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Climate change will get a moment in the spotlight today when the top half of the Democratic presidential field gathers in New York City for CNN’s seven-hour forum on the topic. For some of the candidates—such as Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.—the forum could provide a much-needed opportunity to show climate activists they have the chops to address global warming. But all 10 candidates who qualified—from Sen....

The work involved in shutting down the nearly 200,000 gallons of crude oil spewing up into the Gulf of Mexico daily for the past two weeks has demanded a tremendous amount of coordination involving, among others, BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and local fishermen. But given the depth of the damaged Macondo well—1,524 meters below the Gulf’s surface—the use of undersea robots is the only way to cut off the flow of escaping oil....

As painful as a spider bite may feel, the molecular mechanism that underlies how venom produces that sensation isn’t well understood. Little is known about the molecular channels through which ions flow across the membrane of sensory neurons and thereby trigger a firing of electrical signals perceived as pain. Now researchers examining arachnid venom may have discovered a new tool to probe deeper into how ion channels work to produce pain....

Baby fish exposed to hormone-laden manure from Indiana farms were much more likely to be male than those raised in uncontaminated water, according to new research. The findings add to evidence that farm runoff may alter fish hormones and affect their reproduction and development. Purdue University researchers raised fathead minnow embryos in water taken from two Indiana streams that are contaminated with natural and synthetic hormones from manure spread on fields....

Benasich is one of a cadre of researchers employing brain-recording techniques to understand the essential processes that underlie learning. The new science of neuroeducation seeks the answers to questions that have always perplexed cognitive psychologists and pedagogues. How, for instance, does a newborn’s ability to process sounds and images relate to the child’s capacity to learn letters and words a few years later? What does a youngster’s capacity for staying mentally focused in preschool mean for later academic success?...

Want to start a brawl at an evolution conference? Just bring up the concept of group selection: the idea that one mixed bag of individuals can be “selected” as a group over other heterogeneous groups from the same species. Biologists who would not hesitate to form a group themselves to combat creationism or intelligent design might suddenly start a pie fight to defend the principle that “it’s every man for himself....

The changing ratios of calcium and barium in the teeth of modern humans and macaques chronicle the transition from mother’s milk to solid food — and may provide clues about the weaning habits of Neandertals, a new study suggests. The predominant mineral in the tooth enamel of primates is hydroxyapatite, a form of calcium phosphate. But trace elements present in the bloodstream that are chemically similar to calcium, such as strontium and barium, can be incorporated into enamel as it calcifies, says Manish Arora, an environmental chemist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York....

CONTROL YOURSELF The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. Random House, 2012 ($28) Whether healthy or destructive, habits shape our cognitive wiring. Once they are established, it takes a hefty effort to overwrite those neural connections. In The Power of Habit, Duhigg demystifies the brain processes involved in forming and altering these mindless actions. Mindlessness, in fact, defines a habit, but the routine does not start out that way, writes Duhigg, a New York Times reporter....

We know it best as a stringy slime dripping from noses and as viscous, discolored goop hacked up by sickened airways. But it’s so much more than that. Coating the surfaces of guts, eyes, mouth, nasal cavity and ears, mucus plays a range of important physiological roles — hydrating, cleaning, supporting good microbes and warding off foreign invaders. “I like to call it the unsung hero of the body — it’s something that has such powerful effects over our health,” says Katharina Ribbeck, a biophysicist at MIT who with colleagues outlined the many roles of mucus in the 2018 Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology....

For the first time, scientists have linked the growth of new brain cells–induced by a compound known as ciliary neurotrophic growth factor (CNTF)–with weight loss in mice. The findings could offer an explanation for why use of the compound in previous studies kept mice at a healthy weight weeks and months after injections of the drug were stopped. “Normally for any other treatments for obesity that act in the brain, when you stop those drugs, people just completely go back to where they were,” says endocrinologist Jeffrey Flier, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the team’s leader on the study....

Two research groups have demonstrated progress toward fabricating artificial sensors that can emulate the abilities of human skin, an advancement that could lend robots a far more sophisticated sense of touch. Although the teams used different technologies for their devices, each produced a flexible grid of sensors capable of registering pressures of just a few kilopascals, corresponding to a light touch on human skin. The two groups announced their experimental results in papers published online September 12 in Nature Materials....

Early adopters of technology are usually assumed to be the young and eager. But an increasing number of gadgets are designed not for the stereotypical technophile but for the elderly person. And why not? Between 2010 and 2050 the U.S. population of people aged 65 and up will more than double, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts. Smart, networked sensors and monitors—part of what is known as the Internet of Things—could help make seniors more independent by letting doctors or relatives keep tabs from afar....

Modern medicine can grow kidneys from scratch, halt the spread of infectious diseases such as Ebola and diagnose the cause of a cough with a smartphone, yet snakebites still thwart us. Every year venom from snakes kills nearly 200,000 people and leaves hundreds of thousands disfigured or disabled, making these legless squamates the second deadliest animal. Only mosquitoes may kill more people every year (by spreading the protozoa that cause malaria)....

When Richard Garriott blasts off into space on October 12, he will become the world’s first second-generation astronaut, following in the spacewalking footsteps of his father, NASA pioneer Owen Garriott. Richard Garriott is headed to space as part of Space Adventures, Ltd., a Vienna, Va., company in which he has invested, and will enter orbit not as a tourist but rather as a civilian astronaut whose to-do list includes snapping nearly 500 pictures of Earth and participating in a series of experiments that will test spaceflight’s impact on his eyes (his vision was corrected by laser surgery more than a decade ago), immune system and sleep patterns....

Children with dyslexia have trouble reading and writing, but the root of the problem may actually be in their brain’s sound-processing regions. A new study found that targeting these areas with a workout disguised as a video game improved dyslexic children’s literary skills. Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston examined 23 typical 10-year-old readers with fMRI as they listened to rapid sound shifts common in spoken language, which elicited activity from 11 distinct areas in the children’s brains....

HOLCOMB, Kans.—Kyle Nelson points upward to show off the six-story-high main boiler of Holcomb Station. The 370-megawatt coal-fired power plant sits on the rolling prairie of southwestern Kansas just a few miles from the small town of Holcomb, population 2,100, roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of the Colorado border. Enormous metal pipes crisscross far overhead in a facility where the temperature is a little too hot to ignore, and the machinery’s din is deafening....

The renowned physicist John Archibald Wheeler once suggested, “In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.” Certainly it is hard to imagine an animal much stranger than the star-nosed mole, a creature you might picture emerging from a flying saucer to greet a delegation of curious earthlings. Its nose is ringed by 22 fleshy appendages that are usually a blur of motion as the mole explores its environment....

Climate change is profoundly transforming the way the Arctic looks. The region is warming more than twice as rapidly as the rest of Earth. Polar sea ice continues to shrink to record lows, and Greenland’s ice sheet—which holds enough water to raise global sea levels more than seven meters—is melting. Temperatures 30 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal hit parts of the region this past winter. But very few people have witnessed these dramatic shifts in a visual way....

We all know what successful people look like. They are are the ones who do whatever it takes, the ones with the sharp elbows, the ones who know how to take what is theirs. But there is a different, better path to success, argues Adam Grant, in “Give and Take.” Grant, a professor of management at Wharton, shares research which suggest that some of the most successful people — not just in business, but in many realms — are in fact classic “givers,” people who genuinely try to help those around them....

Pollution from China’s coal-burning power plants is pumping up winter storms over the northwest Pacific Ocean and changing North America’s weather, a new study finds. Northwest Pacific winter storms are now 10 percent stronger than they were 30 years ago, before Asian countries began their industrial boom, according to research published today (April 14) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. North America will be hardest hit by the intensifying storms, which move from west to east, said lead study author Yuan Wang, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif....