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It is Saturday evening at the state fair. To your left, “Rock around the Clock” wafts out of a tent. Behind you, a group of teenagers is carrying on, laughing loudly. Somewhere, an infant is crying. A profusion of neon signs and blinking lights competes for your attention. A roller coaster plummets and makes a hairpin curve. Your senses are already overloaded. But the experience wouldn’t be complete without an ice-cream cone in hand and the aroma of cotton candy and honey-roasted almonds in the air....

Hundreds of gadget makers and software companies at this week’s annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas are staking the success of their newest products on the latest and greatest processors from Intel, AMD, ARM and others. But those bets are looking shaky, even by Sin City’s standards, after last week’s bombshell that many of those processors are plagued by serious security vulnerabilities known as Meltdown and Spectre. Processors lend a degree of intelligence to just about any electronic device—including the thousands of automobiles, home appliances and gaming systems displayed at the exhibition....

Sometime after he calculated the size of a specimens from a new supermassive dinosaur species he discovered in 2005, paleontologist Ken Lacovara nabbed one of his son’s plastic dino toys and stood on the sidewalk outside of his house in New Jersey. He held the plastic sauropod up to his eye, trying to make a mental calculation of how an actual Dreadnoughtus schrani would have looked, standing next to the house....

Many agricultural pesticides – including some previously untested and commonly found in food – disrupt male hormones, according to new tests conducted by British scientists. The scientists strongly recommended that all pesticides in use today be screened to check if they block testosterone and other androgens, the hormones critical to a healthy reproductive system for men and boys. “Our results indicate that systematic testing for anti-androgenic activity of currently used pesticides is urgently required,” wrote the scientists from University of London’s Centre for Toxicology, led by Professor Andreas Kortenkamp....

Sometimes the language of science falters in conveying the staggering complexity and profound beauty of the brain. Cue art. The Art of Neuroscience competition, an annual contest directed by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, pushes researchers and artists to break from the rigid structure of the academic paper and cast the brain in a creative light. This year’s entrants blended color, sound, light and—in one case—human blood to celebrate the intricacies of humanity’s most mysterious organ....

Key concepts Computers Computer programming Problem solving Introduction You probably use computer programs every day. Every time you are on the Internet, play a video game or use a smartphone you rely on computer programs. Do you know you can learn a little bit about programming without needing to use a computer? In this fun activity you will write a “program”—a set directions for a volunteer to find the way through a maze....

Puerto Rico has ambitious plans to transform its hurricane-battered electric grid to rely entirely on renewable energy by 2050. The move is part of a multimillion-dollar program to reduce the U.S. territory’s carbon footprint and make it more climate resilient, Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced yesterday. The clean energy goal is one of 10 measures included in the newly released plan dubbed the “Puerto Rico Pledge for Climate Change.” Other measures involve taking steps to mitigate coastal erosion, including the planting of 500,000 trees in coastal habitats with hopes of reducing the effects of sea-level rise on shoreline communities, where most Puerto Ricans live and work....

China’s pledge to cut its carbon dioxide emissions beginning in 2030 includes a generous gift for its downwind neighbors: less deadly air pollution. By 2030, there will be nearly 2,000 fewer premature deaths in the United States from inhaling pollutants emitted in China, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. South Korea and Japan are also expected to benefit. “It reminds us that air pollution doesn’t stop at national boundaries,” said Valerie Karplus, a co-leader of the study and an assistant professor of global economics and management at MIT....

Donald F. Klein of Columbia University remembers handing out the first pills for schizophrenia in 1955, when the only treatment was electroshock therapy. One patient, an institutionalized war veteran who had not spoken in decades, swallowed the medication and a few days later suddenly asked, “When am I getting out of this place?” According to a new study, this early class of drugs may work just as well at reducing hallucinations and delusions as modern pills that cost up to 10 times more....

Now that solar energy is competitive with fossil fuels for making low-cost electricity, has it peaked in the United States? Nope. We’re probably still looking at only the beginning. The options for developing new solar businesses are substantial, according to a road map for technology-prone U.S. companies released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This is despite the fact that China now dominates solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing and may continue its global leadership of the industry for some time....

SpaceXwill fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon in 2018, the company’s founder Elon Musk announced Monday (Feb. 27). The private spaceflight company will use its Falcon Heavy rocket to send the two paying passengers into space aboard one of the company’sDragon spacecraft. The two private citizens, who have not yet been named, approached SpaceX about taking a trip around the moon, and have “already paid a significant deposit” for the cost of the mission, according to a statement from the company....

By Amanda Orr HOUSTON (Reuters) - More than 50 green sea turtles were released into the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast on Friday after recovering from cold-stunning, or hypothermia, brought on by a drastic drop in water temperature. The release has taken place in phases, with Friday being the last major release for sea turtles rescued after a mid-November cold snap in Texas sent temperatures below freezing in large parts of the state....

Over the past year, as people stopped making appointments with health care providers to check for COVID and shifted to taking home tests instead, health officials lost their tight grip on case tallies. And in turn, it became tougher to spot a new viral variant or wave of the pandemic. Thankfully epidemiologists had a solution—in poop, or rather sewage. In September 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) with the goal of collecting and testing local levels of the virus that causes COVID at treatment plants across the country....

By Eric HandCosmic-ray experiments would suffer, unless budgets increased, under a list of priorities for high-energy physics given to the US Department of Energy (DOE) by independent advisers last week.The DOE should instead fund one massive dark-matter detector, one major dark-energy experiment and a high-energy gamma-ray detector, according to the report, which was presented on 23 October in Washington DC.For current budget trends, the report did not endorse Auger North, a US$127-million array of 4,400 cosmic-ray detectors in southeastern Colorado....

The World Health Organization on Thursday declined to designate the ongoing outbreak of a novel virus in China a global health emergency, saying that, for now, health officials have enough resources to combat the outbreak there and in other countries and that the agency does not need the additional authorities that come from such a declaration. Announcing a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, grants the WHO director-general some certain powers, including the ability to issue recommendations for how countries should respond....

Dazzling green and red light displays regularly dance across the night sky above Earth’s northern and southern poles. For decades scientists had assumed that when aurorae shimmer simultaneously in both regions, the flashing patterns mirror each other. But in 2009 they found that was not the case. They were surprised, and stumped as to why. Now a team of researchers from Norway, Germany and the U.S. has discovered the culprit: a boisterous sun....

India’s relatively mild first wave of COVID last year intrigued scientists and led the country’s leadership to declare what turned out to be a very premature victory over the novel coronavirus. The current surge has been much more deadly. Some researchers and media outlets have pinned the blame on new viral variants, which early studies suggest may be more transmissible than the original strain. But many experts familiar with the situation on the ground argue that large gatherings and crowds in closed, compact urban spaces—in contrast with the draconian lockdown imposed during the first wave—are driving most of the spread....

Why are games like Sudoku so mentally satisfying? Do they activate a pleasure center in the brain, or do they merely provide the satisfaction of solving problems? —Kirk McElhearn, Guillestre, France Mark A. W. Andrews, professor of physiology and director of the Independent Study Pathway at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, explains: THOUGHT-STIMULATING activities such as Sudoku and crossword puzzles elicit positive emotional reactions from many (if not most) people....

Every summer evening 1.5 million bats emerge from underneath the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, on a quest for their favorite meals of mosquitoes and other insects. To track their tiny flying prey, the bats emit high-pitched sounds that deflect from an insect back to bat’s large ears. The information from this process of echolocation tells the flying mammals the precise path of their fast-moving food. But how does any single bat in a swarm of thousands know that the ping it registers is not some other bat’s echo?...

CLIMATEWIRE | President Joe Biden yesterday unveiled a major expansion of U.S. wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico and vowed to take more executive action on global warming in the face of congressional gridlock. With the bulk of his climate spending stalled by Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Biden said he would step in and use the power of the presidency to drive emissions cuts through a series of upcoming executive actions and regulations....