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Brazilians joke that theirs is the country of the future—and always will be. Likewise, solar power has always been the ultimate green technology of the future. But maybe the sun is finally rising. The photovoltaic market, though small, has been growing briskly: by more than 60 percent in 2004. Plastering your roof with solar cells now runs as little as 20 cents per kilowatt-hour over the system’s estimated lifetime, which is approaching what most households pay for electricity....

BORED WHILE WAITING at the bus stop, Kate sticks a cigarette in her mouth just as she notices a billboard across the road. The small print reads, “Warning: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy.” Kate stops for a moment. “How many have I had already today?” she asks herself. But then she lights up. “I don’t smoke that much,” she reasons, to quiet her conscience. “And anyway, I exercise and eat pretty well....

Although illusions are by definition not real, scientists are increasingly finding ways to use them to make an impact on the real world. Here are 10 practical applications that use or control illusions, from warships to virtual reality to Michelangelo’s David and the Statue of Liberty. MP3s All MP3s are based on illusion. An MP3 is a product of “lossy audio compression,” in which parts of the audio signal are discarded to shrink a sound file yet cause zero to minimal perceived loss in the sound quality for the average listener....

Joan Argetsinger Steitz, a scientist known for her pivotal discoveries about cell biology—and for her efforts to encourage women in science and engineering—has netted one of this year’s Lasker Awards, an accolade sometimes referred to as the “American Nobel.” The New York City–based Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced Tuesday morning it will confer the prize for special achievement in medical science on Steitz, a biochemist at Yale University who led work uncovering the details of “splicing”—a process in which noncoding information is removed from cells so that RNA can be translated into protein....

Two powerful solar storms arriving at Earth today have captured the public’s attention for their potential to spark amazing auroras, but scientists say there’s another reason to watch. The solar double whammy is actually somewhat rare. The particles from the two flares could interact as they head toward Earth, and researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center said they are monitoring the situation. The sun unleashed a medium-sized flare on Monday (September 8) followed by a second, larger flare, called an Earth-directed X-class flare, on Wednesday (September 10)....

Editor’s Note (8/15/22): Recent shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is renewing concerns about damage to the plant initially raised when Russian forces first attacked the facility in March. People around the world watched via livestreamed security camera as Russian forces attacked and took over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—the largest in Europe—on Friday morning local time. Amid the shelling and gunfire, a fire broke out at a training facility in the complex and was later extinguished, according to news reports....

Mark Pagel, head of the evolutionary biology group at the University of Reading in England and editor of The Encyclopedia of Evolution, fills us in: We humans are conspicuous among the 5,000 or so mammal species in that we are effectively naked. Just consider what your pet dog or cat (or, for that matter, a polar bear) would look like, and how it might feel, if its furry coat were shorn....

After decades of neglect, hellish and cloud-enveloped Venus—sometimes called Earth’s evil twin—is a world ready and waiting for renewed exploration. That is the message from a new study released late last month from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with one important caveat: The best way to return to Venus, the study’s contributors argue, may be to fly our sister world’s surprisingly friendly skies. Despite surface temperatures and pressures that would melt metal and crush heavy machinery, conditions are far more clement—hospitable, even—higher in the planet’s atmosphere....

Sam Alito–not the town across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, that’s Sausalito–is the new nominee for associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Harriet Miers had been the nominee, but she thought Marbury v. Madison had something to do with New York Knick point guard Stephon Marbury and his home court of Madison Square Garden. Despite her lack of experience in constitutional law, Miers was defended by some commentators who posited that corporate law experience would come in handy when the court hears business cases....

CHICAGO (Reuters)—The sale and distribution of antibiotics approved for use in food-producing animals in the United States decreased by 10 percent from 2015 to 2016, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report said on Thursday. It was the first decline in year-to-year sales since the FDA began collecting the data in 2009, according to food and consumer health groups. For years scientists have warned that the regular use of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent illness in healthy farm animals fuels dangerous, antibiotic-resistant “superbug” infections in people....

What differentiates mere talent from creative genius? No one knows for sure. We do know, however, that many artistic advances and scientific discoveries come from men and women in their 20s–just old enough to have sufficient technical skills yet young enough to be unencumbered by the habits of older generations. Psychological studies also indicate that highly creative people share an elevated risk of serious mental illness. For certain individuals, such ailments may actually contribute to their soaring achievements....

Up to 58 percent of physicians in the U.S. regularly prescribe placebos, according to a survey of 679 rheumatologists and general internists conducted by Jon C. Tilburt of the National Institutes of Health and his colleagues. Even though placebos may contain no active ingredients, many ailments still respond positively to them [see “The Placebo Effect,” by Walter A. Brown; Scientific American, January 1998]. Percent of physicians who believe prescribing placebos is ethical: 62...

Legislation on California state Sen. Mark Leno’s desk has the potential to affect every household in the U.S. If Leno has his way, the state’s textile and furniture manufacturers, and thus probably all such makers in the U.S., will drastically alter the amount of flame retardant carried in almost every sofa, love seat and easy chair in the country. At issue is something called Technical Bulletin 117 (or TB 117), an obscure California law enacted in the late 1970s....

In July 2006, a monthlong triple-digit heat wave scorched California, killing more than 25,000 cattle and reducing dairy production in the region. Land O’Lakes Creameries, which normally produces six million liters of milk daily, was short 1.5 million liters per day. All told, experts estimate that the high temperatures caused $1 billion worth of dairy shortfalls. Extreme weather events and higher average temperatures are predicted to increase with global warming, and that’s bad news for livestock producers in the U....

For the past decade I have studied captive taking in historical and ancient cultures. I am an archaeologist interested in social and demographic processes in small-scale societies of the type that scholars call “tribes” or “chiefdoms”—groups of fewer than 20,000 people who are related through blood or marriage and whose leaders have relatively limited power. Captives were ubiquitous in these societies: early travelers’ accounts, ethnohistorical documents, ethnographies, captive narratives and archaeological reports describe captives in every corner of the world, from northern Europe to southern South America....

Twice per year, Ed Dever’s group at Oregon State University in Corvallis heads out to sea off the Oregon and Washington coasts to refurbish and clean more than 100 delicate sensors that make up one segment of a US$44-million-per-year scientific network called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. “If this had been a normal year, I would have been at sea right now,” he says. Instead, Dever is one of many scientists sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic, watching from afar as precious field data disappear and instruments degrade....

The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled....

Given the billions of food items that are packaged, purchased and consumed every day in the U.S., let alone the world, it is remarkable how few of them are contaminated. Yet since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, “food defense” experts have grown increasingly worried that extremists might try to poison the food supply, either to kill people or to cripple the economy by undermining public confidence. At the same time, production of edible products is becoming ever more centralized, speeding the spread of natural contaminants, or those introduced purposely, from farms or processing plants to dinner tables everywhere....

Just beyond a shallow, narrow sea lay an open topography of grassy savanna, populated by plentiful game and few predators. This watery barrier—likely not more than five kilometers wide—would have been but a small obstacle for a group of modern humans accustomed to navigating African lakes with boats and rafts. But this short crossing, enabled by coincidental climate change, might have led the species—possibly for the first time—out of Africa and into Arabia, and eventually deeper into Asia, Europe and the rest of the globe....

For physicists, measuring temperature takes more than reading a column of mercury. They would like to define it in terms of a physical constant, just as length is described with respect to the speed of light (one meter isthe distance traveled by light in an absolute vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of one second). Currently the basic unit of temperature, the kelvin, is awkwardly defined as 1/273.16 the difference between absolute zero and the triple point of water—that is, when water’s gas, liquid and solid phases may coexist at a certain pressure....