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Elegant and enigmatic, cats tantalize not only those of us who share our sofas with the smaller versions but scientists who have tried to puzzle out the origin and evolution of their larger cousins. Where did the modern cat family evolve? Why and when did they leave their homes and migrate across continents? How many species actually exist, and which ones are closely related? Experts generally agree that there are 37 species in the family Felidae, but they have offered dozens of classification schemes, ordering cat species in as few as two to as many as 23 genera....

Months of pandemic lockdowns, an economic crisis and necessary social upheaval are taxing each and every one of us. As Wired writer Matt Simon outlined in an article in early June, our bodies are programmed to deal with short spurts of stress. Longer hauls of strain amp up levels of the hormones cortisol and adrenaline and lead to a host of problems from anxiety to insomnia and—in the extreme—even Cushing’s syndrome....

Unsigned and undated, inventory number 779 hangs behind thick glass in the Louvre’s brilliantly lit Salle des États. A few minutes after the stroke of nine each morning, except for Tuesdays when the museum remains closed, Parisians and tourists, art lovers and curiosity seekers begin flooding into the room. As their hushed voices blend into a steady hivelike hum, some crane for the best view; others stretch their arms urgently upward, clicking cell-phone cameras....

There’s long been talk in medicine about the need to listen more to the patient voice — and now that mantra is being taken literally. Academics and entrepreneurs are rushing to develop technology to diagnose and predict everything from manic episodes to heart disease to concussions based on an unusual source of data: How you talk. A growing body of evidence suggests that an array of mental and physical conditions can make you slur your words, elongate sounds, or speak in a more nasal tone....

Even as voters ushered in a Republican-led Congress and a Donald Trump presidency they created a new era for marijuana use in the U.S. California, Massachusetts and Nevada all voted to green-light recreational cannabis use in their jurisdictions, meaning a welter of Americans—more than 20 percent of the country’s adult population—can legally blaze up. With the addition of California, the map of legal recreational marijuana use will now include the entire Pacific coast....

The first issue of Scientific American was published on August 28, 1845, so it’s another eight months until our 175th birthday. But we’re kicking off our anniversary year right away with some exciting changes to your monthly issue, most conspicuously a redesigned cover that harks back to the white space and square images used in the 1940s and the latter half of the 20th century. We’re also reintroducing poetry in a new column, Meter, edited by Dava Sobel....

Do you take odd pride in knowing how to clean the dishwasher filter? Do you tell your friends in a conspiratorial whisper about the miracle of compound interest? Does going to bed at 9:30 give you a high? If so, congrats: you’re adulting. But beyond the practical, there’s a psychology to managing your adult life. Adulting, which the Oxford English Dictionary shortlisted for Word of the Year in 2016 (along with alt-right, hygge, woke, and post-truth) is behaving in a manner consistent with responsible adulthood....

But hidden behind this straightforward process is a big climate toll, said environmental and public health experts—the daily rumble of thousands of delivery trucks fanning out across the country. The majority of trucks that transport goods are powered by fossil fuels like diesel, experts say. That means the process of getting gifts from warehouses to consumers involves pumping large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “Right now, under the status quo, basically every product, whether it ends up at the door or at the store, gets there via fossil fuel transportation,” said Aileen Nowlan, senior manager for EDF+Business, a project of the Environmental Defense Fund that advocates for corporate sustainability....

Skeptics of human-caused climate change have often relied on a favorite argument involving the planet’s natural climate cycles. Earth experienced plenty of natural warming and cooling phases long before humans ever began pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, they’ve suggested—so the present-day warming isn’t necessarily dangerous or even that unusual. Scientists have debunked this argument over and over again. Studies demonstrate that carbon dioxide concentrations are currently higher than they’ve been at any point in human history, global temperatures are rising at unprecedented rates, and warming is poised to surpass anything the planet has experienced in millions of years....

On July 23, astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) heaved out a 630-kilogram, refrigerator-size tank of ammonia and a 96-kilogram obsolete camera mounting. NASA frowns on littering in space but made an exception in this case because the pieces were too large to bring back on a shuttle mission (they will fall out of orbit in about a year and burn up). More dangerous are objects smaller than 10 centimeters wide, which are not tracked by ground stations....

A tale of three sisters offers a glimpse into how, with the right systems in place, genomics research can already be applied to alleviate human suffering. In January 2007 Jesse and Anna, members of an Old Order Amish settlement in Pennsylvania, brought their daughter Esther to the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pa. (For privacy, pseudonyms are used for all children mentioned in this article.) Esther, just a few hours old, was born with inflamed skin, patchy hair loss and a swollen liver—telltale signs of Omenn syndrome, a rare and lethal form of severe combined immune deficiency....

Global warming has been affecting the severity of droughts worldwide since at least the beginning of the 20th century, new research has found. The findings emerged from centuries of tree ring data from around the world, analyzed by researchers from NASA, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Columbia University. Tree rings can provide a remarkable record of the changing climate conditions a forest has lived through, as trees tend to grow differently when subjected to hotter or drier periods....

Underlying the wave of unrest across North Africa and the Middle East is the fact that some of the cries for democracy are coming from mouths in need of food. Media outlets around the world were quick to make the link between food and the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, pointing to one specific grain: wheat. Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, with Algeria not far behind....

In a flashback scene in the 1977 film Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer is a depressed young boy who won’t do his homework because, as he explains to his doctor: “The universe is expanding…. Well, the universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart, and that will be the end of everything.” His exasperated mother upbraids the youth: “What has the universe got to do with it?...

Nobody seems to think much about passwords. After all, isn’t their purpose obvious? You need one on your bank account so that nobody else can use your money. You need one on your e-mail account so that strangers can’t find out your innermost thoughts. But I was astonished when my daughter told me that her school has instituted a new security initiative. Student passwords must now be at least eight characters long, must contain letters, numbers and punctuation, and may not incorporate any recognizable English word....

When U.S. photojournalist Peter Essick visited India and China for the first time, he was struck by how different life there was compared with American cities. But when he returned almost two decades later, he found the changes “staggering.” Bangalore now reminds him of the Silicon Valley, and Beijing and New Delhi are smoggier than anything he had ever encountered at home. “Development and a high standard of living – which most people around the world view as desirable – come at a cost,” he said....

Scientists interested in examining the deep layers of the earth’s rocky guts are finally getting their hands on expensive, often confidential image data intended for petroleum companies in search of fossil fuel sources. The data, collected with a technology called seismic reflection, produces three-dimensional images of geologic features buried under hundreds and thousands of meters of terrestrial and marine sediment. Not only are the images aesthetically stunning, but they are shedding light on fundamental processes including the formation of structures on the earth’s surface, the chemical changes that occur in deeply buried rocks, the intrusion of magma into continental crusts and the flow of sediments along ocean basins....

By Philip Ball of Nature magazineRainfall soothes the atmosphere, atmospheric scientists have found. They calculate that a substantial portion of the energy that drives wind and air circulation in the atmosphere is dissipated as friction by raindrops falling through the air.The atmosphere acts like a heat engine, generating mechanical energy by moving heat from Earth’s surface, where air has been warmed by the Sun, to the colder air above. Some of that becomes kinetic energy of air, driving movements ranging from large-scale flows such as the jet streams down to small gusts and eddies....

Fear of losing their innovative edge pushes many leaders to reject hybrid and virtual work arrangements. Yet extensive research shows that hybrid and remote teams can gain an innovation advantage and outcompete in-person teams by adopting best practices for innovation, such as virtual brainstorming. What explains this discrepancy between leadership beliefs and scientific evidence? After interviewing 61 leaders on a strategic return back to the office, I discovered the root of the problem: The vast majority of leaders tried to pursue innovation during the lockdowns by adapting their office-based approach of synchronous brainstorming to videoconference meetings....

Hotter daytimes are thwarting students’ academic progress and exacerbating long-standing educational inequities for people of color, according to researchers who examined the issue in more than 50 countries. The report, published yesterday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, used two major datasets to track the relationship between students’ exposure to soaring temperatures and their learning outcomes. The data revealed that additional days above 80 degrees Fahrenheit inhibit students’ performance on standardized tests that are meant to measure educational achievement and cognitive ability....