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Editor’s Note (9/4/20): This story is being republished as school districts grapple with the challenges of reopening. New York City, the only large district attempting to do so, recently delayed the start of in-person classes until September 21. Even as schools have already begun reopening across the U.S., debate is still intensifying over whether students should be physically present in classrooms. Children are widely thought to be at relatively low risk of developing severe COVID-19, but a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indicates that cumulative cases doubled in roughly the past month: between July 9 and August 13, the number increased from about 200,000 to more than 406,000....

The announcement last month of a long-awaited breakthrough in stem-cell research — the creation of stem-cell lines from a cloned human embryo — has revived interest in using embryonic stem cells to treat disease. But US regulations mean that many researchers will be watching those efforts from the sidelines. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which distributes the majority of federal funding for stem-cell research, prohibits research on cells taken from embryos created solely for research — a category that includes the six stem-cell lines developed by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a reproductive-biology specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, and his colleagues....

That’s a wonderful thing, right? Digital means instant access. It means infinite duplication without loss of quality. It means instant transmission around the world. But unless we get diligent in a hurry, it could also mean a hit to our cultural record keeping. Consider photographs, for example. We know what people looked like 150 years ago because the prints—yes, an analog format—are still around. What photos does anybody print these days?...

Tension from activities as simple as watching a suspenseful movie or reading a speech in front of others is enough to interfere with problem-solving skills. A common beta blocker medication might provide an antidote. A pair of studies supporting this assertion was unveiled in November 2005 by Ohio State University neurologist David Q. Beversdorf, who led both tests. “When you are relaxed, you have more ready access” to problem-solving powers, he observes....

In February 2005 a group of Pentagon industry advisers warned that the “migration of critical microelectronics man?u?facturing” from the U.S. to other countries compromised national security. To ensure a steady supply of safe microchips, the Defense Science Board–which advises senior defense officials–recommended establishing “trusted foundries” to make critical hardware. But that is only part of the picture. According to the science board, any effort to improve the safety and supply of microchips would be of “limited utility” without a comparable focus on software–especially on what the Pentagon calls “foreign-influenced software....

Energy researcher Daniel Kammen stepped down this week as a science envoy for the U.S. State Department. In a public resignation letter addressed to President Donald Trump, Kammen lambasted the president’s response to the recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. He also lamented what he called Trump’s overall “attacks on core values of the United States.” The first letters taken from each paragraph of Kammen’s letter spell the word “IMPEACH.” Kammen is a professor of energy and director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a member of Scientific American’s board of advisors....

Methamphetamine has a fearsome reputation as a destroyer of families. Meth binges, which produce a sense of euphoria, may last a week; the severe paranoia and depression that come afterward persist for days or weeks, making it difficult to hold a job or take care of children. By comparison, cocaine binges rarely last more than three days. The meth problem grew out of addiction to over-the-counter remedies available since the 1930s for the treatment of asthma, narcolepsy and other ailments....

Sixty-five feet below the streets of Manhattan, workers are digging the city’s first new subway line since the 1940s. The Second Avenue subway, to be named the T line, will eventually stretch from 125th Street in East Harlem to Hanover Square in the financial district. The first stretch of the line, from 96th Street to 63rd Street, is set to open in December 2016, carrying more than 200,000 passengers every day....

U.S. stem cell scientists breathed a sigh of relief this July when a federal judge upheld the Obama administration’s expansion of stem cell research. He ruled that work on existing embryonic stem cell lines derived outside federally funded labs did not violate a ban on the destruction of embryos. Despite the legal victory, however, many investigators remain frustrated that a newer method for creating stem cells remains off-limits for funding. Human embryonic stem cells typically come from fertilized eggs....

A viral video about a fantasy phone called PhoneBloks inspired my Scientific American column this month. It’s a concept that almost everyone loves immediately: a cell phone whose components you can snap in and out as newer, better ones came along. Far less e-waste—and money-waste; you’d own only one phone and just keep it up to date with new parts. That idea will never see the light of day, for the reasons I mention in the column....

On Friday, the man most responsible for bringing Microsoft Windows into our homes and offices, forever changing the way we live and work, will leave Microsoft after 33 years at the Redmond, Wash., software Goliath. Bill Gates, 52, leaves behind his day-to-day responsibilities at the company he co-founded along with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975 to become a full-time ambassador of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, which he and his wife established in 2000 to promote health and education worldwide....

It’s human nature to sometimes regret a decision. Now scientists have identified the brain region that mediates that feeling of remorse: the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Giorgio Coricelli of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Research Center in Bron, France, and his colleagues designed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to monitor how people make decisions and feel about them after the fact. The team presented volunteers with two choices, one of which carried higher risk than the other, but had the potential for greater reward as well....

By tweaking the smallest units of life, scientists are making bigger gains in producing alternative and renewable energy, with recent efforts aimed at molecule-level controls and promoting fractal growth patterns to create different fuels and improve efficiencies. Bacteria, which range from 0.5 to 5 microns in size, perform functions that can be exploited, enhanced and modified to produce fuels. As they move, breathe, eat and reproduce, bacteria produce byproducts like ethanol and hydrogen while feeding on simple sugars, starches and sunlight....

California must craft a plan to blunt the impact of large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that have spewed into the air from a methane leak in Los Angeles, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said yesterday. The state also needs to produce emergency rules for all natural gas storage facility operators in the state, Brown said in a proclamation. Those regulations need to mandate at least daily inspections with leak detection technology, he said, and ongoing verification that storage wells are secure....

Editor’s Note (12/21/21): This article is being showcased in a special collection about equity in health care that was made possible by the support of Takeda Pharmaceuticals. The article was published independently and without sponsorship. We don’t think of everyday devices as biased against race or gender, but they can be. Electrical engineer and computer scientist Achuta Kadambi is familiar with the problem both professionally and personally. “Being fairly dark-skinned myself,” Kadambi says, he sometimes cannot activate no-touch soap dispensers and faucets that detect light bouncing off skin....

In August we celebrated the 170th anniversary of the founding of Scientific American, born on a Thursday, the 28th, and let you know we were kicking off several months of activities. (See our In-Depth Report here.) In this issue, the editors and I are pleased to close out the year by sharing with you a special report that showcases the wonders wrought by human ingenuity. Perhaps we’re optimists by nature, but we’ve always found ourselves looking forward to a future powered by the basic research that is emerging from labs today....

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s greenhouse-gas emissions rose to a record in the year ended March as the closure of nuclear power plants increased fossil fuel consumption. Emissions rose 1.6 percent to 1.395 billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent from a year earlier, preliminary data published by the Ministry of Environment on Thursday shows. That was up 1.3 percent from 2005 and up 10.6 percent from 1990. The world’s fifth-biggest emitter said last year that it was targeting a 3....

Doctors have known for a long time that feeling lonely can make you physically sick, but until now they did not know why. The answer may be in our genes. Researcher Steven Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues there and at other institutions found that chronic loneliness triggers a change in gene activity. The initial results published last year showed that people who scored in the top 15 percent of the U....

Head for dark, clear skies tonight—overnight Dec. 13-14—to see the shooting stars of the Geminid meteor shower overhead. The shower is likely to be the best meteor shower of 2018, and it will be visible in both hemispheres—though the Northern Hemisphere will have an advantage. While the August Perseid meteor shower is more famous, experts are saying to get outside for this one as well. “Maybe [it’s less well known] because it’s cold for so many during this shower’s peak,” Diana Hannikainen, Sky & Telescope’s observing editor, said in a statement....

Concrete, the most widely used human-made material, shapes much of our built world. The manufacture of one of its key components, cement, creates a substantial yet underappreciated amount of human-produced carbon dioxide: up to 8 percent of the global total, according to London-based think tank Chatham House. It has been said that if cement production were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter after China and the U.S. Currently four billion tons of cement are produced every year, but because of increasing urbanization, that figure is expected to rise to five billion tons in the next 30 years, Chatham House reports....