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These and the other emerging technologies have been singled out by an international steering group of experts. The group, convened by Scientific American and the World Economic Forum, sifted through more than 75 nominations. To win the nod, the technologies must have the potential to spur progress in societies and economies by outperforming established ways of doing things. They also need to be novel (that is, not currently in wide use) yet likely to have a major impact within the next three to five years....

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, acknowledging what has seemed clear for some time—the virus will likely spread to all countries on the globe. Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the situation will worsen. “We expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher,” said Tedros, as the director general is known....

When a brane and antibrane meet, they do not annihilate directly to energy. Instead they first fragment into shards. These shards are smaller branes and antibranes; they occupy two fewer dimensions than the original ones did. For instance, if the initial brane and antibrane spanned seven spatial dimensions (a D7-brane and antibrane), they fragment into many D5-branes and antibranes. These shards, in turn, annihilate into D3-branes and antibranes and thence into D1-branes....

U.S. EPA has revised the number of cellulosic biofuel gallons in 2013 that needed to be blended in the U.S. fuel supply to 810,185 ethanol-equivalent gallons — about five ten-thousandths of a percent of the country’s fuel — a move supported by both oil and renewable fuel groups. It’s a drastic reduction from the amount EPA had decided on eight months ago — 6 million gallons — and an even larger decline from the 1 billion gallons the industry was meant to produce in 2013, according to the 2007 law that put the federal renewable fuel standard in place....

Congress interrogated Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for two days this week over his company’s privacy policies—and its apparent inability to prevent the misuse of its social media platform by some promoting hatred, terrorism or political propaganda. Throughout Zuckerberg’s apologies for not doing more to protect users’ privacy and curb the spread of false and misleading information on the site, he repeatedly reassured lawmakers artificial intelligence would soon fix many of Facebook’s problems....

Technological progress has been brutal to the yellow pages and compact discs. Coal may be headed the same way in the U.S., partly because of the market and partly because of national climate change policy. Coal-fired power plants are the nation’s largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions and driver of climate change, and an old technology slowly being replaced by newer, cleaner sources of energy. With solar, wind and natural gas gaining ground on the electric grid, change is in the air....

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity reached out and touched a Martian rock with its huge robotic arm for the first time, then took off on its longest Red Planet drive to date. Curiosity spent the past several days investigating a strange pyramid-shaped stone named “Jake Matijevic,” testing out some of the gear at the end of its 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) arm. These tools include the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), which measures elemental composition, and the Mars Hand Lens Imager close-up camera, or MAHLI....

In the fledgling world of embryonic stem cells, where Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University once took the field by storm, scientists who had faltered behind him are just now realizing why: his data were faked. Hwang’s acknowledgment of fabrication and under-the-table dealings late last year eliminated from the record one of the field’s most promising therapeutic advances–patient-specific stem cell lines–and left many wondering how powerfully this crisis, one that ethics expert Jonathan Moreno of the University of Virginia calls “the greatest conduct disaster in microbiology,” may swing the debate over embryonic stem cells (ESCs)....

A drug already on the market for a completely unrelated condition could be used to treat a form of mental retardation linked to autism—if the results of a study in mice hold up, researchers report. Scientists used rapamycin—a medication doctors prescribe to patients who have had transplants to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organs—to treat learning disorders associated with a disease called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) in mice. TSC is a rare genetic disorder that causes brain tumors, seizures, learning disabilities, skin lesions and kidney tumors in the 50,000 Americans and one million people worldwide who have the disease....

Salts that de-ice roads, parking lots and sidewalks keep people safe in winter. But new research shows they are contributing to a sharp and widely rising problem across the U.S. At least a third of the rivers and streams in the country have gotten saltier in the past 25 years. And by 2100, more than half of them may contain at least 50 percent more salt than they used to. Increasing salinity will not just affect freshwater plants and animals but human lives as well—notably, by affecting drinking water....

The two-decade-long search for an AIDS vaccine suffered a major blow last week when researchers prematurely halted the much-anticipated trial of a new HIV vaccine after it failed to block or slow down infections. The so-called STEP trial, sponsored by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. and the federally funded HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), was the first to test the idea of stimulating the immune system’s killer T cells to hunt for the virus more aggressively, in this case using a weakened form of the cold virus to carry three genes from HIV....

In Scientific American’s special issue on human evolution anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison explains—despite some people’s insistence humans are no longer subject to natural selection—that we have in fact evolved dramatically in the last 30,000 years and will continue to do so into the future. One of the most fascinating examples of such recent evolution, which we did not have room to include in the magazine feature, is how Tibetans have adapted to living at very high altitudes....

From butterflies to lobsters, climate change is expected to spur migration of species, with potentially devastating consequences for ecosystems and economies. But in the case of a one-celled organism dwelling in the oceans named Amphisteginid foraminifera, a change in its habitat may lessen the devastation to some coastlines at risk from erosion and powerful storms. In a new study, scientists report that the discus-shaped creatures are likely to shift their ocean range by hundreds of miles as now too-cold ocean regions become more suitable to them....

Ending financial assistance for fossil fuel companies has long been discussed as a tactic to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage investment in renewables. Oil, natural gas and coal companies worldwide receive hundreds of billions of dollars each year in tax breaks or other subsidies—and some experts argue that cutting them off would drive prices up and consumption down. It’s a simple idea, but one that’s been sparsely investigated by scientists....

When you think of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S., you might imagine something like logging, fishing or truck driving. But in 2020 one of the deadliest professions of all did not involve operating heavy machinery, braving the elements or driving big rigs—but rather caring for the elderly. As COVID-19 swept across the world last year, death rates among nursing home staff ranked among the highest for any job in the U....

On the surface, Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) seem to have little in common. Tourette’s is characterized by repetitive involuntary facial or vocal tics, whereas OCD sufferers have all-consuming thoughts and overwhelming urges to perform certain actions. But 50 to 70 percent of people with Tourette’s also have OCD, and recent studies suggest that the same genetic roots may underlie both conditions [see “Obsessions Revisited,” by Melinda Wenner Moyer; Scientific American Mind, May/June 2011]....

Between crop damage caused by climate change and a rising global population and nutritional demand, it is clear the world will need to produce more food in the future. Researchers have long studied ways to help plants resist environmental stressors such as pests and drought, both through conventional breeding and genetic modification. But many questions still remain about how, exactly, plants interact with their environment and how scientists might be able to modify those processes to help them adapt....

BALANCE BOARD In “Welcome to Everybody’s Issue” [From the Editor], editor in chief Mariette DiChristina invites ideas to increase gender equality at Scientific American. Below her editorial is a list of the 42 members of the magazine’s board of advisers, of which six are women. Adding more women scientific leaders to the board seems advisable if the aim is gender parity. SHANA AELONY via e-mail THE EDITORS REPLY: We agree, and we promise to do better....

Dear EarthTalk: Some time ago there were issues with Native American tribes storing nuclear waste on their land, something that was both unhealthy to the communities and caused considerable controversy among tribal leaders. Where is this issue today? —M. Spenser, via e-mail Native tribes across the American West have been and continue to be subjected to significant amounts of radioactive and otherwise hazardous waste as a result of living near nuclear test sites, uranium mines, power plants and toxic waste dumps....

Even as the Obama administration moves ahead with modest plans to tackle global warming, the public relations battle on the issue is as fierce as ever. Some recent scientific stumbles haven’t helped. In fact, they have given fodder to climate change skeptics, some of whom have seized on the errors to attack the credibility of scientists and sway public opinion. Many scientific organizations, such as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, now put data (some near real-time) on their Web sites....