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What if farmers could grow sugarcane in a matter of seconds, not days or weeks? Scientists are doing just that. Of course, these crops are not sprouting from soil. Instead they flourish on a computer screen. Digital plants like these are part of a new movement in agricultural science called “in silico,” where researchers design highly accurate, computer-simulated crops to help speed up selective breeding, in which plants are chosen and replanted to amplify their desirable traits....

As the United States grapples with the national reckoning over race prompted by the killing of George Floyd, it has become increasingly clear that even a pandemic does not strike equally. Nationwide, Black people have been 3.7 times as likely as white people to die of COVID-19, taking age into account; in some states, Black people have died of COVID-19 at age-adjusted rates five to nine times higher than those of white people....

If punishment were to increase to -9, then the upper right corner would give Alice (4 * 0.9) + ((-9) * 0.1). The bottom right corner would give an expected gain of 0. That yields the matrix: Alice High Alice Low Bob High 3, 3 0, 2.7 Bob Low 2.7, 0 0, 0 In this case, if Alice cheats, Bob receives the same gain whether he cheats or not. So, the lower right and the upper right are the same from Bob’s point of view....

Last Friday at 11 A.M., the operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., detected a leak. About 60 gallons (225 liters) of water a minute was escaping from the eastern cooling tower of the 620-megawatt power plant that provides nearly three quarters of the state’s electricity needs. By noon, the owners had shut down both the damaged and undamaged cooling towers and had cut the plant’s electricity output in half to avoid any harm to the reactor....

For a century, schoolchildren have been taught that the massive ocean current known as the Gulf Stream carries warm water from the tropical Atlantic Ocean to northwestern Europe. As it arrives, the water heats the air above it. That air moves inland, making winter days in Europe milder than they are in the northeastern U.S. It might be time to retire that tidy story. The explosion of interest in global climate has prompted scientists to closely study the climatic effects of the Gulf Stream only to discover that those effects are not as clear as conventional wisdom might suggest....

—for Dr. Robert Williams, astronomer Edited by Dava Sobel What are you staring at? said the mother, said the cousin, said the teacher to the child— Nothing, he said. Then his wife asked. Nothing. Nothing and more nothing and nothing more. What a waste of time, said his colleagues, valuable time. People would kill for that. One December for ten nights and a hundred hours, he stared at nothing. He looked at where there wasn’t anything but nothing, more nothing, and nothing more....

Musical preferences seem to be mainly shaped by a person’s cultural upbringing and experiences rather than biological factors, according to a study published on July 13 in Nature. “Our results show that there is a profound cultural difference” in the way people respond to consonant and dissonant sounds, says Josh McDermott, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and lead author of the paper. This suggests that other cultures hear the world differently, he adds....

On a hot summer day, plumes of nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide–collectively known as NOx–billow forth from coal-fired power plants in the eastern U.S. Along with urban concentrations of their transportation counterparts–think the tailpipes of cars and trucks–such plumes can be readily detected from space via orbiting satellites. And such space-based data reveals that NOx emissions, from power plants at least, are on the decline. Si-Wan Kim of NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and her colleagues collected satellite observations of such coal-burning power plants in the six states of the upper Midwest....

LEGACY OF LAUGHTER Everyone is hoping that 2021 proves to be a better year than 2020. But some of the most depressing news I’ve seen was Steve Mirsky’s announcement of the end of his Anti Gravity column in “The Real Deal.” In my opinion, Anti Gravity was the highlight of every issue. Such a sad thought to contemplate—having to face this new year and not having this column to cheer me up....

Key concepts Chemistry Chemical reaction Acids Bases Water Introduction Have you ever had a refreshing bath with bubbles or bath salts? What if you could use chemistry to create a bath-time treat that incorporated both fizzing bubbles and soothing salts? Such a combination does exist, and it’s called a bath bomb. If you have never experienced one, these “bombs” become fizzy when they touch the water. Why? It is due to a chemical reaction taking place between different ingredients within the bath bomb....

Baseball is a game of trajectories. And as Yogi Berra supposedly said, you can observe a lot just by watching. For example, at Yankee Stadium on May 29, I observed New York slugger Alex Rod­riguez hit a pitch by Cleveland Indians David Huff back up the middle and off the pitcher’s head. In fact, the ball hit Huff’s head so hard that it rolled nearly all the way to the right-field wall....

This summer the Iraqi insurgent group ISIS captured the city of Mosul—and along with it, three army divisions’ worth of U.S.-supplied equipment from the Iraqi army, including Humvees, helicopters, antiaircraft cannons and M1 Abrams tanks. ISIS staged a parade with its new weapons and then deployed them to capture the strategic Mosul Dam from outgunned Kurdish defenders. The U.S. began conducting air strikes and arming the Kurds to even the score against its own weaponry....

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced yesterday that it will effectively terminate the controversial China Initiative, a programme that sought to protect US laboratories and businesses from espionage. Instead, the programme will be broadened to cover other countries of concern and renamed. Scientists who spoke to Nature are relieved to see the initiative end—the programme frequently targeted academic researchers for failing to disclose funds from China or partnerships with institutions in that country....

The early hominid Paranthropus robustus might not be as specialized an eater as researchers thought. Using a new laser technique, anthropologists peered into the teeth of these hominids to discover that the primate actually ate a variety of foods. Between 2.4 and 1.4 million years ago, P. robustus roamed the African savanna. Researchers surmised that, because they had large molars with thick tooth enamel and strong jaw muscles, they ate low-nutrient, fibrous foods whereas their toolmaking relatives, Homo habilis and Homo erectus, ate softer foods such as fruit and meat....

Mars had water—until it didn’t. Scientists thinks that about four billion years ago, the planet had substantial amounts of liquid water on its surface, enough to form rivers, lakes, seas, and even oceans—and perhaps also to support life. But something happened in the following billion years, triggering the loss of this water from the surface until all that was left was the cold, dry wasteland of a world that we see today....

California’s Gavin Newsom (D) Few states embody the climate challenge quite like California. The Golden State is America’s second-largest carbon emitter. It was ravaged by wildfires in 2018, and it’s home to one of the country’s leading climate hawks, outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown (D). That means there will be considerable focus on Newsom when he takes office Monday. Newsom, the lieutenant governor and former San Francisco mayor, inherits the country’s most ambitious carbon-cutting policies....

Excerpted with permission from Mathematics without Apologies: Portrait of a Problematic Vocation, by Michael Harris. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2015, Princeton University Press. Hal: […] Mathematicians are insane. I went to this conference […] last fall. I’m young, right? I’m in shape. I thought I could hang out with the big boys. Wrong. I’ve never been so exhausted in my life. Forty-eight straight hours of partying, drinking, drugs, papers, lectures… Catherine: Drugs?...

For many cultures, including the U.S. and China, aging is a particular anathema. The global market for antiaging products alone is valued at more than $50 billion a year and is expected to balloon to more than $83 billion in less than a decade. The demand to slow aging—through mostly ineffectual pills, serums or creams–is real. But our understanding of how the human body ages is still nascent, one could argue....

In 2003 zoologist Eric Warrant took a cold call from an unexpected would-be collaborator: Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota was eager to help drivers see the road better at night. Most pedestrian fatalities occur at that time because walkers are hard to see (alcohol consumption may contribute to this statistic as well). The company was in the early stages of thinking about driverless cars, which would require cameras that see roads and signs not only during the day but also at night....

President Biden’s proposed budget would give a big boost to the global climate fight by injecting more than $11 billion into efforts to help other countries address global warming. The money would go toward a range of programs, budget documents show—from one initiative designed to help developing nations transition away from coal, to another that provides grants to help countries handle climate change and biodiversity loss. Biden’s proposal—the White House’s opening bid in its negotiations with Congress over next year’s budget—sends what analysts called a strong statement to advocates of global climate action....