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The long-neglected planet Uranus might get a visitor for the first time in decades. NASA should send a flagship mission to study the giant planet, says a new report from a panel of US planetary scientists. The agency almost always follows the panel’s advice. The Uranus mission would be the first since Voyager 2 whizzed by the ice-cold body in 1986. The expedition could reveal how the planet, its rings and its moons formed and evolved over billions of years....

The top climate change scientist for NOAA said he has received $4 million from Congress and permission from his agency to study two emergency—and controversial—methods to cool the Earth if the U.S. and other nations fail to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. David Fahey, director of the Chemical Sciences Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, told his staff yesterday that the federal government is ready to examine the science behind “geoengineering”—or what he dubbed a “Plan B” for climate change....

The Atlantic will sneak up to one of its highest points tomorrow as celestial influences create king tides along the East Coast, three years after similar tides and rising seas added to the huge wall of water that crashed onto the coastline during Superstorm Sandy. The king tide comes amid new warnings that electric utilities could face serious flooding as low-lying power plants are exposed to higher oceans over the coming decades....

New research suggests that marine mammals in the Arctic could be threatened by increasing ship traffic as the region’s ice melts. Narwhals and beluga whales could be especially vulnerable because of their exposure to ships and their sensitivity to disturbances, according to a study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Polar bears might be the least vulnerable, with four other important species—bearded seals, walruses, bowhead whales and ringed seals—probably falling somewhere in the middle....

For women, wearing makeup at work can be a complex issue. They must balance looking professional with the risk of being objectified. Overall, research shows that use of cosmetics signals status. A new paper, published in October 2016 in Perception, examines how it projects success—while explaining some of its costs. In the first of two experiments, researchers photographed 40 female college students with and without makeup and presented them to another group of 128 (mostly heterosexual) male and female undergraduates....

This month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations–affiliated body that serves as the world’s foremost authority on climate science, is scheduled to issue the first installment of its new climate assessment, six years in the making. The massive report, the panel’s fifth, is being released in four parts between now and October 2014. It is stuffed with science, woven together by more than 800 scientists. And it is already out-of-date....

The most obvious thing about yourself is your self. “You look down at your body and know it’s yours,” says Todd Heatherton, a psychologist at Dartmouth University. “You know it’s your hand you’re controlling when you reach out. When you have memories, you know that they are yours and not someone else’s. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to interrogate yourself for a long time about who you are....

After arriving at Adirondack Park on our first family vacation since the start of the pandemic, I went out for my routine morning jog. The sun poured light over my body as if it was a racehorse in need of washing. And out there I saw unexpectedly a beautiful young deer near a lake. He focused his eyes on me to verify that I pose no danger. If I had fetched my cell phone to snap a photo, he would have disappeared....

Few fictional creatures are as iconic or as synonymous with their franchise as the giant apex predators of the desert world of Arrakis in the classic novel Dune. Author Frank Herbert imagined the sandworms’ life cycle in incredible detail, and the desert where these behemoths live and hunt continues to be a relevant allegory for our own world and our struggles with sustainability. Within this setting, large-scale climate effects unfold over decades and generations, but individual motives are often influenced by immediate threats and short-term goals....

A number of studies in recent years have shown that clean living—exercise, sleep, a Mediterranean diet—lowers one’s prospect of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Some of these recommendations sound a little like a parent’s entreaty to a child to eat the daily apple or finish broccoli left on a plate. What does it really mean, though, to say that eating greens or berries diminishes risk? How much do such changes lower your chances of Alzheimer’s?...

The fire that destroyed large sections of the iconic cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris last April was a national tragedy. Now, months on, scientists with the French national research organization CNRS are embarking on a multimillion-euro effort to study the 850-year-old building and its materials with the goal of illuminating how it was constructed. With unprecedented access to the cathedral’s fabric—including timber, metalwork and the building’s foundations—in the wake of the fire, scientists also hope that their work will arm them with information to help the restoration....

Among the human body’s many maladies, few have stumped medical researchers like those that decimate the brain. After decades of effort, effectively treating—let alone curing—neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease has been a source of frustration for many, as old theories are questioned and clinical trials fail. Basic scientists have achieved some progress. Over the past few decades, they have made serious headway in identifying single inherited genes responsible for genetic forms of various neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s—and also the molecular and neural mechanisms behind nongenetic, or sporadic, forms of brain maladies....

A big, puffy planet orbiting a small, bright star in the constellation Virgo is leaking helium into space. It’s the first time astronomers have spotted the element on a planet beyond the Solar System, after more than a decade of searching. Many similar planets probably exist, so the work opens new possibilities for probing the atmospheres that enshroud distant worlds, says Jessica Spake, an exoplanet astronomer at the University of Exeter, UK....

Mountain goats are born understanding where they should and shouldn’t climb, but baby humans need practice puttering around before they can make sound judgments. Now New York University developmental psychologist Karen Adolph has found that for each new phase of motor development, infants have to relearn how to keep themselves safe. Adolph tested how infants judge risk by setting 12- and 18-month-old infants at the top of an adjustable wooden “cliff” and having their mothers beckon them over the edge....

Editor’s note: This Q&A is a part of a survey conducted by Scientific American of executives at companies engaged in developing and implementing non–fossil fuel energy technologies. What technical obstacles currently most curtail the growth of biofuels? What are the prospects for overcoming them in the near future and the longer-term? Speaking from the perspective of our microbial renewable oil production technology platform and advanced biofuels, the majority of the true technical hurdles for us have already been crossed....

When a team of Chinese scientists beamed entangled photons from the nation’s Micius satellite to conduct the world’s first quantum-secured video call in 2017, experts declared that China had taken the lead in quantum communications. New research suggests that lead has extended to quantum computing as well. In three preprint papers posted on arXiv.org last month, physicists at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) reported critical advances in both quantum communication and quantum computing....

Of course, by buying that car, you’re also committing to polluting the atmosphere with some amount of carbon dioxide. But how often do car buyers make that calculation? The same can be said for coal-fired power plants, which spew billions of tons of climate-changing CO2 into the atmosphere each year, and continue to be built across the globe. Coal-fired power plants are the largest contributors to the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which last year reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history — up from 280 ppm in pre-industrial times....

Conspiracy theorists are often portrayed as nutjobs, but some may just be lonely, recent studies suggest. Separate research has shown that social exclusion creates a feeling of meaninglessness and that the search for meaning leads people to perceive patterns in randomness. A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology connects the dots, reporting that ostracism enhances superstition and belief in conspiracies. In one experiment, people wrote about a recent unpleasant interaction with friends, then rated their feelings of exclusion, their search for purpose in life, their belief in two conspiracies (that the government uses subliminal messages and that drug companies withhold cures), and their faith in paranormal activity in the Bermuda Triangle....

Cosmologists have produced the biggest map yet of the Universe’s structure and they find it less lumpy than previous surveys have suggested. The new results, part of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey (DES), charted the distribution of matter in part by measuring the way that mass bends light, an effect known as gravitational lensing. The Universe was extremely smooth, with matter evenly distributed in its infancy nearly 14 billion years ago, but mass has been clumping together ever since into galaxies, gas clouds and other structures....

Looking at the very distant, very ancient universe, we find quasars—extremely bright cosmic lights powered by gas falling onto supermassive black holes. But how could black holes have been able to grow so large in such a short time after the big bang? Theory holds that a black hole is the product of a collapsed elderly, burned-out star. So it doesn’t make sense to see such massive ones so early in the timeline of our universe....