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Lawmakers are once again pushing U.S. EPA and other federal agencies to recognize the burning of biomass as a carbon-neutral energy source. But scientists say that could be a bad move for the climate. A massive fiscal 2018 federal spending bill unveiled by congressional leaders Wednesday night includes a provision urging the heads of EPA, the Energy Department and the Agriculture Department to adopt policies that “reflect the carbon-neutrality of forest bioenergy and recognize biomass as a renewable energy source....

Editor’s Note (9/4/20): As flu season begins, many people now worry about the double whammy of influenza and COVID-19. Scientific American sketched out what could happen with these two diseases earlier this year. Uncertainty about the future seems to be the one sure thing in the coronavirus pandemic. No one knows if COVID-19 will persist at its current pace or if recent increased interactions among people will spawn an onslaught of smaller outbreaks or a larger second wave....

In 2005 neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga published a paper identifying single neurons that would light up in an individual’s brain every time that person saw a particular celebrity—Jennifer Aniston and Michael Jordan were two examples. As amusing and remarkable as this finding seemed, even more than a decade later, researchers are still no closer to understanding how neurons firing in certain brain areas leads to recognition of faces or, most important, how the brain controls specific behaviors in the human body....

The founder of psychoanalysis was born 150 years ago, and in 2006 his theories are enjoying a rebirth. New life in deed, because not too long ago his ideas were considered dead. For the first half of the 1900s, Sigmund Freuds explanations dominated views of how the human mind works. His basic proposition was that our motivations remain largely hidden in our unconscious minds. Moreover, they are actively withheld from consciousness by a repressive force....

Editor’s Note (11/11/20): On November 10, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on cloth face masks to add that they can protect the wearer as well as prevent that individual from infecting others. Any mask worn for day-to-day protection against COVID-19 is going to be imperfect, at least for now. Supplies of N95 respirators—the most effective mask type—should find their way to those in daily close contact with infected people....

In a new study, rats were spared the limb-weakening effects of a stroke if they were treated with brain tissue cultivated from human embryonic stem cells. But unlike similar experiments, the transplanted cells gave no sign of causing tumors, according to a report this week in the online journal PLoS One. Researchers say that if they can build a string of such successes in a range of animal models, they can make a stronger case for testing the cells in people....

Whether learning to write, swing a golf club or play the violin, even the most good-natured students become frustrated by inevitable mistakes. Such off-target actions were thought to reflect neural noise in the parts of the brain controlling movement—something a good dose of practice would stamp out. But a new study, published January 12 in Nature Neuroscience, finds that these inconsistencies are not always obstacles to be overcome but rather key ingredients to learning....

President Obama moved toward solidifying his climate change legacy this week by requiring federal defense and intelligence agencies to consider the effects of a warming planet on national security in the policies, plans and doctrines they develop. The executive order, issued yesterday, comes in the form of a presidential memorandum requiring 20 federal agencies to collaborate to make sure decisionmakers have the best available information on climate change impacts and their potential threats to national security (E&ENews PM, Sept....

Six years before her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder marked by tremors and movement difficulties, Joy Milne detected a change in his scent. She later linked the subtle, musky odor to the disease when she joined the charity Parkinson’s UK and met others with the same, distinct smell. Being one of the most common age-related disorders, Parkinson’s affects an estimated seven million to 10 million people worldwide....

The recent surge of positive COVID-19 vaccine developments has sent waves of relief throughout a pandemic-weary world. However, no matter how effective these vaccines are, they will not be enough to end this global pandemic—and for many of the world’s most vulnerable communities, they won’t arrive fast enough. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were developed in record time. However, these announcements highlight significant challenges: delivering two-dose vaccines with stringent cold-chain requirements to almost eight billion people, many of whom reside in communities with underfunded and strained health systems, is no small feat....

Armed with a wand and funky spectacles, Beatrice Steinert steps into a world of lush green mounds and bright blue dots. “To me, this is literally sitting right here,” she says, as she strokes something mid-air. This is not some hallucinogenic trip. Rather, Steinert was exploring a microscopic snail embryo in 3-D at the YURT, a virtual reality theater at Brown University. For her undergraduate senior thesis here, she dove into the past and future of scientific imaging....

Like most robots, social robots use artificial intelligence to decide how to act on information received through cameras and other sensors. The ability to respond in ways that seem lifelike has been informed by research into such issues as how perceptions form, what constitutes social and emotional intelligence, and how people can deduce others’ thoughts and feelings. Advances in AI have enabled designers to translate such psychological and neuroscientific insights into algorithms that allow robots to recognize voices, faces and emotions; interpret speech and gestures; respond appropriately to complex verbal and nonverbal cues; make eye contact; speak conversationally; and adapt to people’s needs by learning from feedback, rewards and criticisms....

By Erika Check HaydenCongresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is resting in a medically induced coma. But her brain is undergoing a frenzy of activity in an attempt to heal itself from the trauma she suffered on Saturday, when she was shot in the head in Tucson, Ariz., by a gunman who also shot 19 other people, killing six. Although Giffords’s recovery could take years, it is possible that she could one day return to politics, doctors say....

Many animals, including humans, can’t live healthy lives without the microbes in their guts. These intestinal residents break down food and help to fight off disease-causing microorganisms. But the latest research suggests that some species, including caterpillars, can do just fine without them. It’s possible, say scientists who have studied these symbiotic bacteria, fungi and other microbes, that gut microbiomes might be less ubiquitous than previously assumed. Tobin Hammer, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, investigated the intestinal microbes of 124 species of wild, leaf-eating caterpillars from the Americas by sequencing a gene commonly used to identify microorganisms....

By turning off the lights, setting up an oatmeal-based bed and slipping some extra vitamins into their food, researchers have persuaded the supposedly asexual mold that makes penicillin to have sex. The fungi’s ability to switch it up sexually could help industrial scientists breed more efficient antibiotic-producing strains or even lead to the discovery of new, useful compounds. Penicillium chrysogenum is the original and still-used source of penicillin. It creates a nitrogen and carbon ring structure called beta-lactam, which prevents bacteria from building cell walls....

Dan Wegner published his last paper here in this edition of Scientific American. It marked the end of a prolific, decades-long career in social psychology—one studded by every major award in the field, over 100 articles, seven books and an endowed professorship at Harvard University. But what the public record does not reveal is how Dan approached science and how that approach influenced his academic progeny. A mere inspection of his CV also misses why it meant so much to him that his final paper would appear here in Scientific American....

By Chris Keane NAGS HEAD N.C. (Reuters) - A weakened but fast-moving Hurricane Arthur swept into southern New England on Friday night, wielding tropical storm-force winds, after an earlier landfall in North Carolina that caused only slight damage. The Massachusetts summer resort areas of Nantucket and Cape Cod, popular destinations for visitors over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, were issued tropical storm warnings by the U.S. National Hurricane Center, which predicted powerful winds and several inches (cm) of rain....

Where is the experience of red in your brain? The question was put to me by Deepak Chopra at his Sages and Scientists Symposium in Carlsbad, Calif., on March 3. A posse of presenters argued that the lack of a complete theory by neuroscientists regarding how neural activity translates into conscious experiences (such as redness) means that a physicalist approach is inadequate or wrong. The idea that subjective experience is a result of electrochemical activity remains a hypothesis, Chopra elaborated in an e-mail....

An emerging clash between electric vehicle quick-chargers is the auto industry’s rerun of the VHS versus Betamax videotape battle. For the electric vehicle owner, there is the Japanese-developed CHAdeMO standard. Then there is the Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE) International J1772 Combo standard. Both are direct-current quick-charging systems designed to charge the battery of an electric vehicle to 80 percent in about 20 minutes. But, like the videotapes, these two systems are designed to be completely incompatible....

This month, my Scientific American column described Viv, a next-generation voice assistant that’s been created by the team who originally brought us Siri (or, rather, brought Siri to Apple). Now, I meet people all the time who say, “Oh, I never use Siri” (or Google Now or Microsoft’s Cortana). “It’s just not accurate enough.” Ah, but there’s a big difference between dictating text to your phone, which sometimes produces errors—and issuing commands, which almost never makes a mistake....