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Imagine visiting a far distant galaxy and addressing a postcard to your loved ones back home. You might begin with your house on your street in your hometown, somewhere on Earth, the third planet from our sun. From there the address could list the sun’s location in the Orion Spur, a segment of a spiral arm in the Milky Way’s suburbs, followed by the Milky Way’s residence in the Local Group, a gathering of more than 50 nearby galaxies spanning some seven million light-years of space....

When my eldest daughter started school last fall, I realized our family needed a whole lot more order and routine if we were going to survive kindergarten: late-start days, no-school days, “spirit” days (wear pj’s!) and avalanches of worksheets. At first, I was petrified. Then I realized this transition was an opportunity to better organize our lives. So I dug into marketing and neuroscience research to find out how to take control of the chaos....

Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. February is American Heart Month. And chest pain is one of the most troubling symptoms that patients experience, and for good reason – heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in the U.S. It also seems to be a very common topic of emails I receive at housecalldoctor@quickanddirtytips....

Daily temperature swings can make water freeze and expand, then thaw and contract. Because concrete is porous and absorbs liquid, these changes often make its surface flake and peel. But researchers say a new process can help prevent such deterioration. “The primary way in which we have resisted this freeze-thaw damage in the past was by using a technology that was developed in the 1930s, which was to put in tiny little air bubbles all throughout the concrete,” says Wil Srubar, a materials scientist and architectural engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder....

Researchers plan to launch a tiny spacecraft to Earth orbit and beyond within the next 18 months, in a key test of new propulsion technology that could help cut the cost of planetary exploration by a factor of 1,000. The scientists and engineers are developing a new plasma propulsion system designed for ultrasmall CubeSats. If all goes well, they say, it may be possible to launch a life-detection mission to Jupiter’s ocean-harboring moon Europa or other intriguing worlds for as little as $1 million in the not-too-distant future....

When Geoffrey Ling talks about the future of technology, his ideas go flying around the room like a whirlwind. Ling eagerly describes a world in which people live far beyond their natural lifespans, minds can be downloaded into external ‘hard drives’ for enhancement by artificial intelligence and robots and aircraft are controlled by human thought. “It’s abso-posi-frickin-lutely going to happen,” he declares. “The next 20 years are going to make our heads spin, because we’ve already crossed over into that realm....

It worked for treating cancer; now researchers have found they can send dollops of lethal radiation directly into HIV-infected cells using radioactive antibodies. So far the technique only works in mice, but investigators hope they can extend their proof-of-concept to a treatment capable of destroying all of the infected cells in a person’s body under some circumstances. “Twenty-five years from the start of the epidemic, HIV is still an incurable disease–something completely different needs to be done to completely eradicate it,” says nuclear medicine specialist Ekaterina Dadachova of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, first author of a report published November 6 in PLoS Medicine that describes the results....

In The Philadelphia Chromosome journalist Jessica Wapner tells the story of the breakthrough cancer drug Gleevec, which has saved the lives of thousands of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and other cancers since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it in 2001. It was the first targeted cancer drug, developed after researchers identified the genetic mutation that gave rise to CML, and it set in motion the race to uncover the genetic roots of a wide range of cancers....

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Triumph Of The City by Edward Glaeser. Published by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Copyright (c) 2011 Edward Glaeser. Two hundred forty-three million Americans crowd together in the 3 percent of the country that is urban. Thirty-six million people live in and around Tokyo, the most productive metropolitan area in the world. Twelve million people reside in central Mumbai, and Shanghai is almost as large....

Fears stoked by President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant statements are causing undocumented Latinos to delay or avoid seeking medical care. In a study published on October 30 in PLOS One, 24 percent of such patients said the president’s statements made them afraid to visit the hospital. And of these, half said they delayed going as a result. Others witnessed the same trend for using these services. A quarter of Latino immigrants surveyed said they knew someone who did not go to the emergency department because of his or her immigration status....

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that pregnant women should avoid travel to a small area of south Florida where mosquitoes have apparently transmitted Zika to residents. “We advise pregnant women to avoid travel to this area,” CDC Director Tom Frieden says. People who live or work there should try to keep from getting bit by mosquitoes and should apply approved bug sprays, repair broken window screens and use protection to prevent sexual transmission of the virus, Frieden adds....

A volcano within view of Mexico City has begun to erupt. Steam, smoke and hot fragments of rock began to be ejected from Popocatepetl this past weekend. The volcano is located about 50 miles southeast of Mexico’s capital, Mexico City. The metropolitan area of Mexico City is home to approximately 21 million people. According to Reuters, Mexico’s National Center for Disaster Prevention this week raised the alert level to three on a scale from one to seven, with seven being the greatest threat....

Key concepts Water Ice Chemistry Solutions Phases of matter Introduction Do you sometimes dump ice cubes into a drink to help keep cool on a hot summer day? Have you ever watched the ice cubes melt and wondered how you could make them melt more slowly—or even faster? In this science activity you will get to try some different, common household substances to try and answer this question: What will help a solid ice cube turn into a liquid puddle the fastest?...

In this age of big science, with fundamental physics generally tested in sprawling laboratories such as CERN and LIGO, maverick individuals who make a big difference through their spot-on hunches are an increasingly rare breed. Those who did so in the past, therefore, have assumed an almost mythic quality. Their excellent guesses changed history in a way that would be much harder today because of the complexity of many areas of research, often requiring massive collaborations....

As a big asteroid flies by at a close but safe distance from Earth on Saturday (Oct. 31), astronomers will likely get a better radar view of the surface than ever before. Asteroid 2015 TB145—discovered earlier this month, on Oct. 10—will fly by slightly outside the moon’s orbit. In celestial terms, this is rather close, especially considering the asteroid’s size; at an estimated 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide, this is the closest known flyby by a large asteroid until 2027....

In a perfect world, debates about the environment, public health and technology would be objective, reasoned, intellectually honest and grounded in evidence, but there are many forces working against that ideal. The first article in this section explains why in today’s “post-truth” world such high expectations no longer hold and lies spread with abandon. People will always dispute the validity of facts, of course, but another story highlights research that shows they often go a step further and reframe an issue in untestable ways....

Attitudes about marijuana seem to be changing and diversifying in Latin America. Throughout the 20th century its consumption was associated with criminal behavior. But over the last decade the drug’s image has improved in some countries. A new survey reveals that in some Latin countries more than 40 percent of the population is in favor of legalizing marijuana, although in other countries favor remains low. “Until now, the scientific literature showed that Latin America had a consistent position on decriminalization,” says lead author Andrés Mendiburo Seguel, a sociologist at the University of Santiago, Chile....

Key concepts Solar system Space Planets From National Science Education Standards: Objects in the sky Introduction Have you ever built a model of the solar system for school—or even just seen a picture of the solar system in a book? The planets are usually pretty close together—and close to the sun. In the real world (that is, in the real solar system) the planets are incredibly far apart from one another and from the sun (which is a good thing for us; if Earth were close to the sun, it would be too hot for us to live!...

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. Please consider a monthly contribution to support this newsletter. The New York Times is routinely updating a graphic resource for readers, “Is your state doing enough coronavirus testing?” The U.S. only conducts 52 percent of the daily coronavirus tests that Harvard Global Health Institute researchers estimate are necessary to keep the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in check, Keith Collins writes....

When you ask people about the safety of our food supply, pesticides nearly always top the list of concerns. Specifically, people worry that exposure to pesticides in their food increases the risk of cancer. On a gut level, this seems like a no-brainer. When we consume food that has been treated with pesticides, we consume trace amounts of these chemicals. And many of these compounds have been categorized as possible or probable carcinogens....