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Elon Musk’s new plan to go all-in on self-driving vehicles puts a lot of faith in the artificial intelligence needed to ensure his Teslas can read and react to different driving situations in real time. AI is doing some impressive things—last week, for example, makers of the AlphaGo computer program reported that their software has learned to navigate the intricate London subway system like a native. Even the White House has jumped on the bandwagon, releasing a report days ago to help prepare the U....

Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino. Crown Archetype, 2016 ($28) The first astronaut to tweet from space was once a skinny kid from Long Island who dreamed of going into orbit. In his memoir, Massimino tells of how he ended up on the space shuttle 350 miles above Earth by way of getting a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, passing nasa’s rigorous astronaut selection process and then being assigned to two Hubble Space Telescope repair missions—one of which provided the opportunity for his first trailblazing tweet....

Editor’s Note (7/11/22): This article is being repromoted because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received the first application to make oral birth control available without a prescription. As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to announce a decision that could severely restrict abortion rights in the country, access to contraception has taken on renewed importance. Birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptives—including patches, injections and vaginal rings—have been fully covered by almost all health insurance plans since the Affordable Care Act designated them as preventive health care....

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — This salt-caked fishing port has been flush with wind prospectors ever since Massachusetts legislators passed a law for massive wind development in the shallow waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. Ed Anthes-Washburn, a local port official, estimates he gives five harbor tours a month to wind industry representatives. Planning for the industry’s arrival now occupies much of his time, alongside proposals to redevelop several old industrial sites and a Seattle-style fish pier....

The future is walking north. The caravan of Central Americans traveling to the southern U.S. border is a preview of what the United States and other rich countries can expect as global warming compounds pressures on fragile and poor states, according to security and immigration experts. Experts caution against simple explanations for the caravan—political instability, violence and economic scarcity are all factors—but say that climate change promises to make such mass migrations more common in the coming years....

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On January 10, when Chinese researchers published the genome of a mysterious, fast-spreading, virus, it confirmed Dan Barouch’s greatest worry. The genome was similar to that of the coronavirus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, yet it also had striking differences. “I realized immediately that no one would be immune to it,” says Barouch, director of virology and vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Within days his laboratory and dozens of others around the world started designing vaccines that they hoped could protect billions of people against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the biggest challenge to global health and prosperity since World War II....

By Harriet McLeod and Todd Epp CHARLESTON, S.C./SIOUX FALLS, S.D., May 10 (Reuters) - Hail, snow, flooding, a tornado and a tropical storm made it a “severe weather” Mother’s Day in much of the center of the United States and on the Carolina coast on Sunday. Rescue helicopters in Denton County, Texas pulled six people out of homes after thunderstorms dumped heavy rain in the area. In the town of Krum in northern Texas, Hickory Creek flooded, sweeping away cars....

At least 5,600 years ago the Botai people that inhabited what is modern day Kazakhstan used horses–both wild and apparently domestic–as the basis of their lifestyle. With no evidence for agriculture or other domesticated animals, these people of the ancient steppes seem to have raised, rode and ate horses to survive. “It looks like the Botai people rode horses to hunt wild horses and either used horses to drag the carcasses back on sleds, or kept some domesticated horses for food,” explains David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N....

This June, the world’s oceans reached 17 degrees Celsius, their highest average temperature since record keeping for these data began in the 19th century. And a new experiment suggests that those balmier waters might mean big changes for the marine food chain. Marine ecologist Mary O’Connor of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill set up five four-liter “microcosms” of seawater filled with microorganisms from the Bogue Sound estuary on the North Carolina coast....

Every month, Scientific American—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Key information from this month’s issue: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY • Net Neutrality In December 2010, the FCC moved to prohibit unreasonable filtering of Internet content, a move that many viewed as supportingthe principles of net neutrality....

The multiverse is one of the most divisive topics in physics, and it just became more so. The major announcement last week of evidence for primordial ripples in spacetime has bolstered a cosmological theory called inflation, and with it, some say, the idea that our universe is one of many universes floating like bubbles in a glass of champagne. Critics of the multiverse hypothesis claim that the idea is untestable—barely even science....

As of March, if retired astronaut Mark Kelly wants to talk with his identical twin, he will have to make a long, long-distance call—to the International Space Station (ISS). His brother, Scott Kelly, age 51, chose the same profession and will be living there as part of a yearlong study of space travel’s effect on human health. The Kellys’ clonal DNA provides a unique opportunity to observe changes in genetic expression in a zero-gravity environment and compare them with a simultaneous quasi-control case on Earth....

Every year 130 million tons of America’s trash ends up in landfills. Together the dumps emit more of the greenhouse gas methane than any other human-related source. But thanks to plasma technology, one city’s rotting rubbish will soon release far less methane—and provide power for 50,000 homes—because of an innovation in plasma technology backed by Atlanta-based Geoplasma. Engineers have developed an efficient torch for blasting garbage with a stream of superheated gas, known as plasma....

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazine Two neuroscientists have created a prosthesis that can partially restore the sight to blind mice. The device could eventually be developed for use in humans. More than 20 million people worldwide become blind owing to the degeneration of their retina, the thin tissue at the back of the eye that turns light into a neural signal. Only one prosthesis has been approved for treatment of the condition — it consists of an array of surgically implanted electrodes that directly stimulate the optic nerve and allow patients to discern edges and letters....

Just below the equator, on the island of Borneo, a tropical rain forest is rising out of a logged, charred wasteland. Dawn mists cling to the leaves of ginger and mango trees erupting out of a tangle of ferns, rattan and yam vines. A sparse canopy of white-barked acacias shelters them in filtered shade as the sun burns through the haze. From deep in the distance a tuneless chorus of gibbons booms over the clamor of cicadas, while a white-bellied sea eagle soars silently above....

A vulnerability on SIM cards used in some mobile phones could allow malware infection and surveillance, a security researcher warns. Karsten Nohl, founder of Security Research Labs in Berlin, told The New York Times that he has identified a flaw in SIM encryption technology that could allow an attacker to obtain a SIM card’s digital key, the 56-digit sequence that allows modification of the card. The flaw, which may affect as many as 750 million mobile phones, could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset’s owner, Nohl warned....

How do soldiers come to terms with having taken a life in combat? Research has suggested that when people consider themselves to be “good” but are forced to do something “bad” to others, they adopt negative opinions about their victims to rationalize their actions. But according to a new study, this tendency may not apply to soldiers or at least not to those who have served in the Iraq War. American soldiers who have killed in Iraq do not think more poorly of Iraqis than Iraq War soldiers who have not killed—they do, however, think worse of Americans who speak out against the war....

In ordinary times, there would be no question about whether a drug with opioidlike effects should be proven safe and effective and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before it is widely marketed. But these aren’t ordinary times and the herbal supplement kratom is not a typical drug. In fact, the issue of whether or not to ban kratom is an excellent litmus test of whether the Biden administration will actually use the philosophy of harm reduction to guide drug policy—or just spout the trendy catchphrase as window dressing to hide ongoing engagement in the war on drugs....

Researchers and users of kratom or Mitragyna speciosa were stunned by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s abrupt withdrawal last week of its stated plan to place the Southeast Asian plant under an emergency ban in the United States. One reason for the famously tough federal agency’s unusual move was “a large volume of phone calls from the American public” as well as messages from the scientific community and letters from members of Congress, says DEA spokesperson Russ Baer....