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In June a massive “heat dome” smothered the famously temperate Pacific Northwest, subjecting parts of Washington State, Oregon and western Canada to blistering and unprecedented temperatures. Lytton, British Columbia, set an all-time Canadian record with a searing 121.3 degrees Fahrenheit (49.6 degrees Celsius). A day later most of that village was destroyed by a huge wildfire. During another western heat wave in early July, California’s Death Valley reached a scorching 130 degrees F (54 degrees C)—just shy of its record of 134 degrees F (57 degrees C), which was reported in 1913 (and is somewhat disputed now)....

President Biden will announce today that the United States is committing to cut carbon emissions in half within the decade, a White House official told reporters last night. Biden’s goal to reduce greenhouse gases 50-52% by 2030 comes as he hosts a virtual climate summit for 40 world leaders today and tomorrow. His announcement is meant to persuade other countries to strengthen their own carbon goals as the world lurches toward a future of intensifying climate effects like heat waves, droughts and stronger storms....

A climate science advisory panel disbanded by the Trump administration released a report today outlining the steps communities can take to prepare for climate change. In 2017, the Trump administration dissolved the federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment. Its purpose was to translate climate science in the National Climate Assessment into usable guidance for local governments and private companies. The panel was reconstituted by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and includes members from academia, corporations and the government....

In a long-awaited assessment, the European Union’s food-safety agency has concluded that three controversial neonicotinoid insecticides pose a high risk to wild bees and honeybees. The findings by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, raise the chances that the EU will soon move to ban all uses of the insecticides on outdoor crops. In 2013, the EU prohibited applications of the three chemicals on crops attractive to bees — such as sunflowers, oilseed rape and maize — after an EFSA assessment raised concern about the insecticides’ effects....

As soon as surgeons in France had performed the first partial face transplant (below) late in November, psychologists began to question whether the patient was mentally stable enough to handle the stressful, high-risk procedure. The unidentified woman’s face had been mauled by her dog, and doctors had said the damage was too severe for reconstructive surgery. Evidence suggested the woman was suicidal or at a minimum traumatized, but surgeon Jean-Michel Dubernard of Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon told the media that the woman had undergone thorough psychological testing that showed she was ready for the transplant’s challenges....

Bugs and fish don’t play video games or attend teleconferences, but they can still explore virtual reality—complete with visual effects, tastes and smells. A new system called PiVR—named after the low-cost Raspberry Pi computer that runs its software—creates working artificial environments for small animals such as zebra fish larvae and fruit flies. Developers say the system’s affordability could help expand research into animal behavior. PiVR’s purpose is not to get these creatures plugged into the Matrix....

Scientific American presents Nutrition Diva by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Several Nutrition Diva fans have asked me to comment on the article entitled “Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food,” which appeared recently in The New York Times. The author, Jo Robinson, observes that humans naturally prefer fruits and vegetables with more sugar and starch and that the varieties we’ve cultivated over the millennia reflect those tastes....

Oil company BP agreed on July 2 to pay US$18.7 billion to settle civil lawsuits over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 3.19 million barrels of oil poured into the Gulf during the months-long crisis, the largest marine spill in US history. The payment will add to $14 billion that BP said it had already paid in claims, advances and settlements related to the spill....

Randall R. Wickett, professor of pharmaceutics and cosmetic science at the University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy, explains. Although many people still desire a suntan, we now understand just how damaging exposure to the sun can be. Repeated sun exposure greatly increases skin wrinkling and may even lead to skin cancers. Adding wrinkles while trying to improve appearance is obviously counterproductive and has led to the popularity of so-called sunless tanning products....

The elasticity of time is perhaps best appreciated when we are the spectators of a performance, be it a film, a play, a concert or a lecture. The actual duration of the performance and its mental duration are different things. To illustrate the factors that contribute to this varied experience of time, we can turn to the example of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope. This technically remarkable work was shot in continuous, unedited 10-minute takes....

Editor’s note: The following is the introduction to the SA Classics issue, the Birth of Flight. ALTHOUGH WE KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS—the airplane was invented; it changed the world—we can still feel the suspense of the time when many were trying and none had succeeded to fly. In this collection of Scientific American articles published at the turn of the last century, observations and reports about experiments with flying machines nearly vibrate with anticipation....

At a time when much of the world is still struggling to access COVID vaccines, the question of whether to vaccinate children can feel like a privilege. On 19 July, vaccine advisers in the United Kingdom recommended to delay vaccines for most young people under 16, citing the very low rates of serious disease in this age group. But several countries, including the United States and Israel, have forged ahead, and others are hoping to follow suit when supplies allow....

A while ago I wrote an article called How to Build Strong and Pain Free Feet that really resonated with a lot of people. Apparently, foot pain is even more of a problem than I thought. Is going barefoot more often one possible remedy? In my article, I mentioned that although most shoes are specifically designed for various aspects of athletic performance, general protection, correcting footfall, and lookin’ good, many of them do not manage to avoid some very important factors:...

Water droplets, coffee granules, fragments of polystyrene and even a toothpick are among the items that have been flying around in a Swiss laboratory lately — all of them kept in the air by sound waves. The device that achieves this acoustic levitation is the first to be capable of handling several objects simultaneously. It is described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Typically, levitation techniques make use of electromagnetism; magnetic forces have even been used to levitate frogs....

It’s a problem as old as civilization: the wobbly table. You may have thought your only recourse against this scourge is a hastily folded cocktail napkin stuffed under the offending leg. If so, take heart, because mathematicians have recently proved a more elegant solution. Just rotate the table. The intuitive argument, which dates back at least to a 1973 Scientific American column by Martin Gardner, is straightforward. Consider a square table with four equally long legs....

From Our Partner When Marlen Esparza was young, about 5 or 6 years old and growing up in Houston, she watched boxing on television, often VHS tapes of Julio Cesar Chavez, the Mexican fighter who won six titles in three weight classes in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Her father, David, who immigrated to the United States was a supervisor at a welding plant and was a huge fan of the sport....

Although scientists have learned a lot about the brain in the last few decades, approaches to treating mental illnesses have not kept up. As neuroscientists learn more about brain circuits, Stanford psychiatrist Amit Etkin foresees a time when diagnoses will be based on brain scans rather than symptoms. Etkin, who will be speaking at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China, from June 26 to 28, spoke with Scientific American about his research on the neurological basis of emotional disorders and the future of mental health treatment....

By Melissa Gaskill of Nature magazineHeart-breaking pictures of seabirds covered in black crude oil, arresting as they are, can miss the hidden story of an oil spill’s impact on wildlife.Exposure to even tiny concentrations of the chemicals present in oil can also cause harmful biological effects that usually go unnoticed, according to a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.“It’s striking that even though the analytical chemistry doesn’t indicate exposure, the biology does,” says Andrew Whitehead, a biologist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who led the study....

[Editor’s note: A reference to acrylics in the first paragraph has been removed on March 18, 2016, to avoid implying that acrylic artist paints will be unsuitable for display in one hundred years.] Conservators at museums and art galleries have a big worry. They believe there is a good chance the art they showcase now will not be fit to be seen in one hundred years, according to researchers in a project called Nanorestart....

The hospital of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, a medical school in the town of Sevagram in the Indian state of Maharashtra, has been taking in patients afflicted with COVID since May 2020. But in the middle of last month, something changed. Patients arrived with problems the physicians there had not yet seen in the pandemic: people were not only breathless and feverish yet had pain and pressure behind their cheekbones and around their eyes....