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Have you ever wondered why you seem to understand some people—even if you know relatively little about them? It turns out there may be a biological reason why it’s easier to walk a mile in some people’s shoes but not in others’. Researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that brain scans suggest people project their own values and feelings onto others if there is even the slightest evidence that the pair have something in common....

JANUARY 1956 SARGASSO SEAWEED–“Generations of scientists have sailed forth to study the Sargasso Sea. Contrary to what the seaweed might suggest, it is not a jungle teeming with life but one of the great oceanic deserts of the earth. Where do the weeds come from? Columbus theorized that the drifting weeds were torn loose from great submerged beds of plants near the Azores, but no such beds have ever been found....

To prevent economic and environmental devastation, climate experts maintain that we will now also have to achieve negative emissions. Doing so means removing billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. That is like saying we can no longer put out the garbage—and we need to steadily take back the garbage we put out in the past. Negative emissions on a massive scale have become “a bio-physical requirement” to meeting climate change goals, according to a 2018 study led by Jan C....

Astronomers breathed a collective sigh of relief as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) sprung to life. Getting the $10-billion telescope up and running following its launch on Christmas Day 2021 had been a nerve-racking affair. JWST would not fit into any modern rocket without being folded, and it had to rely on hundreds of moving parts to unfurl to full size once in space. Ultimately those efforts were successful, and the telescope has started returning some of its first calibration images to thrilled audiences back on Earth....

Scientists in the US have made a bionic spinach plant that soaks up explosive molecules from groundwater and gives off an infrared signal. Removing contaminants from soil is a time consuming and costly endeavour. But growing plants in affected areas offers a cheap and sustainable way of dealing with waste. Known as phytoremediation, the field exploits a plant’s ability to absorb and concentrate nutrients in their leaves or stem. Once the waste is absorbed, the plant can simply be pulled out of the soil....

When the wear and tear on Richard Merrell’s shoulder finally became too painful to bear this past fall, the Virginia-based firefighter opted to forgo a hospital visit. He turned instead to an outpatient medical facility in suburban Maryland where a surgeon shaved down his frayed cartilage, connected some tissue to the shoulder socket and drilled a few holes in the bone to stimulate the growth of new cartilage. Within hours of the operation, Merrell was free to go home....

The Obama administration will host a high-level meeting to discuss ways to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars in annual international global warming assistance, State Department Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said in a recent speech. Speaking to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, Stern warned that there will be “enormous pressure” on donor countries to show they are making progress on a vow to generate $100 billion annually by 2020 for clean energy and adaptation....

A dark plume leapt into the sky over southern Mexico. Below, waves of hot gas and rock screamed down volcanic slopes, stripping the mountain and surrounding area of vegetation, killing any living thing in their path. It mixed with rivers to create torrents of water, mud and other material as thick as wet concrete. For days afterward the air was choked with ash—microscopic shards of glass—that sickened survivors who inhaled it....

Black swans are catastrophic events that no one sees coming, while “grey swans,” as they are known, are extreme events for which there’s no historical precedent, but that could still potentially be predicted. A new study takes this concept into the realm of weather and climate, finding that global warming might sharply increase the odds of grey swan hurricanes and storm surge over the coming century. While such tempests would still remain relatively rare, they could pose unrecognized but potentially serious threats to coastal areas like Tampa, Fla....

Scientist and author Lyall Watson once remarked: “If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.” The chaotic networks of billions of electrically pulsating neurons in our skulls have perplexed scientists for centuries. Yet in the last 10 years our understanding of this mysterious organ has exploded. Prodigious advances in diagnostic and molecular techniques have laid bare some of the brain’s complexity, and scientists are just beginning to parse how these revelations translate into everyday behavior, let alone disease....

Will Wright is best known as the mastermind behind Spore as well as the enormously successful The Sims and SimCity series of computer games that offer players the opportunity to manage the lives of simulated people living in virtual worlds. (The Sims is the best-selling PC game in history.) But the 49-year-old Atlanta native also has a passion for robots. In addition to building robot warriors that competed on Comedy Central’s BattleBots TV program, which ran between 2000 and 2002, Wright is also a co-founder of Berkeley, Calif....

Mark your calendars for next Tuesday, September 10. Apple has just sent out invites for a news event that day, where we’re expecting to see the next iPhone. This year’s tagline is simply, “This should brighten everyone’s day.” The event is taking place at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., and begins at 10 a.m. Pacific. CNET will be there to bring you all the news, live. Stay tuned for more details on how to watch....

It took less than a minute of playing League of Legends for a homophobic slur to pop up on my screen. Actually, I hadn’t even started playing. It was my first attempt to join what many agree to be the world’s leading online game, and I was slow to pick a character. The messages started to pour in. “Pick one, kidd,” one nudged. Then, “Choose FA GO TT.” It was an unusual spelling, and the spaces may have been added to ease the word past the game’s default vulgarity filter, but the message was clear....

The field of robotics has long been held back by issues of diversity—too much of it in the robots themselves and not enough of it among the engineers designing and building them. Software written to, for example, coordinate the movement of limbs or wheels on one robot often will not work on any other robot. And studies have shown artificial intelligence algorithms—including those robots use to identify people and objects—tend to reflect their developers’ inherent gender and racial biases....

The cause of mysterious pneumonia cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan remains unknown, health authorities in the city said Sunday, as the number of infected people rose to 59 from 44 on Friday. Seven of the sick are listed as critically ill, down from 11 on Friday. The number of close contacts of cases under medical observation has risen to 163. Sunday’s statement, the third from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission about the incident, is the first to give information about when people became infected....

By Haim WatzmanTEL MEGIDDO–Fabled as a site of biblical battles and spectacular palaces, Tel Megiddo today is a dusty mound overlooking Israel’s Jezreel valley. It is also host to one of the hottest debates in archaeology – a controversy over the historical truth of the Bible’s account of the first united Kingdom of Israel.Ancient Megiddo is said to have been a key administrative and military centre in the kingdom ruled by King David and his son Solomon during the eleventh and tenth centuries BC....

DUKEVILLE, North Carolina—Deborah Graham’s life changed on April 18, 2015, with the arrival of a letter. Graham was in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee. Her husband, Marcelle, opened a large certified envelope just dropped off by the mail carrier. “The North Carolina Division of Public Health recommends that your well water not be used for drinking and cooking,” the letter said. “What did you just say?” Graham asked, incredulous....

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the worsening Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) a public-health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). The move came amid renewed fears that the virus could spread beyond the DRC’s borders. The declaration is the WHO’s highest level of alarm. This is the fifth time that the agency, an arm of the United Nations, has declared a global emergency—a step it reserves for events that pose a risk to multiple countries and that require a coordinated international response....

Key concepts Adaptation Traits Evolution From National Science Education Standards: Populations and ecosystems Introduction Have you ever thought about the differences between a hummingbird and a hawk? They are both birds and yet they look nothing alike! Why do you think they look so different? Aside from hawks being very big and hummingbirds being very small, these two birds exhibit other differences. Take their beaks, for example. A hawk’s beak is razor sharp and can tear the flesh off the small animals it eats....

Global warming has profoundly changed the odds of extreme heat, rain and snowfall, researchers report on 27 April in Nature Climate Change. Climate change caused by human activities currently drives 75% of daily heat extremes and 18% of heavy rain or snowfall events, the team found—warning that further global warming will sharply increase the risks of such weather. The researchers looked at ‘moderate’ extremes, which they defined as events expected to occur on 1 in every 1,000 days under present conditions....