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Despite the threat climate change poses to human health, very few medical schools have made it a part of their coursework. The International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations recently conducted a survey of medical schools in 118 countries. Of the medical schools reviewed, the IFMSA found 15.9% have made climate change a part of their curricula. Dr. Renee Salas, an emergency room doctor and climate change researcher at the Harvard Global Health Institute, said she was not surprised by the results....

Who am I? The question seems so simple, yet it cuts to the heart of everything we do. Without an answer, we lack the inner compass that guides us through life. Decisions become arbitrary. Relationships dangle by a tenuous thread. Introspection offers partial insight into this nebulous yet vital question. A fuller account, however, emerges from our interactions with the social environment. As we move through the world, certain people, ideas and activities resonate more than others....

The oldest of the old are living even longer, a new report shows. In recent years, the death rate among American centenarians — people who have lived to age 100 or older — has decreased, dropping 14 percent for women and 20 percent for men from 2008 to 2014, according to the report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In other words, “the risk of dying for centenarians decreased” over this period, study author Dr....

By Katharine Sanderson of Nature magazine One trick to test whether a frying pan is hot enough is to sprinkle water on it. If the surface is sufficiently above the boiling point of water, droplets will skip across the pan. Those jittery beads of water are held up from the hot pan by a cushion of steam. The vapour cushion collapses as the surface falls below the ‘Leidenfrost temperature’, causing furious bubbling and spitting when the water droplet hits the surface and boils explosively....

The Falling Walls Conference is an annual, global gathering of forward thinking individuals from 80 countries organized by the Falling Walls Foundation. Each year, on November 9—the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—20 of the world’s leading scientists are invited to Berlin to present their cutting-edge research. The aim of the conference is to address two questions: Which will be the next walls to fall? And how will that change our lives?...

No matter how old and experienced we get, sex and romance never fail to surprise and perplex us. Three new books explore the origins of human sexuality, whether we are capable of monogamy, and why we kiss. Husband and wife Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeth travel back in evolutionary time in Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (HarperCollins, 2010) to reveal that modern humans evolved from hunter-gatherers who lived in intimate groups and shared everything—food, chores and even sexual partners....

Fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales remain in the wild, and not even 100 of them are breeding females. Their biggest survival threats are boat strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. Protecting these whales, such as by diverting boats from dangerous encounters, requires locating them more reliably—and new technology, described in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, could help make that possible. To listen for marine life, researchers often deploy underwater microphones called hydrophones on buoys and robotic gliders....

Writing guides tend to be pretty unsatisfying. They offer plenty of concrete rules, but why, a reader might ask, should the rules be followed? The answer is usually “because” — as in, “because I say so.” This, of course, is where humanity found itself before the advent of the scientific method: the mystics spoke, and everyone had to decide for themselves whom to believe. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker takes a different approach, one that is both more ambitious and more modest....

The boys attack Basini almost every night, yanking him out of bed and pushing him up the stairs to the attic. No teacher will hear his screams there. They force him to undress, then whip his back. Naked and defenseless, the boy cowers while his tormentors force him to cry, “I’m a beast!” During the day other students surround him in the school yard and shove him around until he collapses, bloodied and soiled....

During the tsunami of bicentennial celebrations of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday in February, I visited the fringes of evolutionary skepticism to better understand how one of science’s grandest theories could still be doubted. Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol, England, is run by a kindly gentleman named Anthony Bush, who insisted that I not confuse him with those “loony American creationists” who think that Earth is only 6,000 years old. “How old do you think it is?...

by Chloe McIver of Nature magazine Turtles should sit on the same branch of the tree of life as lizards, according to a genetic analysis that could clear up a long-standing mystery over the creature’s origin. Palaeontologists have long used morphological data, obtained by looking closely at the physical characteristics of fossils and living relatives, to show the evolutionary relationship between different species. In recent decades, however, genetic comparisons have become important....

Children who sleep in bedrooms containing fumes from water-based paints and solvents are two to four times more likely to suffer allergies or asthma, according to a new scientific study. Scientists measured the compounds – propylene glycol and glycol ethers, known as PGEs – in the bedroom air of 400 toddlers and preschoolers, and discovered that the children who breathed them had substantially higher rates of asthma, stuffy noses and eczema....

Both Mars and Venus have been objects of scientific and popular speculation since at least the beginning of the 20th century, and since the 1960s spacefaring nations have been sending robotic probes to explore both worlds. Mars has gotten far more attention, however. Since 2002 no fewer than two Mars probes have been actively gathering data during any given year. Last year there were seven. This is understandable. Mars is far more hospitable than Venus, where surface temperatures reach nearly 480 degrees Celsius, surface pressure is 92 times that of Earth and the planet is permanently shrouded by thick clouds of sulfuric acid....

Market prices don’t reflect hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden costs of energy production to human health and the environment, a National Research Council panel said in a report released today. “There are many external effects of energy production and use,” said Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University and chairman of the panel that wrote the report. “These are important because they can lead to distortions in decision making....

It was 1973 when a war between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led Saudi Arabia and other oil producers to impose an embargo on crude shipments to the United States. Oil prices soared, and the way the world consumed energy changed. France built a fleet of nuclear power plants. Japan did, too; it also started to import liquefied natural gas. In the United States, oil use for electricity generation plummeted and was replaced by coal and nuclear power....

When doctors talk about a new leukemia drug from Novartis, they ooze enthusiasm, using words like “breakthrough,” “revolutionary” and “a watershed moment.” But when they think about how much the therapy is likely to cost, their tone turns alarmist. “It’s going to cost a fortune,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore. “From what we’re hearing, this will be a quantum leap more expensive than other cancer drugs,” said Leonard Saltz, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York....

Richard A. Muller has never been comfortable with conventional scientific wisdom. In the 1980s, when his mentor Luis Alvarez came up with the then outrageous idea that a giant comet or asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs, the University of California, Berkeley, physicist went him one better, suggesting that the meteorite had been hurled our way by a dim companion star to the sun, which Muller dubbed Nemesis. In the 1990s he posited that ice ages are triggered by space debris encountered because of cyclical changes in the location of Earth’s orbit....

For most of the 20th century all women with breast cancer received similar treatment. Therapy has since become more individualized: breast cancers are now divided into subtypes and treated accordingly. Many women whose tumors produce estrogen receptors, for instance, may receive drugs that specifically target those receptors, along with standard postsurgery chemotherapy. This year researchers took a step closer to even more personalized treatment. They identified a significant fraction of patients whose tumors possess characteristics that indicate they can safely forgo chemo—and avoid its often serious side effects....

Virtual reality (VR) immerses you in a fictional, isolated universe. Augmented reality (AR), in contrast, overlays computer-generated information on the real world in real time. As you look at or wear a device equipped with AR software and a camera—be it a smartphone, a tablet, a headset or smart glasses—the program analyzes the incoming video stream, downloads extensive information about the scene and superposes on it relevant data, images or animations, often in 3-D....

As the pandemic grinds on, many people are exhausted by conversations with friends and family who downplay the risks of COVID-19. Masks really do work. It isn’t “just the flu.” Please don’t go to that indoor gathering or sing in the church choir. We share articles and statistics; friends and family sometimes respond with misinformation or apathy for established fact. We correct mistakes and encourage compliance with sensible rules. All too often, our efforts to persuade fail....