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BEIJING—China has made progress in its carbon trading pilot programs but still has a long way to go, government officials and industry players believe. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is betting on carbon trading as a key measure to cut its emissions for each unit of economic output 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Already, five regional carbon markets have been up and running in the Guangdong province and cities of Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin since 2013....

“Mr. Chalmers Mitchell’s new book, ‘Darwinism and War’ is a reply to the argument in favor of war, so often put forth in the last three years by a certain German school, that a state of constant struggle or warfare is a dominant factor in evolution. These writers declare that war is both necessary and admirable, and is in fact a biological law which man cannot resist, and that it is, moreover, beneficial in the long run, favoring the survival of the strongest and ablest races....

Marine biologist Silvia Maciá was boating on the north coast of Jamaica in the summer of 2001 when she noticed something soar out of the sea. At first she thought it was a fish. After tracing the creature’s graceful arc for a few seconds, Maciá realized it was a squid—and it was flying. The sighting led Maciá, who teaches at Barry University in Florida, to co-author one of the first studies on squid aeronautics in 2004....

The warming waters of one of central Europe’s most popular holiday destinations, Switzerland’s Lake Zurich, have created an ideal environment for a population explosion of algae including Planktothrix rubescens, a toxic cyanobacterium. It has the potential to harm humans, animals and the tourism that pumps up the economies of lake districts. Although harmful algal blooms have been documented for more than a century, recently the number and frequency of cases have drastically increased....

The December earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, and the tsunami it created, wreaked massive destruction and loss of life. It also increased stress on nearby faults in the area. A report published today in the journal Nature indicates that the region may now be primed for another big quake, one that could spawn a second tsunami. The news follows on the heels of another reminder of the area’s geologic restlessness: early Wednesday a 5....

NEW ORLEANS—A new study hints that black holes might not be as good at keeping secrets as researchers have long thought. A pair of physicists has reexamined the time it would take for information (think: your iPhone’s memory) to potentially escape from inside a black hole. They find that the 1s and 0s of your address book could be recovered as quickly as 1,000 bits per second—far faster than previously expected....

Liquid salts can improve the treatment of skin infections by killing bacteria and enhancing antibiotics’ ability to penetrate the skin’s outer layer, a new study finds. A team led by Samir Mitragotri, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has demonstrated this strategy in principle in a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Penetrating the barriers Four-fifths of all human infections are associated with biofilms....

Each summer, scores of sunny yellow dragonflies transform into vibrant scarlet flyers. Behind this showy makeover scientists have discovered a simple chemical reaction every bit as elegant as the spectacle itself. The discovery—made by a team of biologists in Japan—reveals both the pigments and mechanism behind this colorful change, a process they describe in a study released yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Because dragonflies are diurnal [awake during the day] and have a better sense of vision than smell or sound, body color is essential for partner recognition,” says lead author Ryo Futahashi, a biologist at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology....

“I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms and extreme immoderation in all my passions,” wrote Oliver Sacks six months ago in a New York Times op–ed in which he told the world that he was dying of cancer. And although he admitted to feeling an incipient sense of detachment from the transient events of the day, the renowned neurologist and peerless chronicler of the quirks and intricacies of the human brain said he was doubling down on life: “I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can....

Both cigarettes and opioids are highly addictive—and potentially deadly. Both substances are sold by profiteering companies using science distorted by spin or outright lies. And both have been the subjects of multi-billion-dollar lawsuits. But opioids are not cigarettes. And as the opioid settlements finally near completion, it is crucial not to misapply lessons learned from tobacco. Fundamentally, this means accepting that—unlike cigarettes—opioids have genuine uses in both pain and addiction medicine....

Leaping up out of a jar in an arc before falling to the floor, the fountain-like motion of a chain of beads has puzzled millions around the world with its apparently gravity-defying behavior. Now physicists think they have an explanation. And it is far from intuitive. British science presenter Steve Mould, who made the experiment famous with a video that went viral on the Internet, explained the phenomenon as simply one of inertia: the falling chain has downward momentum, causing an upward momentum in beads leaving the pot....

When Less Is More The global challenge of addressing sustainable use of nitrogen fertilizers is well characterized in “Fixing the Global Nitrogen Problem,” by Alan R. Townsend and Robert W. Howarth. Where the authors fall short, however, is in considering some of the solutions that agricultural research and innovation offer to address these problems. Conventional breeding and biotechnology are being applied to improve crop utilization of available nitrogen, thus reducing fertilizer demand without sacrificing increased yields....

Beautiful Whale by Bryant Austin Abrams, 2013 ($50) Like humans, whales are “warm-blooded, air-breathing, milk-producing creatures with a little bit of hair and oversize brains,” writes oceanographer Sylvia A. Earle in her introduction to this mesmerizing book of photography. Austin, who has dedicated himself to creating life-size, full-body portraits of whales, writes about his weeks and months at sea with groups of minke, humpback and sperm whales. He floats motionless in waters off Tonga, Dominica and the Great Barrier Reef until the creatures approach closely enough for him to capture them on camera....

A new study suggests that global carbon models are getting it wrong when it comes to soil carbon. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is expected to rise steadily through the end of the century. This is good news for plants and trees, which thrive on CO2 and can serve as important sinks to absorb carbon and mitigate climate change. But a higher level of carbon dioxide is likely to have the opposite effect on carbon stored in soils, according to the results of an 11-year study on vegetation in an experimental oak woodland in Florida....

British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this week spoke publicly about a number of measures his country is taking to crack down on child pornography peddled over the Web. A key component in Cameron’s plan is enlisting the aid of Internet service providers, wireless carriers and search engine developers to help filter out images portraying such child abuse. The prime minister’s initiative is commendable, but it does not address a major source of online child porn—peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks....

A spectacular set of photos taken by an amateur astrophotographer chronicles the evolution of Comet ISON over the last few months, which has seen the much-hyped icy wanderer brighten so much that it’s now visible to the naked eye. “In September, ISON was just a smudge smaller than most stars,” Mike Hankey wrote SPACE.com in an email. “The tail, while visible, was short, faint and had little detail.” Hankey started imaging Comet ISON using a 14....

Editor’s Note: We are posting this story from our April 2003 issue because of news that the gray wolf is being removed from the U.S. Endangered Species list. Only six domestic animal species have ever earned their way off the U.S. Endangered Species List. The gray wolf is closing in on becoming the seventh. Although many wolf biologists back the decision, not all wildlife advocates are cheering the pending status change....

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are still scratching their head over a basic question: Is there something they could measure to tell if people are protected? Researchers call such measures “correlates of protection”—indicators that a person is unlikely to get seriously ill if infected by a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Data so far have focused heavily on a single parameter: neutralizing antibodies....

Our sun is a ship; our galaxy the sea. Moving in cosmic currents, our star completes a lap of the Milky Way every 230 million years or so, with its retinue of planets in tow. For the most part, this journey is solitary, save for the occasional close encounter with another star. But a few years ago, something remarkable seems to have occurred. While traversing this vast, magnificent ocean, our sun may have come across a cosmic iceberg, a sizable hunk of hydrogen ice adrift in space....

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazineThe battle for the world’s largest radio telescope has ended in a draw.South Africa and Australia will split the Square Kilometer Array, a €1.5-billion (US$1.9-billion) project made up of 3,000 15-metre-wide dishes and an even larger number of simple antennas. The decision was announced at a meeting outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, following a vote by SKA’s international board.Under the terms of the deal, the split will eventually see South Africa receiving the majority of the project’s 3,000 dishes, and Australia will host the low-frequency radio antennas....