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Marine biologist Silvia Maciá was boating on the north coast of Jamaica in the summer of 2001 when she noticed something soar out of the sea. At first she thought it was a member of the flying fish family—a group of marine fish that escape predators by breaking the water’s surface at great speed and gliding through the air on unusually large pectoral fins. But after tracing the creature’s graceful arc for a few seconds, Maciá realized this was no fish....

Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries. Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs....

Female birds sing. That is one conclusion of our 2020 study on one of the most abundant, widespread, well-studied bird species in the world: the barn swallow. Despite the well over 1,000 scientific publications about this species, female barn swallow song had never previously been the focus of a research article. Why does it matter that female song has been ignored in this bird that breeds across most of North America?...

For Douglas Meffert, those attempting to harness the water power of the Mississippi River aren’t just scientists and engineers; they’re visionaries who could transform the way power grids operate in the Southeast, and perhaps other areas of the United States. Meffert, a professor of bioenvironmental research at Tulane University, said that with his work, he’s carrying on the mission of the late professor William Mouton, a revered New Orleans structural engineer, to end the southeastern United States’ reliance on fossil-fuel energy from the Gulf of Mexico....

HIV can defeat efforts to cripple it with CRISPR gene-editing technology, researchers say. And the very act of editing—involving snipping at the virus’s genome—may introduce mutations that help it to resist attack. At least half a dozen papers over the past three years have explored using the popular CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing technique to combat HIV, but the latest finding, described in a study published on April 7 in Cell Reports, adds to questions about the feasibility of the approach....

A convenient way of cutting industrial gases that warm the planet was supposed to be the United Nation’s clean development mechanism (CDM). As a provision of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM enables industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in part by purchasing “carbon offsets” from poorer countries, where green projects are more affordable. The scheme, which issued its first credits in 2005, has already transferred the right to emit an extra 250 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), and that could swell to 2....

“We are now engaged in another deadly episode in the historic battle of man versus microbe. These battles have shaped the course of human evolution and of history. We have seen the face of our adversary, in this case a tiny virus.” I spoke these words in testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on September 26, 1985. I was talking about HIV, but I could say the same thing today about the coronavirus we are facing....

Filling the shoes of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft won’t be easy. Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has discovered nearly three quarters of the 3,700-plus known exoplanets. And there are thousands more candidates waiting to be confirmed. So NASA is taking a different approach with its next planet-hunting mission. On April 18, the agency launched the US$337-million Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which will scrutinize 200,000 nearby bright stars for signs of orbiting planets....

Have you ever wanted to eat breakfast sitting across from a dire wolf or watch a saber-toothed cat roar from the comfort of your living room? These ice age animals have been extinct for more than 10,000 years, but scientists are bringing them back to life—virtually. The team developed three-dimensional, animated models of some of the ice age animals found in the site of Rancho La Brea, better known as the La Brea Tar Pits, in Los Angeles....

A good working definition of quantum mechanics is that things are the exact opposite of what you thought they were. Empty space is full, particles are waves, and cats can be both alive and dead at the same time. Recently a group of physicists studied another quantum head spinner. You might innocently think that when a particle rolls across a tabletop and reaches the edge, it will fall off. Sorry. In fact, a quantum particle under the right conditions stays on the table and rolls back....

People with Parkinson’s disease may show hints of motor difficulty years before an official diagnosis, but current methods for catching early symptoms require clinic visits and highly trained personnel. Three recent studies, however, suggest that diagnosis could be as simple as walking, talking and typing. Tests of such activities might eventually enable early intervention if a cure becomes available, which will be crucial for halting progression of the neurodegenerative condition. The findings are exciting, says neurologist Zoltan Mari of Johns Hopkins University....

From Nature magazine The pressurized, cylindrical chamber fits in the palm of Margaret Murnane’s hand. Yet out of one end of the device comes an X-ray beam that packs almost as much punch as the light generated by massive particle accelerators. Murnane and Henry Kapteyn, both physicists at JILA in Boulder, Colorado, a joint institute of the University of Colorado and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, have reported the first tabletop source of ultra-short, laser-like pulses of low energy, or ‘soft’, X-rays....

Soon, four men drove up to Merideth’s home. One of the men, David Boggs, had just bought the drone and says he was demonstrating it to his friends and family. Merideth told local TV news station WDRB that when Boggs and his friends arrived at his place, he warned them, “If you cross my sidewalk, there’s going to be another shooting.” Boggs called 911 and 30 minutes later, police arrested Merideth....

Space elevators are often dismissed as a science fiction dream, but I believe they will exist soon—perhaps in two or three decades. Throughout my career as an aerospace engineer and physics professor, I keep coming back to the concept of a cable stretching from Earth to space, along which people and cargo can easily travel. In recent years I and other researchers have found new ways to tinker with designs and answer questions about how space elevators could work....

Key concepts Vehicles Air Friction Engineering Aerodynamics Introduction Have you ever ridden on a hovercraft? It is like gliding on a cushion of air! In fact, that’s exactly what you’re doing—a hovercraft is a vehicle that glides over a smooth surface on a cushion of air. Because a hovercraft can travel over flat land or water, it is an amphibious vehicle. In this activity, you’ll get to build your own mini hovercraft using a CD or DVD, a pop-top lid from a plastic bottle, some glue and a balloon....

Alzheimer’s disease has long been characterized primarily by the buildup of two proteins in the brain: beta-amyloid and tau. Decades of focus on beta-amyloid has failed to significantly help patients. So researchers are turning more attention to the second member of the duo. “Amyloid hasn’t been as successful as we hoped,” says Jang-Ho Cha, an executive overseeing translational medicine work at pharmaceutical giant Novartis. “Tau has really emerged as a [potentially] more relevant target....

When the Obama administration issued its landmark climate rule in 2015, officials declared that benefits to public health and the climate would be enormous — dwarfing the costs. For every dollar spent to comply with U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan, the public could potentially get more than $6 in benefits, the Obama team said. Those benefits would come in part from averting premature deaths, asthma attacks and other health problems. Now, the Trump administration is poised to ax the rule, a move the president touted again Friday night at a rally in Huntsville, Ala....

Genetic material once dismissed as mere “junk” may in fact be responsible to the evolution of simple invertebrates into more complex organisms sporting backbones, according to a new study. Tiny snippets of the genome known as microRNA were long thought to be genomic refuse because they were transcribed from so-called “junk DNA,” sections of the genome that do not carry information for making proteins responsible for various cellular functions. Evidence has been building since 1993, however, that microRNA is anything but genetic bric-a-brac....

It’s no secret that when abroad, travelers often find local residents’ body odor particularly noxious. Now a study published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA shows that the degree of disgust we find in others’ sweat may depend on whether we are thinking of them as part of our social group or as outsiders. The team—led by Stephen D. Reicher, a psychologist at the University of St....

When the Chinese government recently folded to public outrage over Beijing’s record-breaking levels of smog, some thought it could signal a forceful shift to clean energy in the country. Instead, it looks like it might do the opposite. China is in the process of approving a new fleet of large-scale, coal-fueled synthetic natural gas (SNG) plants to be built in northwestern China and Inner Mongolia, projects that would emit seven times as much greenhouse gases as conventional natural gas plants, according to a new study out in the journal Nature Climate Change....