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Texas’ electric grid nearly melted down in the summer of 2019, when searing temperatures sent electricity demand soaring. The state’s grid operator was able to keep the lights on, but many observers were worried. They wondered if Texas power plants would be able to match the rising demand, driven largely by residents reaching for the dial on their air conditioning units. When the grid locked up again this week, leaving 4 million people in Texas without power, it was for an entirely different reason: extreme cold, the likes of which the state had never seen....

Share Your PhotosUpload On April 20, 2010, a blowout at the Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by BP. Eleven people died. And the wellhead, protruding from the seafloor, spewed millions of gallons of crude into the ocean. That oil spread far and wide, killing microorganisms and larger animals, marring coastlines and damaging the economies of communities along the shore. Debate arose over whether the large volume of chemicals dispersed to break down the oil was doing its own harm or good....

The prospect of finding extraterrestrial life is no longer the domain of science fiction or UFO hunters. Rather than waiting for aliens to come to us, we are looking for them. We may not find technologically advanced civilizations, but we can look for the physical and chemical signs of fundamental life processes: “biosignatures.” Beyond the solar system, astronomers have discovered more than 200 worlds orbiting other stars, so-called extrasolar planets. Although we have not been able to tell whether these planets harbor life, it is only a matter of time now....

The Science Of The Next 150 Years: 50 Years in the Future When the U.S. civil aeronautics administration certified the Aerocar for operation in 1956, it seemed inevitable, at least to aerospace engineers, that before long the flying car would take its place as a fixture in the garage of the typical suburban ranch home. Yet that was not to be. The Aerocar, which looked like a car but had wings and could take off on a short runway, was too expensive to justify mass production....

On a balmy day in late June, Scott Williams waits for a white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) to fall asleep. Williams, a wildlife biologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, has just transferred the animal from a trap to a plastic bag containing a cotton ball doused in anaesthetic. As soon as the mouse’s breathing slows to one breath per second, Williams will take it out, draw blood, weigh it, put an ear tag on it for identification and check the animal for ticks, saving any that are engorged with blood....

When tornadoes form and reach down to the Earth in sinister columns of 100 mph winds, they do so for so many highly specific reasons that it’s almost impossible to predict where they might hit or how strong they will be. The recipe for a tornado has to be Goldilocks-specific. Air temperatures on the ground have to be just right, as do air temperatures in the upper atmosphere. The air has to mix in the right place and at the right time of year, and there has to be a storm strong enough to stir it all together....

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug regimen to treat an extreme form of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Nearly 90% of people infected with extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB who took this treatment during a clinical trial recovered in 6 months. The average success rate for drug regimens currently used to treat XDR TB is around 34%. New TB drugs are desperately needed, and the XDR TB regimen approved on 14 August could quickly reach patients—as long as it’s priced affordably, says Sharonann Lynch, TB policy advisor for the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders), who is based in New York City....

Editor’s Note (6/1/17): This story has been updated to reflect the Trump administration’s announcement today of its decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Pres. Donald Trump announced today that he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. But whether Trump had kept the U.S. in the agreement or not, his policies—if they all become reality—already had the power to profoundly undermine the nation’s ability to reach the U....

Executives of ECOtality Inc. believed in 2009 that their battery charging technology would be a winner when plug-in electric vehicles began to hit the market this year. But with debts running far ahead of revenue, the San Francisco firm needed immediate financial support to stay in the game. The help came from China, through a $2 million investment that year by a Chinese company. In return, the Chinese company received the rights to make and sell ECOtality’s chargers in its country and in other Asian markets....

The virtues of exercise are myriad: better cardiovascular health, decreased risk for diabetes, boosted mood, and even perhaps a leaner physique. But aside from such macro links and knowledge about the heart rates, blood–oxygen levels and hormonal responses related to exercise, scientists have a relatively cursory understanding of the chemical mechanisms at work in the body during and after physical activity. A new study, published online May 26 in Science Translational Medicine, presents a thorough profile of exercise’s impact on the human body’s metabolites in plasma—and reveals vast biological differences among more- and less-fit individuals....

Another type of model used to project climate impacts, however, still has significant uncertainty, researchers say. These models, called impact models, take the climate model outputs that show changes in the atmosphere and ocean systems and translate them into effects on things like agriculture, flooding, drought and even human health. Such results would be incredibly useful for planners and policymakers, but impact models are still in their early stages, with somewhat unreliable projections....

One of the biggest scientific experiments in American schools this year has unfolded not in a petri dish but in a patty. Instead of all-beef burgers, students in more than 300 school districts across the country have been eating “The Blend,” a meat-mushroom amalgam. This mash-up has its roots in a “healthy flavors” initiative from the Culinary Institute of America, which teamed up with the Mushroom Council in 2011 to explore how the umbrella-shaped fungi could trim the dietary sins of common beef dishes....

Confirming reports from earlier this month, Apple this morning sent out invites to an iPad-related event taking place on March 7. As in years past, Apple is holding its event at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco, as opposed to its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. where the company recently held its annual shareholders meeting and the unveiling of the iPhone 4S last October. The invite says only “We have something you really have to see....

FM radio and cellular phones are fostering a rising awareness of climate impacts and mitigation in some of the globe’s remotest and most undeveloped regions. In Nepal, community radio has long been used to spread news about social issues. But lately the focus has shifted to climate change, said Pitambar Sigdel, a senior reporter for Annapurna Post, the national daily newspaper. “They are playing some interesting roles,” she said via e-mail....

LONDON — The European Space Agency has some ambitious resolutions for the New Year. The year 2013 will include the agency’s first spaceflight for its newest class of astronauts, the launch of its latest robot cargo ship Albert Einstein, and the development of new rockets and spacecraft, including a reusable space plane and work on NASA’s new Orion capsule. January and February should see agreements and contracts signed for the new rockets, Ariane 5 Mid-Life Evolution (ME) and Ariane 6, and for ESA’s participation in NASA’sOrion space capsule....

If antioxidant supplement labels are to be believed, you should stop reading this article and gobble down some pills: Spurred by the rising sales of antioxidant supplements, Pom Wonderful, makers of pomegranate juice, now makes an antioxidant supplement that they claim has “extraordinary health benefits.” This proclamation is echoed by numerous health supplement ads in health food stores and on the Internet. For instance, Source Naturals Resveratrol advises on the General Nutrition Centers Web site that taking antioxidants “…may help prevent free-radical damage throughout the body and provide protective support to the cardiovascular system....

At the dawn of aerial combat 100 years ago, World War I flying aces frequently closed to within 15 meters before firing at enemy aircraft with their machine guns. Such intimate encounters helped create a perception of pilots as skilled “knights of the air” who climbed into the cockpits of nimble aircraft to duel their opponents. But a recent report hints at a very different near future, where military pilots fly large, bomber-size aircraft loaded with missiles and command networked swarms of robotic drones....

When we make selection decisions – whether it is choosing a date, a potential business partner or a job candidate – we try our best to make accurate judgments about the potential of the people we are considering. These decisions, after all, have long-term consequences. A first date could turn into a long-lasting romantic relationship; a potential business partner could be a lifelong colleague; a job candidate could be someone we work with for years to come....

In early 2021 emergency room physician Torree McGowan hoped the worst of the pandemic was behind her. She and her colleagues had adapted to the COVID-causing virus, donning layers of protection before seeing each patient, but they’d managed to keep things running smoothly. The central Oregon region where McGowan lived—a high desert plateau ringed by snow-capped mountains—had largely escaped the first COVID waves that slammed areas such as New York City....

In 2003 preliminary clinical trials of a vaccine to treat Alzheimer’s disease were halted because 18 of the 298 patients developed swelling in their brains. The doctors had hoped that by exposing the human immune system to small amounts of beta-amyloid–a protein thought to initiate the buildup of plaques in the brain that underlies the neurodegenerative disease–it could be trained to expel the rogue protein. Instead, in 6 percent of the patients, the immune system overreacted and damaged the brain itself....