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In what could be an important step toward stabilizing the world’s population of endangered Asian elephants, German researchers say they’ve hit on a way to freeze elephant sperm without destroying its viability. Elephants are notoriously tricky to breed in zoos, with high rates of miscarriages and infant mortality. Artificial insemination (AI) is possible, but fresh sperm is delicate and can be damaged in transport. And in addition to being costly and logistically tricky, bringing elephants from other zoos to do the job can be socially disruptive to the animals and risks spreading disease, particularly a lethal strain of herpesvirus....

Europe’s leading particle-physics laboratory, CERN, has suspended an Italian theoretical physicist after he allegedly denied that physics suffers from a male gender bias and criticized affirmative-action policies during a presentation at the lab. The University of Pisa in Italy and the European Research Council (ERC), which funds the physicist’s research, also say they are opening investigations. Alessandro Strumia of the University of Pisa gave the presentation on 28 September at the lab’s first Workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender, in front of an audience reportedly largely made up of women....

“It affects virtually nobody,” President Donald Trump said of the novel coronavirus on September 21—a few hours before U.S. deaths from COVID-19 exceeded 200,000 and less than two weeks before he tested positive. Unlike the president, the numbers don’t lie. The human toll underlying that milestone figure is a number about as big as the population of Salt Lake City or Birmingham, Ala.—and greater than the deaths in any U.S. conflict except for the Civil War and World War II....

A new method of shining light through gas trapped in a silicon chip may point the way to simpler, more portable timekeepers, chemical sensors and test beds for communications networks that run on quantum weirdness. Researchers pumped light into one end of a hollow rectangular chamber embedded in silicon and filled with gaseous rubidium atoms. The specially coated cavity funneled the light to the other end, where the group could detect which frequencies of light the gas had absorbed along the way....

The brain is the body’s sovereign, and receives protection in keeping with its high status. Its cells are long-lived and shelter inside a fearsome fortification called the blood–brain barrier. For a long time, scientists thought that the brain was completely cut off from the chaos of the rest of the body — especially its eager defence system, a mass of immune cells that battle infections and whose actions could threaten a ruler caught in the crossfire....

There are 24 hours in a day, right? Well, almost. Though it mostly goes unnoticed, hardly any of our days hit this number exactly. Decade to decade, season to season and even day to day, Earth’s rotation speeds up and slows down, shaving off or adding milliseconds to our 24-hour count. Beyond just being a quirk of a rotating planet, these variations in day length are also affected by ancient ice sheets, powerful winds and the dynamics of our planet’s core....

All roads lead from Rome, according to a visual history of human culture built entirely from the birth and death places of notable people. The 5-minute animation provides a fresh view of the movements of humanity over the last 2,600 years. Maximilian Schich, an art historian at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues used the Google-owned knowledge base, Freebase, to find 120,000 individuals who were notable enough in their life-times that the dates and locations of their births and deaths were recorded....

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA–E) works on a three-year cycle: Funded projects have three years to prove worthy—or not. Program directors who help fund projects such as Plants Engineered to Replace Petroleum (PETRO) or Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation (BEEST) have three years to steer the research. And, after three years at the helm as the founding director of ARPA–E, mechanical engineer Arun Majumdar has announced that he will be stepping down in June....

Artificial muscles–plastics that expand and relax when exposed to electric fields–could help produce truly lifelike colors in future television and computer screens. Tiny “tunable prisms” based on these materials could form the pixels of improved video displays within a decade. Existing screens, such as those based on TV tubes, flat-screen LCDs or plasma displays, cannot faithfully reproduce the full range of colors that humans can see. Each pixel in those technologies consists of three light-emitting elements, one for each of the fundamental colors: red, green and blue....

By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Earthquakes in Oklahoma in the past week, including one of the strongest ever recorded in the state, have led to calls for the governor to make changes to oil and gas drilling regulations and reduce seismic activity scientists link to the energy industry. Two large earthquakes were recorded in northwest Oklahoma on Wednesday, including a magnitude 4.8 quake. The quakes were part of a surge in seismic activity over the past several years....

Two waves of solar material blown out by powerful sun eruptions n this week are hitting the Earth now, and could amplify the aurora displays for observers in northern regions. Scientists with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, expected the first wave of solar flare particles — unleashed by a so-called coronal mass ejection, or CME, on Monday (Sept. 8) — to reach Earth Thursday night (Sept. 11). A second wave, this one caused by a massive solar flare on Wednesday, is due to arrive between Friday and early Saturday....

Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make bullet-resistant armor plates. Wood is abundant and relatively low-cost—it literally grows on trees....

With a steady stream of avocado toast, latte art and vintage Huji filters, Instagram advertises the kind of life to which almost anyone would aspire. If you take social media’s word for it, the world is full of happy, healthy, thriving people taking luxury vacations, getting drinks with lifelong friends and promoting their passion projects online. Even amid a global pandemic and record levels of social isolation, many still fall prey to the glossy perfection of the feed....

Like many people with epilepsy, Richard Shane, 56, has some problems with memory. But he can easily recall his first seizure, 34 years ago. “I was on the phone with my father, and I noticed that I started moaning, and I lost some level of consciousness,” Shane says. After experiencing a similar episode three weeks later, he went to a doctor and learned he had epilepsy, a neurological disorder caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain....

As the Bootleg Fire rages across south-central Oregon and the Dixie Fire scorches Northern California, obliterating hundreds of thousands of acres of forest, the roiling flames have launched massive smoke plumes into the air. Typically, the smoke is lofted to a few kilometers above ground and then picked up and carried by wind currents across the country—much like weather fronts that carry moisture and bring rain—to blanket New York City and the Eastern Seaboard in a thick haze....

Coal remains king in the Rust Belt. But whether the carbon-laden fuel retains its throne depends on state lawmakers in a handful of Midwestern capitals. Illinois legislators are debating a bill that would provide subsidies to aging nuclear and coal plants. Ohio policymakers are fielding calls from utilities to guarantee a rate of return for their old coal facilities. And Michigan representatives are sorting through an energy package that will determine the future makeup of their state’s electric grid....

Women make up a mere quarter of emergency doctors in the U.S., according to data from the American Medical Association. This statistic does not signal well to gender equality in medicine or young women considering the specialty—and it may have even darker implications for patients. A new study suggests female heart attack patients may be at a higher risk of mortality in the emergency room if they see a male physician rather than a female one, giving greater urgency to diversity initiatives in medicine....

The Führer, predictably, scored very high. What was surprising—and of some consolation to my German audiences—was that so did British prime minister Winston Churchill. Although Hitler’s scores suggested that he was a hole-in-one psychopath, the numbers I collected for Churchill—one of the most celebrated figures ever to grace the world political stage—put him, too, solidly on the green. What did that say about politicians in general? If one of the all-time greats scores high on the psychopathic spectrum, might not many lesser luminaries lie there as well?...

The world is running out of time to avert dangerous warming and keep the rise in global temperature below two degrees Celsius. Although scientists are still debating some specifics of climate change, such as whether warming has already caused Antarctica to lose mass, they clearly agree that global warming is real and that we humans are the culprit. In spite of this scientific consensus, some—including the U.S. president and many Republican representatives in Congress—continue to fiercely deny the existence of climate change and humanity’s role in causing it....

The shift to electrified transport represents a societal and technological change on par with the industrial revolution, the New Deal and the more recent digitalization of everything. The effects will have lasting impacts on our economy and built environment. The Senate’s passing of the bipartisan infrastructure bill is a historic breakthrough in the country’s progress toward decarbonized transport, with $7.5 billion allocated to create charging stations across the country and another $7....