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NEW YORK—U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this morning declared the signing today of the Paris Agreement on climate change “a new covenant with the future.” Addressing a crowded assembly at U.N. headquarters, Ban said leaders from a record 171 nations have gathered to officially sign onto the landmark deal. It is, he said, the largest number of countries to ever sign onto an international agreement on a single day. Secretary of State John Kerry will address the gathering shortly, as well as French President François Hollande and leaders from China, India and dozens of other nations....

People living near pig farms or agricultural fields fertilized with pig manure are more likely to become infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria, according to a paper published today in JAMA Internal Medicine. Previous research has found that livestock workers are at high risk of carrying MRSA, compared to the general population. But it has been unclear whether the spreading of MRSA through livestock puts the public at risk of infection....

Animal diseases cost cash-strapped African farmers about $300 billion a year in lost income and veterinary bills. Now scientists are proactively breeding livestock with defenses against these pests before they strike. Scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) consortium are setting up a “preemptive breeding” program to develop livestock with resistance to potential widespread outbreaks of currently localized diseases to help reduce some of the losses that would occur....

The sun has finally risen above the horizon in the Arctic after months of darkness. That means the floating ice that clogs the world’s northernmost seas every winter is beginning to loosen and it’s time for Christopher Zappa to head for the town of Ny-Ålesund, in the Svalbard Archipelago, a group of islands located about halfway between the northern tip of Norway and the North Pole. Zappa, an oceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, wants to understand the details of exactly how sea ice breaks up and melts, and he is going to call on a quintessentially 21st century technology to help him do it....

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - When Palestinians in the Gaza Strip seek some relief from the grind of life in an enclave plagued by conflict and hardship, they usually need to look no further than their sandy beaches. But this summer access to the cooling waters of the Mediterranean is gradually being closed off to Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, due to pollution stemming from the fuel shortages that have halted work at sewage treatment facilities....

For the past four decades the Nikon Small World competition has placed photography under the microscope, with eye-catching results. This year’s 20 finalists, announced Thursday, are no exception, zooming in on microorganisms, minerals and even electronic circuitry to find beauty hidden from the naked eye. Judges evaluated more than 1,200 photos sent from dozens of countries based on scientific relevance, composition, quality and technique, along with technical and artistic merit. The competition’s subject matter is unrestricted as long as some type of light microscopy technique is used, including phase contrast, polarized light, interference contrast, dark field or some combination thereof....

The Dead Sea is not all dead. Sure, it is one of the most extreme ecosystems on our planet, with a salinity so high that tourists can easily float atop its dense, briny brew. And with no plants, fish or other visible life, swimmers can be excused for assuming that nothing stirs in the deep. But long ago scientists discovered single-celled microorganisms called archaea living in the lake’s waters—causing many to wonder whether other simple life could also survive within the sediments below despite the absence of oxygen, light or nutrients....

The US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has a new director. On September 12, psychiatrist Joshua Gordon took the reins at the institute, which has a budget of US$1.5 billion. He previously researched how genes predispose people to psychiatric illnesses by acting on neural circuits, at Columbia University in New York. His predecessor, Thomas Insel, left the NIMH to join Verily Life Sciences, a start-up owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, in 2015....

Patients seeking stem cell therapies for achy joints or shoulder injuries no longer need to hop a plane to Mexico or China. More than 550 clinics around the U.S. offer unproved interventions for sports injuries and conditions including autism, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. In cities like Beverly Hills or New York a prospective patient may only need to drive some 20 or 30 minutes from the center of town to find such a treatment....

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - Among men whose low-risk prostate cancer was managed with so-called active surveillance for up to 15 years, just 1.5 percent died of the cancer, according to new data from a Canadian study. That result is similar to outcomes in men whose cancers are treated immediately, the authors write. Prostate cancer often grows very slowly. In some men, such as the elderly or those with serious health problems, it may never need to be treated, says the American Cancer Society....

Can we tweak certain genes to stave off the aging process—or, conversely, to speed it up? New research indicates that it may one day be possible. Scientists have discovered genetic switches in roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans)—whose genetic makeup is remarkably similar to that of humans—that apparently cause the spineless critters to grow old when flicked on but, when off, may extend their lives. “This is a new and potentially powerful circuit that has just been discovered,” says Brown University biologist Marc Tatar, who was not involved in the study....

When officials postponed the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo until 2021 last year, the announcement came amid similar decisions from professional sports leagues and regional and national stay-at-home orders. At the time, International Olympic Committee (IOC) organizers hoped that the extra year would buy the world time to get a handle on SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, which had then recently been characterized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization....

Editor’s Note: In mid-May, Scientific American will announce the winners of this year’s Scientific American 10. Every Monday, starting April 13, we will profile a previous Scientific American 50 winner. Year in Scientific American 50: 2003 Recognized for: His work documenting and analyzing the world’s collapsing fisheries. In the 1990s he and a handful of other researchers created FishBase, a searchable online database that now has information on more than 30,000 species....

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A new online monitoring system will make it possible to quickly check the condition of tropical forests around the globe that were previously under no surveillance, potentially increasing pressure on governments to stop deforestation. Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) will provide public access on Thursday to the new tool to evaluate forests worldwide. Global Forest Watch (GFW) was developed by dozens of institutions with the help of Google Inc’s Earth Engine....

In the waters off the northern coast of New Zealand swims a group of one of the world’s most poorly understood cetaceans. Named for their resemblance to their better-known cousins, false killer whales dwell in warm tropical and temperate seas across the globe. But humans usually find them only when they become stranded. Because false killer whales are so elusive, scientists have only a basic understanding of their social lives. Past studies of individuals near Hawaii and Costa Rica have found that false killer whales are social animals that can maintain friendships—swimming, hunting and cavorting—for years....

NEW YORK—Despite the rain and cold this past weekend, dozens of robots took the field to compete in the New York City FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) regional championship at the Javitz Center in Manhattan. The tournament tested the skills and determination of 48 teams of high school students who have spent the past several months building, programming and otherwise preparing their bots to face off in a friendly game of HotShot!...

Dear EarthTalk: What are the major issues with protecting migratory birds that groups like the Nature Conservancy are working on?—Lorinda Bennet, Albuquerque, N.M. Migratory birds, like other animals, need suitable habitat and food sources to survive. But unlike other animals which stay primarily in one place, migratory birds depend on the availability of food and habitat all along their migration paths, which for some are thousands of miles long. Changing environmental conditions along routes can hinder birds’ ability to survive their often arduous long distance journeys....

The guy running the snake down our sewer looks matter-of-fact. Our sewage has been backing up. Right next to the pipe connecting our house to the sewer line running down our street stands a 70-year-old willow oak, and I worry the tree’s roots have found their way, during the droughty past year, into our line. He shrugs: Maybe it’s tree roots, maybe it’s a collapsed pipe, maybe it’s a yo-yo. The snake went in only a dozen feet or so and found a clog, and now the little claw at the end is spinning....

Business, government or technology forecasts usually look five or 10 years out, 50 years at most. Among climate scientists, there is some talk of century’s end. In reality, carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere today will affect Earth hundreds of thousands of years hence. How will greenhouse gases change the far future? No one can say for sure exactly how Earth will respond, but climate scientists—using mathematical models built from knowledge of past climate systems, as well as the complex web of processes that impact climate and the laws of physics and chemistry—can make predictions about what Earth will look like....

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler sold his agency’s power plant carbon rule on Wednesday as having all the benefits of its Obama-era predecessor with none of the costs. He told an invited audience of conservative lobbyists and GOP lawmakers at EPA headquarters that the Affordable Clean Energy rule would slash emissions of carbon dioxide and pollutants that harm human health directly, while saving the public up to $730 million annually. “Here is the bottom line: ACE will continue our nation’s environmental progress, and it will do so legally and with proper respect for the states,” he said....