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On a clear day in Gibraltar, looking out of Gorham’s Cave, you can see the rugged northern coast of Morocco looming purple above the turquoise sea. Inside the cave, quiet prevails, save for the lapping of waves against its rocky beach. But offshore, the strait separating this southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula from the African continent bustles with activity. Fishing vessels troll the waters for tuna and marlin, cruise ships carry tourists gawking at Gibraltar’s hulking limestone massif, and tankers ferry crude oil from the Mediterranean to points west....

CALLAWAY COUNTY, Mo.—The 31-year-old Callaway Energy Center is doing some heavy lifting. Missouri’s lone nuclear power plant produces 11.7 percent of the state’s electricity from one reactor cranking out 1.2 gigawatts, making it the third-largest electricity producer in the state. Its 553-foot-tall, cloud-spewing cooling tower is the second-tallest structure in Missouri behind the St. Louis Arch, two hours’ drive east. Operated by Ameren Missouri, Callaway’s Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactor provides electricity to 1....

Editor’s note: This story was originally posted in the July 2007 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long history of Nobelists publishing in Scientific American. For a scientist studying climate change, “eureka” moments are unusually rare. Instead progress is generally made by a painstaking piecing together of evidence from every new temperature measurement, satellite sounding or climate-model experiment. Data get checked and rechecked, ideas tested over and over again....

Defendants whose convictions on drug charges were based on evidence potentially tainted by disgraced former state chemist Annie Dookhan can pursue retrials without having to face more charges or tougher sentences, the Massachusetts supreme court has ruled. Dookhan, who has acknowledged that she mixed evidence samples and falsified results while working at the Hinton drug laboratory in Massachusetts, was sentenced to three to five years in prison in November 2013. The court’s opinion stated that any withdrawal of a guilty plea should be seen as a direct result of Dookhan’s misconduct....

By Terry Wade HOUSTON (Reuters) - A pact that 15 U.S. states signed to jointly investigate Exxon Mobil Corp for allegedly misleading the public about climate change sought to keep prosecutors’ deliberations confidential and was broadly written so they could probe other fossil fuel companies. The “Climate Change Coalition Common Interest Agreement” was signed by state attorneys general in May, two months after they held a press conference to say they would go after Exxon, the world’s largest publicly-traded oil and gas company, and possibly other companies....

There has long been debate about a link between serious blows to the head and the development of neurodegenerative diseases later in life. Research has made cases for and against a relationship between traumatic brain injuries and neurological ailments such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and general dementia. Now the question is drawing ever more scrutiny as the alarming extent of these injuries becomes better known—and new research is finally casting some light on this murky and often quietly terrifying topic....

More than 65 years ago Americans found a way to ensure that no one would have to die from malaria ever again. The disease was eliminated in the U.S. in 1951, thanks to strategies created through the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, formed in 1942, and the Communicable Disease Center (now the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), founded in 1946. The idea for Africa’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) was devised in 2013 and formalized after the worst Ebola outbreak in history the following year....

Five years ago I had the misfortune of beginning a relationship one week before Valentine’s day. Long hours and many glasses of wine were consumed trying to develop the perfect strategy to court this new woman, and this most saccharine of holidays was proving to be an obstacle. Should I be assertive and make plans with her for the night? Should I assume that we’d be together that evening? Should I assume the contrary?...

Every year migratory bats travel from Mexico to Bracken Cave near San Antonio, Tex., where they spend the summer consuming insects that would otherwise devour common food crops. But the bats have been showing up far earlier than they did two decades ago, possibly because of a warming climate, new research suggests. This trend creates a risky situation in which bats may not find enough food for themselves and their young, as the insects they prey on may not yet have arrived or hatched....

As electronics get steadily smaller and denser, they also get hotter. Their components do not function best at high temperatures, so dealing with the escalating heat that colliding electrons produce as they flow through the semiconductors in these shrinking items is a huge—and increasingly pressing—technological challenge. There are various ways to chill components, ranging from simple fan-cooled heat exchangers to more compact and sophisticated systems. One of the latter involves equipping semiconductor chips with a tiny device that has fluid-carrying microchannels running through it to move heat away....

A trio of mysterious gaping holes in northern Siberia has spawned many theories about the craters’ origin, but scientists have suggested some concrete explanations. In mid-July, reindeer herders stumbled across a crater that was approximately 260 feet (80 meters) wide, on the Yamal Peninsula, whose name means “end of the world,” The Siberian Times reported. Since then, two new chasms — a 50-foot (15 m) crater in the Taz district and a 200- to 330-foot (60 to 100 m) crater in the Taymyr Peninsula — have also been reported....

What if the best way to conquer obesity is to have fat injected into your stomach? According to two studies in Nature, that may be the future of weight loss treatments—provided you use the right kind of fat. When we think of the stuff, we usually call to mind white fat, which stores calories and migrates to our waistlines. But fat isn’t all bad. So-called brown fat releases the energy it captures and promotes calorie burning—and thus weight loss....

We normally think that every cell in our body contains the same genome, the complete set of genetic information that makes up the biological core of our individuality. However, there are exceptions where the body contains cells that are genetically different. This happens in cancers, of course, which arise when mutations create genetically distinct cells. What most people do not realize, however, is that the brain has remarkable genetic diversity, with some studies suggesting there may be hundreds of mutations in each nerve cell....

Hundreds of studies on nature-based solutions to extreme events show that “green infrastructure” is often cheaper and more effective than engineered projects like dams, levees and sea walls, according to a new analysis. Experts say federal and state governments should heed those findings and increase funding for natural landscapes and systems to reduce climate disaster risk. Solutions include floodplain restoration and “living shorelines” along vulnerable coasts and rivers. The 44-page “Protective Value of Nature” report released this morning is a joint effort between the National Wildlife Federation and Allied World, a global insurance and reinsurance firm....

The safety of football continues to be a heated topic for players and parents, with mixed evidence regarding the effect of head injuries on mental illness. Past studies on the connection have often been methodologically flawed or yielded ambiguous results. Now a paper in April in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the largest study yet to investigate the link, finds that even a single head injury indeed increases the risk of later mental illness, especially if the injury occurs during adolescence....

Nonfiction A Busy History How beavers shaped America—and not just its ecology Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip Twelve, 2022 ($30) Beavers, you may have noticed, are having a moment. These tireless engineers build woody dams that form ponds, which in turn filter out water pollution, sequester carbon, furnish wildlife habitat and avert drought. The Los Angeles Times recently called the beaver a “superhero,” and the New York Times has deemed them “furry weapons of climate resilience....

That trees need to match their habitats may sound obvious. But those habitats are changing as the planet warms—and trees can’t exactly get up and walk to a new home. If a species cannot keep pace with a changing climate, it is doomed. Because the trees themselves cannot relocate, scientists are exploring a novel solution: relocating the plants’ DNA. Sally N. Aitken, director of the ’s Center for Forest Conservation Genetics at the University of British Columbia, believes that saving the forests of the Canadian province—and others around the world—may hinge on a practice called assisted gene flow....

Psychedelic drugs—once promising research subjects that were decades ago relegated to illicit experimentation in dorm rooms—have been steadily making their way back into the lab for a revamped 21st-century-style look. Scientists are rediscovering what many see as the substances’ astonishing therapeutic potential for a vast range of issues, from depression to drug addiction and acceptance of mortality. A frenzy of interest has captivated a new generation of researchers, aficionados and investors, triggering some understandable wariness over promises that may sound a little too good to be true....

High tide left its mark on the houses like a dirty ring in a bathtub. The flood crept into the village of Teaoraereke under the cover of darkness, sending filthy seawater sloshing through pigsties and shallow graves, and into people’s homes. Teaoraereke residents scrambled to retreat, hoisting sleeping children, sodden bedding and other belongings to higher ground. But some stayed put, including Rerema Kauria, a 63-year-old grandmother who was marooned just inches above the floodwaters on a raised platform bed....

Jon Morse likes to make big things happen fast. After becoming director of NASA’s astrophysics program in 2007, in less than five years he helped the agency refurbish the Hubble telescope for a final time and launch a plethora of new, wildly successful mid-size space telescopes. At the same time, he oversaw the debut of NASA’s SOFIA airborne observatory and fought to restore funding to the agency’s Explorer missions program. All the while Morse envisioned a bright future for the agency in which it would rapidly develop and launch a broad variety of high-impact space science projects....