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The crucial insight came to me as I leisurely rode my bike home from work. It was Valentine’s Day, 2008. While I cruised along, my mind mulled over a problem that had been preoccupying me and others in my field for more than a decade. Was there some way to simulate life—including all the marvelous, mysterious and maddeningly complex biochemistry that makes it work—in software? A working computer model of living cells, even if it were somewhat sketchy and not quite accurate, would be a fantastically useful tool....

Consumer electronics companies got an early Christmas present this year when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to grant unlicensed smart phones, computers and other wireless devices approval to connect to the Internet via vacant “white space” airwaves. Exactly which Christmas, however, is less clear—consumer electronics–makers wanting to take advantage of broadcast spectrum space abandoned as a result of last year’s shift to digital television have much work ahead of them to meet the requirements laid out by the FCC....

As the nation’s 375,000 nail technicians buff, polish and file our fingers and toes, that workplace exposure to chemicals in the polish and glue can pose a real threat. But it’s not just the amount of those substance that can turn them toxic, it is also the way they get into workers’ bodies. Workplace conditions in certain nail salons, expertly laid out last week in an investigation by The New York Times’s Sarah Maslin Nir, can alleviate or exacerbate these issues....

July 1964 Picturephone “By this month it should be possible for a New Yorker, a Chicagoan or a Washingtonian to communicate with someone in one of the other cities by televised telephoning. The device he would use is called a Picturephone and is described by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which developed it, as ‘the first dialable visual telephone system with an acceptable picture that has been brought within the range of economic feasibility....

New developments in tracing particular photographs to the cameras that snapped them might provide the basis for a forensic method of catching pedophiles who distribute child pornography anonymously on the Internet. It could also help law-enforcement agencies identify smartphone thieves who take pictures with the stolen gadgets and then post the images online. It has been known since 2006 that tiny variations in the silicon chip–based camera sensors create differences in response to light that leave a signature “noise” pattern (above right) on every photo that can be matched to a specific camera and cannot be removed....

Going to the doctor’s office can feel so routine. You sit in the waiting room, fill out the paperwork, get measured and hop onto the exam table. But medical appointments for patients with disabilities require navigating a tricky obstacle course, full of impediments that leave them feeling awkward and could result in substandard care. Despite laws that require ramps and wider doors for access, many health care providers don’t have scales that can accommodate wheelchairs, or adjustable exam tables for patients who can’t get up on one by themselves....

I live in the South Bronx. this small part of New York City receives more than 40 percent of the city’s commercial waste. It is home to two sewage plants and four power plants; 60,000 diesel trucks drive through each week. Some 50 percent of the residents live at or below the poverty line. The hospitalization rate for asthma is seven times the national average. Unfortunately, race and class are reliable indicators of where one can find trees or waste facilities....

Scientists have long known that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe, even as they had less of a grasp of how recent trends compare to thousands of years ago. Now, a new study aims to fill the knowledge gap by concluding that recent summer warming in the eastern Canadian Arctic is unprecedented in more than 44,000 years. Prior research documented melt and temperature dynamics going back about 2,000 to 4,000 years in comparison, said study lead author Gifford Miller, associate director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder....

Diana writes: “I eat quinoa all the time but now I’m learning that the saponins in quinoa could cause intestinal damage and an inflammatory immune response? I would love your thoughts on this.” If you look hard enough, you can find some sort of sinister side to every so-called superfood. I guess it was only a matter of time before quinoa got its comeuppance! And sure enough, a quick Google search will lead you to all kinds of scary warnings about the saponins in quinoa....

A call by Germany’s environment minister to fast-track the country’s coal exit has riled Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative-led coalition government. Rebuffed in the run-up to December’s U.N. climate conference in Paris, Minister Barbara Hendricks has once again raised the topic. This time, things could turn out differently. The global deal struck in the French capital, experts say, has changed the calculation. Global carbon budgets and coal reserves are now in the mainstream of Germany’s public and political dialogue....

Tidal wetlands come in many forms, but they could be more alike below the surface than anyone realized. Whether it’s a mangrove forest in Florida, a freshwater swamp in Virginia or a saltwater marsh in Oregon, the amount of carbon locked in a soil sample from each of these coastal ecosystems is roughly the same. That’s the surprising message from a new analysis of some 1,900 soil cores collected around the United States during the past few decades....

Climate skeptics may soon join a key science advisory panel at U.S. EPA. A number of people who reject the findings of mainstream climate science are being considered by the Trump administration for spots on EPA’s Science Advisory Board, a voluntary but influential panel that reviews science used in environmental regulations. At least one nominee hopes to use a position on the board to challenge the science undergirding many environmental regulations....

COSMIC JACKPOT: WHY OUR UNIVERSE IS JUST RIGHT FOR LIFEby Paul Davies. Houghton Mifflin, 2007The head of a new cosmology think tank—provocatively named Beyond—at Arizona State University, physicist Paul Davies says he wants to look into “the origin of the universe, life, consciousness and the emergence of humanity.” In this, his 27th book, Davies examines the perplexing fact that many basic features of the physical universe seem tailor-made to produce life....

Some California drivers no longer go to the gas station—and it’s not because they drive electric cars. Gasoline increasingly is being delivered into the fuel tanks of cars while their owners work or as they spend time at home. It’s a trend in Silicon Valley, where technology companies offer fuss-free fill-ups to employees as a perk. They include PayPal, UPS, Facebook, Cisco, IBM and FedEx. There are also “pop up” gas stations....

I don’t know how many e-mails I have received from children who are terrified that 2012 will somehow involve the end of life as we know it, all because of an unfounded fringe religious prophecy that has received mass-market exposure with the release of a recent Hollywood movie. I have tried to reassure those children (and not a few adults) that this date represents nothing more cosmically special than the year of the next presidential election....

Researchers from NASA and the University of Illinois at Chicago atop the frozen surface of Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota this week are preparing for interplanetary exploration. Below them, under a sheet of ice more than a foot (30 centimeters) thick, the space agency’s new Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-Ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer (ENDURANCE) maps the lake’s underwater terrain. If this and subsequent voyages are successful, a similar vessel could be sent to navigate the suspected liquid water under the frozen surface of the ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa by the year 2028....

From Nature magazine. The United States is reeling under the impact of a massive hurricane named Sandy, the second to hit the northeastern states in two years. Flooding and widespread blackouts have crippled New York City and parts of New Jersey. Even the upcoming US election is taking a back seat, as President Barack Obama has quit the campaign trail to oversee the federal response. Throughout, there has been frequent talk of global warming as a potential driver of such events, but scientists and the media are still struggling with how to communicate the complexities....

From the moment Julia entered first grade, she appeared to spend most of her time daydreaming. She needed more time to complete assignments than the other children did. As she moved through elementary school, her test scores deteriorated. She felt increasingly unable to do her homework or follow the teachers instructions in class. She made few real friends and said her teachers got on her nerves. She complained that her parents pressured her all day long and that nothing she did was right....

John Dabiri thought, while training as an engineer, he would be studying machines like airplanes, and not creatures with no bones that are largely made of water. But jellyfish, the Stanford scientist came to learn, embody billions of years of design that has brought them through extinctions and recoveries, and illustrates some remarkably efficient ways of moving through the surrounding environment. In one example, jellyfish flex their bodies to manipulate zone of high and low pressure around them, which lets them move with a very low expenditure of energy....

An extinct marsupial hunter only the size of a fox may have hunted prey larger than itself, researchers say. This predatory ability makes the ancient creature different from its most recent living relative, the also-extinct thylacine, or “Tasmanian tiger.” The last known wild thylacine was shot in 1930, and the last captive member of the species died in a zoo in 1936. Hunting apparently helped drive the species to extinction. People targeted the dog-like Tasmanian tigers because they believed that the animals killed sheep; in fact, a 2011 study published in the Journal of Zoology found that the creatures’ jaws were too weak to take down large prey, and that they would have only killed animals smaller than themselves....