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A new approach for concentrating photovoltaic systems gets rid of mechanical sun trackers, making this design a contender for sunny rooftops across the world, a recent report shows. Current strategies for turning sunlight into electricity make trade-offs between performance, price and versatility. However, researchers will have to advance in all three areas to meet the Department of Energy’s “SunShot” goal: cost parity with fossil fuels by 2020. Conventional silicon-based cells are durable, but engineers are now hitting the upper performance limit of these designs, hovering around 25 percent power conversion efficiency....

Dear EarthTalk: What initiatives are taking place on college campuses to reduce the footprints of these large users of energy and other resources? – Shawna Smith, Hamilton, NY Microcosms of the world at large, college campuses are great test beds for environmental change, and many students are working hard to get their administrations to take positive action. The initiatives that are emerging are models for the larger society, and the students pushing for them will be taking these lessons with them, too, as they enter the work force after graduation....

Autism, a developmental disorder that causes deficits in social behavior and communication, affects four times as many boys as girls. Because of this extreme gender imbalance, some scientists posit that sex hormones may contribute to the disease. Now researchers have identified for the first time a gene that may help explain the gender discrepancy and underlie some common autism symptoms. In 2010 biologist Valerie Hu of the George Washington University Medical Center and her colleagues found that brains of people with autism have low levels of a protein produced by a gene called retinoic acid–related orphan receptor-alpha (RORA)....

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S last year, the new phone looked just like the previous one. It had a better camera and a faster chip, but it could do only one new thing: Siri. Siri, as everyone knows by now, is a software assistant that takes spoken orders. No training necessary: just hold down the “Home” button and speak casually. Siri lit the cultural world on fire. There were YouTube parodies, how-to guides and copycat apps for Android phones....

What if we could anticipate well in advance the outcome of an election or the impact of a natural disaster? Psychologist Philip E. Tetlock and journalist Dan Gardner explore how well we can foretell the future in their provocative new book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Crown, 2015; 352 pages). According to Tetlock, most people are pretty bad at judging future events. But decades of research have led him to recognize special individuals he calls “superforecasters....

The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting brings a wealth of scientific minds to the shores of Germany’s Lake Constance. Every summer at Lindau, dozens of Nobel Prize winners exchange ideas with hundreds of young researchers from around the world. Whereas the Nobelists are the marquee names, the younger contingent is an accomplished group in its own right. In advance of this year’s meeting, which focuses on physics, we are profiling several promising attendees under the age of 30....

A new twist on the familiar lithium ion battery has yielded a type of power-storing material that charges and discharges at lightning speed. The finding could offer a boost for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles and possibly allow cell phone batteries to regain a full charge in seconds rather than hours. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) report in Nature today that they devised a way for lithium ions in a battery to zip in and out about 100 times faster than previously demonstrated....

The F-150 notwithstanding, Americans are choosing more efficient cars. George Will has been described as an “intellectual,” as “erudite,” “brilliant,”even “brainy.” If you’ve ever heard him on television, you’d have to admit that his opinion of his own intellect seems to be quite high. And yet for such an erudite and brainy fellow, it’s amazing how often he gets it wrong when it comes to things environmental. (No comment on his other positions....

By Environment Correspondent Alister DoyleOSLO (Reuters) - A kind of rock that often contains diamonds has been found in Antarctica for the first time, hinting at mineral riches in the vast, icy continent – where mining is banned.No diamonds were found, but researchers said they were confident the gems were there.“It would be very surprising if there weren’t diamonds in these kimberlites,” Greg Yaxley of the Australian National University in Canberra, who led the research, said in a telephone interview....

In their search for eco-friendly energy sources, scientists have learned how to harness power from ever smaller living things: first corn, then algae, now bacteria. By figuring out how to generate electricity using the M13 bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have gone smaller still. Although the virus-powered device produces only a tiny bit of energy, it may one day pave the way for cell phones that can be charged while you walk....

At a bitcoin conference in Miami this January, Jeffrey Tucker, a laissez-faire economist and libertarian icon, made an unexpected observation. “There are people in this room who would think bitcoin is a little old-fashioned,” he quipped. Well, that was fast. After all, it was only five years ago that bitcoin appeared on the scene and provided the world with the first open-source, decentralized alternative to government controlled currencies. And it’s really only in the last year that bitcoin has begun to gain traction as a payment option....

Lifting a lobster casita is easier than it looks. The device is little more than an underwater cement table on stumpy legs that most people in the Caribbean use in place of lobster traps. To collect the spiny lobsters native to the area, you simply plant your feet in the sand, take a breath, duck into the four-foot-deep water, and flip up the trap. “You have to keep it from falling backwards!...

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The 2016 U.S. election was a wake-up call about the dangers of political misinformation on social media. With two more election cycles rife with misinformation under their belts, social media companies have experience identifying and countering misinformation. However, the nature of the threat misinformation poses to society continues to shift in form and targets....

Excerpted from Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? … And Other Reflections on Being Human, by Jesse Bering, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (North America), Transworld Ltd (UK), Jorge Zahara Editora Ltda (Brazil). Copyright © 2012 by Jesse Bering. We all know the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy’s step, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses and dresses, and a strong distaste for rough play with other boys....

Three-toed sloths (Bradypus variegatus) are the slowest mammals on Earth, according to scientists who have spent 15 years studying these lazy tree-dwellers. When it comes to saving energy, three-toed sloths are on a league of their own—panda bears, koalas and opossums can’t beat them—according to a research paper by Jonathan Pauli and Zachariah Peery, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We really expected them to have low metabolic rates, but we found them to have tremendously low energy needs—much lower than their cousins, the two-toed sloths, and the lowest documented for any mammal,” Pauli says....

Scientists have known for some time the ocean is acidifying because of climate change. The seas’ absorption of human-generated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is well documented, along with the harm it is causing ocean creatures like shellfish. But what about freshwater? Is it also soaking up atmospheric carbon? A new paper published today in Current Biology presents some of the first evidence that the answer may be yes, but perhaps not the same way as occurs in the ocean....

The Advances section of the March issue of Scientific American includes news stories related to China’s growing energy consumption, a new theory behind the extinction of large mammals in North America, why the sun’s outer atmosphere is hotter than its surface, along with many other subjects. For those interested in learning more about any of these developments, a list of further reading follows below. “Coal Fires Burning Bright,” page 14 This story, by David Biello, SciAm’s online editor for environment and energy, explains why coal will remain the dominant power source in China for many years to come....

You awake with a pounding heart and clammy hands. Relax, you think to yourself—it was just a bad dream. But are nightmares truly benign? Psychologists aren’t so sure. Although some continue to believe nightmares reduce psychological tensions by letting the brain act out its fears, recent research suggests that nocturnal torments are more likely to increase anxiety in waking life. In one study Australian researchers asked 624 high school students about their lives and nightmares during the past year and assessed their stress levels....

The Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountains are nicknamed the “Third Pole” or the “Water Tower of Asia” because of the immense volumes of ice stored in the area’s snowpack, glaciers and permafrost. Annual spring thaws send meltwater into the tributaries of many of Asia’s largest rivers, such as the Yangtze, Indus and Mekong. Together, streams and rivers snaking out of what is called High Mountain Asia provide freshwater for nearly one third of the world’s population, and are crucial for hydropower and farming....

The United States is not expected to electrify passenger cars fast enough to stay on track with the Paris climate accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to a new study. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change yesterday, the study by engineers at the University of Toronto concludes that 90% of light-duty cars on American roads would need to be electric by 2050 to keep the transportation sector in line with climate mitigation targets....