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California officials proposed regulations Wednesday that would force manufacturers and importers to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in everyday consumer products. Driven by revelations of lead in children’s toys and jewelry, hormone-mimicking chemicals in plastic baby bottles and controversial flame-retardants in furniture, state officials drafted a set of rules aimed at products with chemicals that have been linked to illness or abnormal development. “We want to capture the products most prevalent in the society that contain chemicals that are very toxic,” said Maziar Movassaghi, acting director of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, in an interview....

Several U.N. meetings meant to tackle global warming are being postponed or canceled outright in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The outbreak also threatens to complicate a planned rollout of an airline emissions trading program organized by the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization. Regional briefings on the trading program are supposed to be held in several locations beginning this month. The moves mark a significant shift. The most recent gathering of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change went ahead in Paris without interruption, but IPCC has scuttled its next formal gathering slated for mid-April in response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus....

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic several months ago, scientists have been puzzling over the different ways the disease manifests itself. They range from cases with no symptoms at all to severe ones that involve acute respiratory distress syndrome, which can be fatal. What accounts for this variability? Might the answer lie in our genes? Coronaviruses have raised such questions for more than 15 years. In researching the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ralph Baric and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill identified a gene that, when silenced by a mutation, makes mice highly susceptible to SARS-CoV, the coronavirus that causes the disease....

Declaring that endosulfan is unsafe, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it is about to ban one of the last organochlorine pesticides still used in the United States. Endosulfan—used largely on vegetables, apples, melons and cotton—“poses unacceptable risks” to farm workers and wildlife, EPA officials said. In response, the agency is moving to cancel the pesticide’s registration. Endosulfan is a chlorinated insecticide that is chemically similar to DDT, which was banned nearly 40 years ago....

From Nature magazine The biology of aphids is bizarre: they can be born pregnant and males sometimes lack mouths, causing them to die not long after mating. In an addition to their list of anomalies, work published this week indicates that they may also capture sunlight and use the energy for metabolic purposes. Aphids are unique among animals in their ability to synthesize pigments called carotenoids. Many creatures rely on these pigments for a variety of functions, such as maintaining a healthy immune system and making certain vitamins, but all other animals must obtain them through their diet....

In 2013 then-Secretary of State John Kerry called out Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for a chemical attack on Syrian civilians that left more than 1,400 dead. The gas used was sarin, one of a class of compounds known as organophosphates (OPs). Although antidotes to OPs like sarin are available, the fast action of these nerve agents means such measures often come too late. Researchers have eagerly pursued prophylactics for decades, ever since German chemists first developed this group of chemicals prior to World War II....

The ability to tell individual faces apart was long thought to be exclusive to large-brained mammals. But in recent years a number of studies have shown that, in fact, some wasps can facially recognize one another. And honeybees can learn human faces, too. In their article in the December issue of Scientific American, biologists Elizabeth Tibbetts of the University of Michigan and Adrian Dyer of RMIT University in Melbourne describe these findings and what they reveal about the neural requirements for seemingly complex cognitive tasks....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. It’s been a busy summer for computer security mavens. The U.S. and China locked horns on cyber espionage, Edward Snowden allegedly leaked classified intelligence about National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring programs that target communication networks, and the Cobalt malware took 13 U.S. oil refineries offline. If you missed that last one, that’s because it was fictional—a scenario created for a student cyber attack challenge held on June 15 at American University in Washington, D....

With spring in full bloom, winter’s last stores of snow are beginning to melt. As they do, they’ll release much-needed fresh water into streams or the surrounding soil, fueling plant growth and replenishing drinking resources for communities. It’s one of nature’s most important annual rituals. But how soon the snow starts to liquefy, and how quickly it disappears, may depend on more than just the outside temperature. Scientists are finding that wildfires in the western United States may alter the landscape in ways that lead to earlier, faster snowmelt....

Katherine Johnson—a mathematician at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia who helped make human spaceflight possible—celebrated 100 trips around the sun this weekend. Johnson, one of NASA’s “human computers” whose calculations propelled NASA spacecraft to the stars, turned 100 on Aug. 26. Johnson is a retired NASA Langley mathematician who was integral to developing human spaceflight in America. Johnson, who was played by Taraji P. Henson in the feature film “Hidden Figures,” began her career at NASA on a team of black women who were also referred to as “human computers....

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). In a breakthrough that disproves decades of conventional wisdom, two mathematicians have shown that two different variants of infinity are actually the same size. The advance touches on one of the most famous and intractable problems in mathematics: whether there exist infinities between the infinite size of the natural numbers and the larger infinite size of the real numbers. The problem was first identified over a century ago....

Does the language you speak influence how you think? This is the question behind the famous linguistic relativity hypothesis, that the grammar or vocabulary of a language imposes on its speakers a particular way of thinking about the world. The strongest form of the hypothesis is that language determines thought. This version has been rejected by most scholars. A weak form is now thought to be obviously true, which is that if one language has a specific vocabulary item for a concept but another language does not, then speaking about the concept may happen more frequently or more easily....

In 1999, a circulation pattern in the Pacific Ocean changed suddenly, which some scientists say made global temperatures plateau and led to the global warming “hiatus.” A new study, published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, lends weight to this theory. Using records stretching back to 1791, the study finds that a switch in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO has always been accompanied by changes in temperature in the north and south Pacific Ocean....

The unveiling of the draft sequence of the human genome in 2000 was met with enthusiastic predictions about how genomics would dramatically change the treatment of diseases such as cancer. The years since have brought a 100,000-fold drop in the cost of sequencing a human genome (to just a few thousand US dollars), and the time needed to sequence it has been cut from months to little more than a day....

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru said on Friday that it might restrict shark fishing to curb the illegal slaughter of up to 15,000 dolphins per year - used as bait by informal fisherman - following the release of footage documenting the practice.Video taken by NGO Mundo Azul broadcast on Thursday shows Peruvian fisherman harpooning dolphins, whose capture is banned under Peruvian law, before skinning and throwing their bloodied parts back into the ocean to lure sharks....

You are walking down a quiet grocery store aisle when suddenly a voice says: “Thirsty? Buy me.” You stop in front of the soda display, but no one is next to you, and shoppers a few feet away do not seem to hear a thing. At that moment, you are standing in a cylinder of sound. Whereas a loudspeaker broadcasts sound in all directions, the way a lightbulb radiates light, a directional speaker shines a beam of waves akin to a spotlight....

At two years old and $37 million invested, EarthScope is like a young Little League team with the game tied in the second inning–the players are still learning to work together, and the parental units are watching closely. But the game is just getting started. The passionate, pat-you-on-the-back coach is Greg van der Vink, geophysicist by training, visiting Prince¿ton University professor, and the first project director of the most ambitious earth science project ever attempted....

Several thousand near-surface hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations for oil and natural gas production in the U.S. pose a potentially significant risk of contaminating drinking water sources, according to a new analysis. This first national assessment of fracking focused on well depth raises particular concerns about fracking wells less than a mile deep (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b01228). Fracking uses water, sand, and an often-proprietary blend of chemicals, which may include benzene, toluene, and other hydrocarbons....

For decades doctors and researchers have dabbled with using electrical stimulation of the spinal cord to help restore movement in people with paralysis. The technique, when combined with physical therapy, has even allowed some patients with complete paralysis to walk again. Yet it has not worked for all paralyzed people. And researchers still have had trouble with improving complex movements in such patients, not just the capacity to take simple steps....

In the 1980s philosophers would sometimes speak of “the Beam”—a metaphorical spotlight of intellectual brilliance that could illuminate even the most complex philosophical conundrums. Only some lucky philosophers were ever born with the Beam, and their work represented the gold standard of the field. Anyone who lacked the Beam was forever condemned to trail behind them intellectually. One of us (Leslie) would share this sort of story whenever we would see each other at conferences....