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Changing economic circumstances make proposed new regulations critical. New Regs for Power Plants on Their Way Today Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,announced that the administration is going forward with first-time ever regulations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants.* This development shouldn’t be too much of a surprise: EPA had proposed similar regulations in March of 2012 (but withdrew them last April in order to respond to some 2....

Animals have helped many kids with autism improve their speech and social skills, but these cases have been largely isolated. Now the first scientific study of horse therapy finds its many benefits may have to do with rhythm. A study of 42 children with autism, six to 16 years old, found that riding and grooming horses significantly bettered behavioral symptoms. Compared with kids who had participated in nonanimal therapy, those exposed to horses showed more improvement in social skills and motor skills, rated via standard behavioral assessment surveys, according to the study published in the February issue of Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders....

Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data. Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith....

We all know (or even love dearly) someone who complains about everything. They complain about their partner, the weather, their boss, their weight, their internet speed, that the only thing on the menu at the local Indian restaurant is Indian food, or that this portobello sandwich has mushrooms on it! This week, by request from an enterprising listener who wrote and asked how she could stop complaining so much, we’ll tackle 3 myths about complaining and 4 ways you can get a grip on your griping....

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This principle, called conservation of energy, is one of our most cherished laws of physics. It governs every part of our lives: the heat it takes to warm up a cup of coffee; the chemical reactions that produce oxygen in the leaves of trees; the orbit of Earth around the sun; the food we need to keep our hearts beating. We cannot live without eating, cars do not run without fuel, and perpetual-motion machines are just a mirage....

Strap on a headset, immerse yourself in an alternate reality and cure your pain—that’s the idea of a recent study in Psychological Science. Most people think of pain as something that happens in the body—I twist my head too far, and my neck sends a “pain signal” to the brain to indicate that the twisting hurts. In reality, pain is simply the brain telling us we are in danger. Although certain nerve endings throughout the body can indeed detect bodily harm, their signals are only one factor that the brain uses to determine if we should experience pain....

How can a cellist play like an angel? Why am I engrossed in my book when others struggle with reading? And while we’re at it, can you tell me why my child won’t stop screaming? Now neuroscience offers the answers—or so say the news headlines. The brains of musicians “really do” differ from those of the rest of us. People with dyslexia have different neural connections than people without the condition....

To many Europeans, poliomyelitis is an ancient foe. But for the first time in years, there is a risk that the crippling paralytic disease is about to make an unwelcome return. Poliovirus has re-emerged on Europe’s southeastern flank — in Israel and Syria — leaving public-health officials concerned that the disease could be imported and again become established on the continent. Europe is surprisingly vulnerable. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared its European region, which now spans 53 countries from Portugal to Russia, free of polio in 2002....

Terrible Thing to Waste One of the most important messages in Matthew L. Wald’s “What Now for Nuclear Waste?” is that we really have several options for handling nuclear waste. All the options, whether aboveground storage for a couple of hundred years until we decide on the next step, reprocessing fuel to remove the long-lived isotopes to be burned in a fast reactor, or even the original plan for burying spent fuel will have little to no impact on future generations or the environment....

A skywatcher has photographed a troubled Russian Mars probe that remains stuck in Earth orbit three weeks after its launch. Astrophotographer and veteran satellite spotter Ralf Vandebergh tracked Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft as it passed over the southern Netherlands yesterday (Nov. 29). Using a 10-inch (25-centimeter) telescope and a video camera, he snapped a series of images at a range of about 170 miles (274 kilometers). “It was bright in my tracking scope, I think it was clearly visible naked-eye as well with sun at -6 degrees,” Vandebergh told SPACE....

Key concepts Heat Temperature Physics Animals Introduction Have you ever woken up on a cold, frosty morning and just wanted to snuggle down deeper under the covers? Other mammals, such as puppies and piglets, do not like being cold either, but they do not have hands or blankets to wrap themselves up. So when these animals get chilled they change their behavior and do things like huddle—curl up close to other animals....

Arctic permafrost holds about twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, making its ultimate fate a key factor in the severity and pace of climate change impacts. Now a study reports that old assumptions of how permafrost carbon breaks down in Arctic lakes and rivers may be wrong. Instead of bacteria being responsible for the conversion of carbon into carbon dioxide, the real culprit in many cases is sunlight, according to the research supported by the National Science Foundation....

In the early 19th century, the very existence of Timbuktu was in doubt among Europeans. Stories of its great wealth drove many to try to reach the fabled city. Unfortunately, penetrating into what is now northern Mali was off-limits for outsiders. Expeditions that set off with substantial funding, weapons and misplaced confidence were attacked and the leader usually killed or enslaved. It was not a gentle time. Rene Caillé a penniless orphan from France, didn’t have the resources to mount an expedition....

In the midst of the winter rampage of COVID-19—with more than 92 million confirmed cases and closing in on 2 million deaths globally—it is difficult to even consider the possibility of something similar lying in wait for the next opening in human vulnerability to disease. But that is exactly what health experts around the world must contemplate to prevent or reduce the impact of other potential causes of a pandemic. Equally importantly, that thinking should already be underway, and it is....

Sea level is rising faster along the U.S. East Coast than it has for at least 2,000 years, according to new research. The ocean began rising an average of 2.1 millimeters per year some time between 1865 and 1892 and hasn’t stopped, the study concludes. The current rate of sea level rise is about 3.2 mm per year. That trend, gleaned from muck collected in North Carolina salt marshes, is a direct consequence of increasing temperatures, said co-author Benjamin Horton, a coastal geologist at the University of Pennsylvania....

DNA found at a crime scene can help forensic investigators identify suspects. The genetic information may lead to a match in an existing criminal database or offer clues about physical attributes, such as eye and hair color. But DNA testing takes time—a rare commodity in many cases. Jan Halamek, a chemist at the University at Albany, is searching for new ways to rapidly reduce a pool of suspects: he recently identified a chemical biomarker in blood that can provide a rough estimate of a person’s age....

Decades of research and thousands of studies have suggested precisely the opposite: that being even a little overweight is bad and that being obese is worse. The distinction between overweight and obese—which are sometimes both classified under the rubric of obesity—can be confusing. It relates to the measure called body mass index (BMI), derived by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by the square of one’s height in meters. A myriad of Internet-based calculators will handle the math for you....

As we age, we seem to get worse at ignoring irrelevant stimuli. It’s what makes restaurant conversations challenging—having to converse while also shutting out surrounding chatter. New research bears out the aging brain’s distractibility but also suggests that training may help us tune out interference. Scientists at Brown University recruited seniors and twentysomethings for a visual experiment. Presented with a sequence of letters and numbers, participants were asked to report back only the numbers—all the while disregarding a series of meaningless dots....

This story is a supplement to the feature “Using Causality to Solve the Puzzle of Quantum Spacetime” which was printed in the July 2008 issue of Scientific American. A Mosaic of Triangles To determine how space sculpts itself, physicists first need a way to describe its shape. They do so using triangles and their higher-dimensional analogues, a mosaic of which can readily approximate a curved shape. The curvature at a point is reflected in the total angle subtended by the triangles that surround it....

If you’ve ever had a hangover, you know how bad acetaldehyde’s effects can feel. The chemical, produced when the body breaks down drinking alcohol (ethanol), can make people nauseous and cause their mouths to dry and heads to ache. But most people get off comparatively lightly. Others have a mutation in the gene for the enzyme that normally cleans up acetaldehyde, and when they drink heavily they get more than hung over: They are over 80 times more likely to get mouth, throat and esophageal cancers than people with the normal gene and enzyme....