmann learned to observe from an early age. Born Jewish in Poland in 1937, he spent long days of his childhood hiding from the Nazis in an attic near the border of the Soviet Union. He noted the changing light, the seasons and other children playing through a small portal to the outside world. “I’m a watcher,” he says....

Dear EarthTalk: How often do I really need to change my car’s oil? Conventional wisdom has always put it at every 3,000 miles to prevent engine wear, but isn’t changing oil that frequently wasteful and unnecessary? Also, what is the “greenest” and longest-lasting oil I should use? – Vic Roberts, Lincoln, MA There is much debate in the automotive world over how often drivers of typical passenger cars or light trucks should change their oil....

By Valerie Volcovici and Devidutta TripathyWASHINGTON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India voiced firm opposition on Tuesday to EU plans to impose a scaled-back carbon charge on flights over European airspace while a senior U.S. lawmaker said the EU proposal runs afoul of a law intended to shield U.S. airlines from such charges.The European Commission, the EU executive, last week proposed to make all airlines pay for emissions over European airspace in a retreat from a suspended EU law that covered the duration of flights using EU airports....

The White House itself once harvested the power of the sun. On June 20, 1979, the Carter administration installed 32 panels designed to harvest the sun’s rays and use them to heat water. Here is what Carter predicted at the dedication ceremony: “In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people....

I apologize in advance, but our cover story on human water needs might make you thirsty. I’ve been thinking of it every time I take a drink! We humans are weird animals in a lot of ways, but one of the weirdest is that we’re really bad, physiologically, at staying hydrated. In fact, we are more dependent on water than most other mammals. As biologist Asher Y. Rosinger explains, some of our most distinctive technologies, from clay pots to aqueducts to desalination plants, were developed to let us survive and thrive when and where water is scarce....

I recently asked my first-year humanities classes: Will war ever end? I specified that I had in mind the end of all wars—like the one currently ravaging Ukraine—and even the threat of war between nations. I primed my students by assigning “Warfare Is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity,” by anthropologist Margaret Mead, and “A History of Violence,” by psychologist Steven Pinker. Some students suspect, like Pinker, that war stems from deep-rooted evolutionary impulses....

Each year hundreds of the best and brightest researchers gather in Lindau, Germany, for the Nobel Laureate Meeting. There, the newest generation of scientists mingles with Nobel Prize winners and discusses their work and ideas. The 2013 meeting is dedicated to chemistry and will involve young researchers from 78 different countries. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from June 30 through July 5, we are highlighting a group of attendees under 30 who represent the future of chemistry....

It’s official – Apple’s holding an event next Wednesday, where the company is widely expected to debut its next iPhone.Just like its iPad reveal earlier this year, Apple is holding at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater.The invite says only “It’s almost here,” with a shadowed “5” underneath the September 12 date. The event will begin at 10 a.m. in San Francisco. CNET will cover the event with a live blog, so mark that time and head back here to tune in....

For decades astronomers have searched for a possible “Planet X” in the far outer reaches of our solar system, speculating that something big and dark may be lurking out there, its gravitational influence occasionally stirring up trouble in the orbits of the objects that we do see. There are major incentives to look: When astronomers sought a Planet X beyond Uranus in 1846, they discovered Neptune; when they looked for one beyond Neptune in 1930, they found Pluto....

Volkswagen’s infamous “Dieselgate” emissions scandal did much to support the notion that “clean diesel” may be a delusion. Top executives at one of the world’s leading carmakers were accused of cheating on tailpipe emissions tests to hide the fact that some models’ diesel engines released up to 40 times as much pollution as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards allow. Diesel engine exhaust contains several harmful pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and soot particles....

When we think of the DNA that makes up our chromosomes, we usually focus on our genes. But at the end of every chromosome in our body lies a long chain of repetitive DNA called a telomere, which acts as a protective cap. As we age, these caps get shorter. Now studies find that chronic pain and phobic anxiety are linked with shorter telomeres, which suggests that sufferers of these ailments may be aging prematurely and points to ways to reverse that process....

By Katherine Rowland of Nature magazineIn the Congo Basin, Bayaka pygmies patrol their forests with handheld tracking devices. Using the devices to record instances of poaching, industrial roads and illegal logging, they map their landscape, documenting the course of deforestation and harmful development.The project is part of an emerging field that its champions describe as the “new wave” of citizen science. With endeavors ranging from air-pollution assessments in Europe to chimpanzee counting in Tanzania, the next generation of citizen science attempts to make communities active stakeholders in research that affects them, and use their work to push forward policy changes....