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Mexico has pledged to unilaterally peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2026 in a detailed climate change plan that is the first of its kind among developing nations. The target unveiled Friday, which also calls for cutting carbon 22 percent below business-as-usual levels by 2030, will become Mexico’s official contribution to a global climate change accord. That agreement is expected to be signed in Paris in December and include, for the first time ever, carbon-cutting measures from developed and developing nations alike....

Proteins, the fundamental nanomachines of life, have provided scientists like me with many lessons in our own efforts to create nanomachinery. Proteins are large molecules containing hundreds to thousands of atoms and are typically a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) to tens of nanometers across. Our bodies contain at least 20,000 different proteins that, among other things, cause our muscles to contract, digest our food, build our bones, sense our environment and tirelessly recycle hundreds of small molecules within our cells....

Drugs originally developed to treat diseases ranging from diabetes to alcoholism may have applications in cancer treatment, according to a new study. Researchers tested thousands of existing medications, many of which have already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating diseases other than cancer, against hundreds of different human cancer cell lines in the lab. The study revealed dozens of newly identified cancer-killing compounds. Lead author Steven Corsello practices oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and researches new cancer drug development at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University....

The human brain is hardwired to map our surroundings. This trait is called spatial memory—our ability to remember certain locations and where objects are in relation to one another. New findings published today in Scientific Reports suggest that one major feature of our spatial recall is efficiently locating high-calorie, energy-rich food. The study’s authors believe human spatial memory ensured that our hunter-gatherer ancestors could prioritize the location of reliable nutrition, giving them an evolutionary leg up....

By Ichiko Fuyuno The magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on 11 March trashed Koji Tamura’s laboratory and office, flinging books, microscopes, sequencers and samples to the floor. The geckos, Xenopus frogs and zebrafish that the Tohoku University researcher uses to study organ development survived the quake but now face a slow death, because disrupted water supplies mean their tanks may run dry. “Without water, I am worried how long our animals can survive,” he says....

The failure to detect pancreatic cancer until after it has progressed to a fatal stage has long been the bane of doctors and the demise of patients. Imaging the out-of-the-way organ with MRI or CT scans often fails to catch tumors and, so far, there are no reliable blood-based markers for the disease. For most patients–including actor Patrick Swayze, who died this week as a result of this aggressive malignancy–abdominal pain, weight loss and jaundice are the disease’s first indicators, and their onset usually occurs after the cancer has metastasized, erasing any possible benefit of surgery....

In the race to build ever-smaller microchips, researchers have tinkered for more than a dozen years with an end-run technique that would shrink things to previously unrealizable scales. Rather than etching away semiconductors with photolithography to create circuits and processors—a top-down process that is limited by the light wavelength used—bottom-up fabrication could yield even smaller processors by stringing together nanoscale building blocks into functional devices. After a flurry of exciting results in the late 1990s and early 2000s things quieted down a bit as the new approach hit some fundamental roadblocks....

www.mindhacks.com Walk through an enlarged brain, complete with lightning shows that imitate the central nervous system—just one part of a 5,000-square-foot interactive traveling exhibit. The Science Place, Dallas Through Jan. 8, 2006 214-428-5555 http://scienceplace.org The brains and nervous systems of several real human bodiesfgbk> appear in three-dimensional exploded views. Gunther von Hagens preserved the bodies in plastic and dissected them for display, sometimes in shockingly unusual ways. The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia...

Inhaling carbon nanotubes could be as harmful as breathing in asbestos, and its use should be regulated lest it lead to the same cancer and breathing problems that prompted a ban on the use of asbestos as insulation in buildings, according a new study posted online today by Nature Nanotechnology. During the study, led by the Queen’s Medical Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh/MRC Center for Inflammation Research (CIR) in Scotland, scientists observed that long, thin carbon nanotubes look and behave like asbestos fibers, which have been shown to cause mesothelioma , a deadly cancer of the membrane lining the body’s internal organs (in particular the lungs) that can take 30 to 40 years to appear following exposure....

In the past decade, the construction and retrofitting of individual homes to reduce energy and water use has grown explosively. Yet applying green construction to multiple buildings at once may be an even better idea. Sharing resources and infrastructure could reduce waste, and retrofitting impoverished or moderate-income neighborhoods could also bring cost savings and modern technology to people who would normally lack such opportunities. Working at the neighborhood level does add complexity to planning, but these neighborhood efforts offer rewards that even green single-family homes cannot offer....

Blood banks do all they can to ensure that donations carry no pathogens that could infect and possibly kill recipients. But screening tests for the microorganisms that cause some tropical diseases, such as dengue and chikungunya, do not exist, and these pathogens have been spreading into the U.S. in recent years because of global warming. Meanwhile tests for viruses such as HIV and hepatitis C can take up valuable time, and pathogens that have not yet been identified may be lurking in blood, as happened in the early days of HIV....

By Lizzie BuchenJust as a whiff of pumpkin pie can unleash powerful memories of holiday dinners, the stimulation of a tiny number of neurons can evoke entire memories, new research in mice suggests.Memories are stored in neurons distributed across a host of brain regions. When something triggers a memory, that diffuse information is immediately and cohesively reactivated, but it’s unclear how the circuit gets kicked into full gear. Over the past few years, a handful of studies have suggested that a small number of neurons – perhaps even single neurons – can trigger sensations....

Six months after the birth of her second child, Patricia, a woman with an active and fulfilling sex life, found herself unable to achieve orgasm. “My partner and I tried everything,” she says. “And it was so frustrating because I’d almost reach climax, time and time again, and then … nothing.” After a few months, her frustration led her to visit a local clinic for sexual disorders. “They brought in a social worker who asked me a lot of questions about abuse....

Oxybenzone and octinoxate. These chemical names may sound unfamiliar, but it is very likely that you have slathered them over your body more than once. Oxybenzone and octinoxate are the chemicals found in sunscreens that are under consideration for a ban in the state of Hawai’i. While Hawai’i would be the first state to ban the sale and distribution of the potentially problematic sunscreens, a few resorts, ocean tours, and other tourist areas in Mexico, like several on the island of Cozumel, already ban their use....

The proposed names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 are nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson respectively, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) has announced. ‘It’s an exciting day for the world,’ says Lynn Soby, Iupac’s executive director. The groups responsible for the discovery of these new elements each put forward their proposed name and symbol after Iupac confirmed their existence in January 2016. The criteria states an element may be named after a mythological figure or concept, geological place, scientist, elemental property, or mineral....

1971 1971 In-Patient Therapy “The treatment of mental illness in the U.S. has changed profoundly over the past 20 years. One change, which is not widely known outside the mental health profession, has been the development of a method of treatment that is called the therapeutic community. The term describes a way of operating a small psychiatric unit in a hospital. Ideally a unit will have between 20 and 40 patients; a large hospital may have more than one therapeutic community....

More people in New York City are sick with Legionnaires’ disease in what appears to be a new cluster of cases, health officials say. So far, seven people who live or work in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx have been hospitalized recently with Legionnaires’ disease, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Officials were notified of these cases last week. The new cases are not related to the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that occurred in New York City over the summer, which was the largest in the city’s history, and sickened 120 people in the South Bronx....

Here’s an update and a bit of good news on the ocean acidification front. The Primer This is a topic I’ve covered quite a bit (see “Ocean Basin Ocean Acidification,” “Ocean Acidification Time Bomb Is Ticking,” “Update: Thinner Shells Put Ocean on Thin Ice,” “Ocean Acidification Faster Sooner,” “Planetary Watch: An Unexpected Impact of Global Warming“),butfor rapidly developing scientific areas like this one, there’s always new stuff. Here’s a report on the latest....

In autumn 2000 devastating floods swept through England and Wales, inundating homes, swamping roads and rail lines, and requiring the evacuation of more than 11,000 people. That fall was the wettest in the region since records began in 1766, and the subsequent flooding caused billions of dollars in damage. Now climatologists suggest that climate change doubled the odds of such catastrophic flooding in 2000. “Greenhouse gas emissions due to human activity have affected the odds of floods in England and Wales,” says physicist Pardeep Pall of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), who led the research published February 17 in Nature....

Editor’s Note: In mid-May, Scientific American will announce the winners of this year’s Scientific American 10. Every Monday we will profile a previous Scientific American 50 winner. Year in Scientific American 50: 2002 Recognized for: Bill Becker earned a place on the award’s inaugural list as an environmental policy leader for his work urging a reduction in auto emissions. As executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA, an association of state, territory and city agencies that helps to manage policy across the country), he coordinated efforts to create model air pollution regulations that could be—and were—turned into law....