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What does standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, looking up at the Sistine Chapel, and Katelyn Ohashi’s perfect 10 viral gymnastics floor routine have in common? They might bring a tear to your eye without you knowing exactly why. In their own way, they are each entrancing and sublime. They all leave you saying “Wow!” a telltale sign of a little-known emotion called awe. Awe doesn’t have to be rare: the birth of a child is a great example of something that happens worldwide 250 times a minute, but still inspires awe....

Digging into our planet’s past could help us prepare for a hot future. One dramatic spike in historical temperatures, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), occurred around 55.9 million years ago. That time was marked by changes in ocean productivity, the water cycle, ocean acidification and land animal migrations. Now a new study by researchers in the U.K. confirms the ocean held less dissolved oxygen. Similarly, low oxygen zones caused by modern climate change threaten marine life and humans who depend on the ocean for food....

CHICAGO—Climate change has undermined fundamental assumptions about oceanic conservation, challenging the notion that today’s sanctuaries will protect tomorrow’s fish. Conservationists have long assumed fish harvested at a sustainable rate will forever be available for future generations. Instead, scientists now find that a warming ocean is mobilizing fish populations, sending them to the poles with little regard for marine preserve boundaries. Many of the areas set aside for fish protection are the most vulnerable to climate change, scientists say....

Feeling sociable or reckless? You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old. Researchers tested participants for T. gondii infection and had them complete a personality questionnaire. They found that both men and women infected with T. gondii were more extroverted and less conscientious than the infection-free participants. These changes are thought to result from the parasite’s influence on brain chemicals, the scientists write in the May/June issue of the European Journal of Personality....

Every morning for about eight weeks each summer, Leslie Ritter becomes bait. As head of the lifeguarding program at the Congregational Summer Assembly (a vacation community in northwest Michigan), Ritter wades into Crystal Lake up to her knees. After 30 minutes she gets out and records wind and temperature data. If her skin starts to tingle, she knows something in the lake is after her—and swimming lessons are canceled. For the past few years Ritter has been sending the results of her unusual experiment to the Michigan Swimmer’s Itch Partnership (MSIP), a coalition of more than 20 Michigan watershed associations that shares research and raises public awareness about something lurking in these waters—a scary-sounding parasite that can really ruin someone’s day, even if it has long been considered medically harmless....

In the never-ending cat-and-mouse game between digital media distributors and enthusiastic code breakers, the latter seem to have gained the upper hand when it comes to HD DVD and Blu-ray disks. Already twice this year amateur programmers have released keys for these next-generation DVDs, enabling playback and copying via unlicensed devices. The inability of copyright authorities to stay ahead—by issuing either new keys or cease-and-desist orders—prompts the question of whether such policies are the best way to balance fair use with intellectual-property rights....

All dinosaurs once pranced, strolled or lumbered about on two legs. But some took to occasionally resting or running on all fours for greater stability and over time evolved into quadrupeds. During the transition, the forelimbs were shorter than the hind limbs, raising the question of how the intermediate animals leveled out the tilted stance from those stubby appendages: Did they walk on their “fingertips” or their palms? New research suggests the latter—some early dinosaurs and their close relatives may have stepped straight down on the front of their palms....

A research group at the medical-device and health care giant Abbott has discovered a new strain of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV—the first to be identified in 19 years. Abbott continues to look for potential new HIV strains to ensure that diagnostic tests for blood screening and detecting infectious diseases remain up to date, says Mary Rodgers, senior author of the paper announcing the finding and head of the company’s Global Viral Surveillance Program....

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. That’s what astronomers saw this spring when they trained their telescopes on the giant black hole at the Milky Way’s centre, hoping to see galactic fireworks as a huge gas cloud smashed into it. A team of astronomers now says that it has an explanation for the lack of fireworks around the black hole, called Sagittarius A*, which is four million times more massive than the Sun. The researchers think that the cloud, rather than being isolated, is a dense clump within a continuous but thinner stream of matter....

LONDON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell is shutting down its huge 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) Bonga oilfield off the Nigerian coast after a leak occurred while loading a tanker on Tuesday, the firm said in a statement. The Anglo-Dutch oil major said “less than 40,000 barrels of oil” had leaked into the ocean. The flow of oil had now halted, a spokesman said. The leak occurred while a tanker was loading oil from Shell’s Bonga facility, about 120 kilometres off the coast of the West African nation, according to the statement....

Since the 1970s more and more twins have been popping up across the developed world (large graph). Women have been having babies at older ages, so more are becoming pregnant at the natural peak age for twins: about 35. And fertility treatments have become more common, which boosts the chances of twins further (bars above graph). Because multiple births are dangerous for both mothers and babies, public health officials would like to reverse the trend....

By Andrew R.C. MarshallTACLOBAN, Philippines (Reuters) - Dead bodies clog the basement of the Tacloban City Convention Centre. The dazed evacuees in its sports hall are mostly women and children. The men are missing.That so few men made it to this refuge shows how dimly aware they were of the threat posed by Typhoon Haiyan, which crashed into the central Philippines on Friday with some of the strongest winds ever recorded....

Children come to school with different aptitudes, many of which determine their ability to learn. Some are quicker at grasping the concepts and skills that form the core of most educational curricula. Others are better able to concentrate or make friends. Some seem lazy; others determined. As a result, we label children as smart, attentive, social and hardworking—or as slow, distracted, shy and lackadaisical. The labels suggest fixed traits, not teachable skills....

Sprightly yellow seems to be the hue of choice for corporate wellness chains designing a logo to attract health-minded women. There is the cleansing grapefruit of SoulCycle, the happy buttercup of Drybar. And in 2019 vans started materializing at busy pedestrian spots in Manhattan and Los Angeles that sported the shade of sunflowers. These vans are mobile fertility clinics, inviting women to pop in and learn how to safeguard their reproductive germ line by freezing their eggs....

By Alistair Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Polar bear DNA has been isolated for the first time from footprints left in the snow on an Arctic island, a breakthrough that could help scientists better protect rare and endangered wild animals, experts said on Tuesday. Scientists often spend days tracking rare animals such as snow leopards or orangutans for samples of DNA, for instance from hair or faeces, to understand their movements, monitor their populations and propose ways to protect them....

There’s more than just pollen riding on a springtime breeze. Just as some human viruses spread when humans reproduce, plant viruses can use pollen to hitch a ride from flower to flower. A study in Nature Communications shows how plentiful pollen-borne viruses are—and suggests that human activity may help them spread. University of Pittsburgh evolutionary ecologist Tia-Lynn Ashman and her colleagues used genetic sequencing to catalog viruses on wildflower pollen from four different environments: California grasslands, the California coast, an agricultural area in Pennsylvania and the Appalachian Mountains....

In journalism, there’s what you call your dog-bites-man situation. Which is anything too common and expected to be a good story (unless the dog is one of those Resident Evil hellhounds, or the man is Cesar Millan). An example of a dog-bites-man science story is yet another confirmation of Einstein and relativity. Then there’s your more compelling man-bites-dog scenario. Which is something out of the ordinary (unless the man is competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, and the dog is a Nathan’s Famous)....

By David Stanway TANGSHAN, China (Reuters) - Reforming the bloated steel sector in northern China’s Hebei province is a key part of Beijing’s efforts to cut air pollution - but it is the market, not the government, that is doing most of the work. That undermines state media claims that the government is going the extra mile to clean up Hebei, China’s biggest steel producer and home to seven of the 10 most polluted cities in the country, environmentalists and industry experts said....

Not all fats are created equal. Scientists have known since the 1950s that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated ones can have profound health benefits. Diets that are high in solid fats, such as butter and animal fat, lead to elevated risks of cardiovascular disease and high cholesterol. But it has been difficult to phase out saturated fats—not only are they are delicious, they are also important components of a food’s structure....

MANY PEOPLE HAVE grown up hearing the same exhortations: “Put your shoulder to the wheel!” “Pull yourself together!” “Shape up!” All these demands are aimed at the same thing: self-control. This ability is an essential life skill, yet it also has the obvious drawback of being stressful. It is hard enough for most people to force themselves to see a dentist for an annual checkup. Accomplishing a larger, longer-range goal can be so daunting that we often never confront it....