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Soft drinks, sports drinks and other sweetened beverages are now known to contribute to Americans’ obesity problem. This link has led some policy makers to address the problem by restricting access or serving sizes, including the New York City health board’s effort to ban restaurants, delis, movie theaters, food carts and stadiums from selling sugar-sweetened drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces. Now, less than a week after an appeals court ruled against the proposed ban, a study in Pediatrics has found evidence that the sugary drink–obesity link occurs in the youngest population to be studied along this dimension—toddlers and preschoolers....

The genome of the termite has just been sequenced, and it is revealing several clues about how the pests create their rigid social order. For instance, the new genome, detailed today (May 20) in the journal Nature Communications, uncovers some of the underpinnings of termites’ caste system, as well as the roots of the males’ sexual staying power. Social bugs Like other social insects— such as ants, honeybees and some wasps — termites live in highly structured “caste systems,” with each creature programmed to perform a rigidly defined job....

Pope Francis has drawn attention for his progressive teachings on sexuality, contraception and abortion. Now he and the Catholic Church are tackling another contentious issue: climate change. On April 28, scientists, religious figures and policymakers will gather at the Vatican to discuss the science of global warming and the danger posed to the world’s poorest people. The meeting comes as Francis prepares an encyclical letter to bishops on climate change for release this summer, ahead of United Nations climate negotiations in December....

KHULNA, BANGLADESH—The soil in Chandipur village in southwest Bangladesh has become increasingly salty because of incursions of seawater. The situation became particularly acute in the aftermath of Cyclone Aila in 2009, which brought storm surges that broke embankments and flooded farmland. After 2009 vegetable crops planted in the ground there yielded only meager returns—if they didn’t fail completely. But for the past three years hundreds of villagers have enjoyed the bounty of so-called vertical gardens—essentially crops grown in a variety of containers in backyards and on the rooftops of their humble homes....

Three in ten women worldwide have been punched, shoved, dragged, threatened with weapons, raped, or subjected to other violence from a current or former partner. Close to one in ten have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner. Of women who are murdered, more than one in three were killed by an intimate partner. These grim statistics come from the first global, systematic estimates of violence against women. Linked papers published today in The Lancet and Science assess, respectively, how often people are killed by their partners and how many women experience violence from them....

L’ANSE, Mich. — Long dedicated to the trout that sustain its commercial fishing, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community started rearing fish that historically couldn’t survive in much of frigid Lake Superior. “We started raising walleye at the hatchery in 2005,” said Evelyn Ravindran, a natural resource specialist with the tribe. “We see them more and more.” Commercial fishing has been a steady staple for the tribe over the past few decades....

Rising ocean temperatures and acidification are known to be altering the way fish grow and reproduce—and now research shows these climate change side-effects may also change how fish think and act. A recent study has found Port Jackson sharks become “right-handed” when incubated at the kind of temperatures projected to prevail by the end of this century, if climate change continues at its current pace. Some scientists think such shifts could lead to behavioral changes that tip marine ecosystems out of balance....

The plan is familiar: park an antenna high in the stratosphere and then relay signals to and from devices below. Such an airborne transceiver could blanket urban areas with wireless coverage more cheaply than satellite-based alternatives while avoiding the need to build forests of mast-mounted base stations on the ground. In the past, various remote-controlled airplanes, balloons and blimps have been proposed to keep antennas aloft for months on end, but few have ever made it into the air, and none have operated commercially....

Fido’s expressive face, including those longing puppy-dog eyes, may lead owners to wonder what exactly is going on in that doggy’s head. Scientists decided to find out, using brain scans to explore the minds of our canine friends. The researchers, who detailed their findings May 2 in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, were interested in understanding the human-dog relationship from the four-legged perspective. “When we saw those first [brain] images, it was unlike anything else,” said lead researcher Gregory Berns in a video interview posted online....

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve often cooked canned foods in their own can, things like condensed milk and mushroom soup. I put the can without opening it in the pressure cooker, cover it with water and let it cook for 30 minutes. The results are amazing. Is it safe to do that? Can metals leach into my food? —Mercedes Kupres, via e-mail For starters, can makers don’t recommend using their products for anything but storing food unopened until it’s ready to eat....

At the threshold of the Sahara Desert near Ouarzazate, Morocco, some 500,000 parabolic mirrors run in neat rows across a valley, moving slowly in unison as the Sun sweeps overhead. This US$660-million solar-energy facility opened in February and will soon have company. Morocco has committed to generating 42% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Across Africa, several nations are moving aggressively to develop their solar and wind capacity. The momentum has some experts wondering whether large parts of the continent can vault into a clean future, bypassing some of the environmentally destructive practices that have plagued the United States, Europe and China, among other places....

Royal Dutch Shell PLC inked a deal Friday with the Canadian government to develop technology to control oil emissions. The province of Alberta announced it would provide C$745 million to test carbon capture and sequestration technology on Shell’s Scotford Upgrader, which is similar to a refinery for processing heavy oil. The Canadian government will chip in an additional C$120 million, making the project one of the most expensive attempts to control carbon dioxide output from Alberta’s oil sands region....

The Colorado potato beetle costs the agricultural industry billions of dollars per year and devours so many crops around the world that the insect has been branded an “international super pest.” Because the pest has become resistant to all major classes of insecticides and has few natural enemies, crop scientists are seeking a strategy to rein in the beetle’s feeding frenzies. A team of researchers led by Ralph Bock at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, in Potsdam, Germany, now reports that it has found a way to protect crops from the Colorado potato beetle with a new insecticidal tool: RNA interference, or RNAi (Science 2015, DOI: 10....

In the past decade an extraordinary claim has captivated cosmologists: that the expanding universe we see around us is not the only one; that billions of other universes are out there, too. There is not one universe—there is a multiverse. In Scientific American articles and books such as Brian Greene’s latest, The Hidden Reality, leading scientists have spoken of a super-Copernican revolution. In this view, not only is our planet one among many, but even our entire universe is insignificant on the cosmic scale of things....

Many people have preconceived notions about different dog breeds’ behavioral quirks. Golden retrievers are seen as playful and affectionate, and pit bulls can be viewed as hostile and aggressive. Chihuahuas are labeled yappy and temperamental, whereas bulldogs are described as easygoing and sociable. These behavioral stereotypes are ingrained in how many view breeds, from Great Danes to shih tzus. Before beginning work on dog behavior, “I really held this idea of breeds being different to be the truth,” says Kathleen Morrill, a dog geneticist at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School....

Online dating provides opportunities we do not have in the real world, like scanning 100 potential sweethearts in an hour. But some of these advantages may actually be drawbacks. Anonymous browsing, for instance, allows users to look at people’s profiles without the target knowing they got checked out—which can mean freedom from drawing unwanted messages. Yet it also erases any breadcrumbs that might lead to love. A paper published online in February in Management Science finds that on the whole, this feature backfires....

By Ben Hirschler 2015 was a good year for innovation in medicine with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving 45 novel drugs, four more than in 2014 and the most since the all-time record of 53 set in 1996. Across the Atlantic, the European Medicines Agency recommended 93 new products, including generics, up from 82 in 2014. But despite the rosy statistics and the prospect for further progress in 2016, the pharmaceuticals industry faces challenges, with increased political focus on drug pricing having punctured both biotech and specialty pharma valuations in recent months....

Genetically engineered salmon has reached the dinner table. AquaBounty Technologies, the company in Maynard, Massachusetts, that developed the fish, announced on August 4 that it has sold some 4.5 tons of its hotly debated product to customers in Canada. The sale marks the first time that a genetically engineered animal has been sold for food on the open market. It took AquaBounty more than 25 years to get to this point....

Look around. Do you see four walls or an expansive vista? The answer could influence your ability to think creatively. A growing body of research suggests that our sensory experiences can trigger metaphorical thinking, influencing our insights and behavior without us even realizing it. New research reveals ways we might be able to harness these subconscious forces. Consider, for example, the metaphorical idea that the heart is warm and emotional and the head is cool and rational....

With all due respect to T. S. Eliot, maybe the world really does end with a bang, not a whimper. Whether of our own creation (nuclear holocaust) or of nature’s (asteroid impact), plenty of cataclysms could doom civilization—perhaps even putting the survival of the species in jeopardy. We assessed the likelihood of several doomsday scenarios, from oft-discussed threats such as climate change to more fanciful ideas such as quantum fluctuations that would destroy our universe....