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The coming narrative was depressing, predictable and sadly bipartisan: the president was virtue-signaling that he was a strong man who had beat a terrible disease. He hadn’t let COVID-19 win—he’d crushed it. He was dancing on the graves of people who had let themselves die because they were weak. Like gloating Jair Bolsonaro after he’d defeated the virus on Brazil’s COVID-19 battlefield, President Donald J. Trump was now a COVID survivor—and if he could be, so could you....

U.S. scientists believe they have removed one of the last obstacles to commercializing a more efficient and cheaper solar panel made from an alternative material to silicon called perovskite. The breakthrough came from using “off-the-shelf” materials to prevent the lead that is used in the light-absorbing layer of the panels from leaking into the environment. The danger of lead poisoning was viewed as “one of the most vexing, last-mile challenges” facing the development of perovskite panels, explained Kai Zhu, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo....

In my Scientific American column this month, I wrote about the public’s hysteria when Apple eliminated the headphone jack in its phones, starting with the iPhone 7. (Motorola and LeEco had also eliminated the headphone jack.) Apple argues that sooner or later, everything goes wireless: phones (cellular), networking (WiFi), video connections (AirPlay or Chromecast), accessory connections (Bluetooth), and so on—and now it’s time for headphones to go wireless, too. Apple sells its own, rather amazing AirPods (wireless white earbuds that hook into each ear), but there are dozens of Bluetooth earbuds available, costing as little as $17....

Sandy beaches, water parks and T-shirt shops draw millions of tourists to Myrtle Beach, S.C., each summer, but officials there think they might have something else tourists may be interested seeing—offshore wind turbines. “We think that the artificial reef it creates could be another piece of the tourist offerings in our area,” Greg Hembree, a Republican state senator from North Myrtle Beach, said, speaking Wednesday at the North American Offshore Wind Summit in New York City....

A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck central Mexico on September 19, killing more than 100 people and reducing buildings to rubble in the states of Puebla, Morelos and Guerrero, as well as Mexico City. The event came 12 days after a magnitude-8.1 tremor hit off the state of Chiapas — Mexico’s largest quake in more than a century — and 32 years to the day after the country’s most damaging tremor, an 8....

Renewable portfolio standards are an excellent way of getting more wind and solar onto the grid. What they’re not as good at: reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the conclusion of a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which found a weak correlation between renewable energy quotas, high net-metering prices and emission reductions. There is a lengthy list of reasons for the finding, but it can be broken out into two broad categories....

Urbanization has been linked to increased overweight and obesity levels across populations. However, evidence for this association has been based mainly on calculations of the body mass index (BMI)—the most frequently used tool for measuring overweight and obesity—at the time of study. The dynamics of BMI change in urban and rural areas have not been investigated separately. Writing in Nature, the members of the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration challenge the idea that general BMI trends are mainly a result of urbanization....

An international research team has tracked down and measured an elusive molecule that rapidly breaks down pollution in the atmosphere, turning it into clouds that actually help cool the Earth. The compound is part of a class of molecules called “Criegee biradicals,” named after the scientist Rudolf Criegee, who predicted their existence in 1949. The biradicals are intermediates in reactions, meaning they are steppingstones in processes where one compound becomes another....

Last year a high-profile panel of expertsknown as the Copenhagen Consensus ranked the world’s most pressing environmental, health and social problems in a prioritized list. Assembled by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute under its then director, Bjrn Lomborg, the panel used cost-benefit analysis to evaluate where a limited amount of money would do the most good. It concluded that the highest priority should go to immediate concerns with relatively well understood cures, such as control of malaria....

RIZHAO—This seaside resort city facing Japan and Korea across the Yellow Sea takes its name from an ancient poem, “ri qu shien zhao,” or “first to get sunshine.” More than 2.8 million residents enjoy that early sunshine (even if Gisborne in New Zealand is actually the first to see the sun in the morning) as well as a gentle sea breeze and a host of water sports. But Rizhao is also among the first—ahead of the rest of China and most cities in the world—to pledge to become carbon neutral, that is, to balance the amount of greenhouse gases it emits through industry and other human activities with the amount of greenhouse gases it eliminates....

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves,” Albert Einstein is purported to have said. The quote acknowledges a fundamental characteristic of human attention. Sometimes there simply is not enough of it to go around. Never mind the buzzes and beeps of every new text message and e-mail, distracting as they may be. The pressures to be supportive family members, lifelong learners, chiseled athletes and professional leaders make multitasking nearly irresistible....

Key concepts Physics Energy Density Temperature Greenhouse effect Introduction Have you ever had a sunburn? If so, you know how powerful the sun’s heat can be! Did you know this heat can also be turned into electrical energy? You might have heard about solar cells, but what about a solar updraft tower? This very simple structure uses the sun to heat up air, which then powers a turbine within a large tower....

From Ensia (find the original story here); reprinted with permission. June 28, 2016 — As forest fires devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, last month, a different sort of fire may have started beneath the ground. Peat, a carbon-rich soil created from partially decomposed, waterlogged vegetation accumulated over several millennia and the stuff that fueled Indonesia’s megafires last fall, also appears in the boreal forests that span Canada, Alaska and Siberia. With the intense heat from the Fort McMurray fires, “there’s a good chance the soil in the area could have been ignited,” says Adam Watts, a fire ecologist at Desert Research Institute in Nevada....

By David Alire GarciaACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) - More heavy rain spawned by Hurricane Raymond as it churns over the Pacific fell on southwestern Mexico on Tuesday, soaking areas hit by record flooding last month, but forecasters said the storm was weakening and appeared unlikely to reach land.The port and schools remained closed in the resort city of Acapulco, which also was battered by tropical storms that struck Mexico in mid-September. The freight hub of Lazaro Cardenas to the northwest also was shut....

Bryan K. Smith, chief of the Exploration Vehicle Project Office at NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center, provides the following explanation. A rocket works by exchanging momentum. Both the mass of the propellant and the high velocity of its exit from the engine system give the rocket its momentum. The propellant attains its velocity by burning with an oxidizer in a high-pressure chamber. The resultant high energy exhaust is then funneled through a converging or diverging nozzle....

Along with its darling buds, the month of May features Mother’s Day. The holiday is a time for Mom to be feted by her own darlings—because all us buds were brought into this world by a mother. But the human mother-child relationship is just one small slice of what nature has ordered up over the course of evolutionary time. The oddball (to us) ways of some other mothers—mostly mammals, but with a smattering of fish, reptiles, amphibians and birds—are illuminated in the new book Wild Moms, by biologist and author Carin Bondar....

As a NASA photographer, Chris Gunn has been documenting the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) from its early days. Since 2009 he has captured every milestone and witnessed nearly all the pieces of the spacecraft being put together and tested. The telescope is scheduled to reach space in December, and in the months that follow it will open its 6.5-meter-diameter eye on the sky. At this point, the subject of Gunn’s photography will become a photographer itself....

For the last four years, as President Trump worked to roll back environmental regulations and boost fossil fuels, utilities forged ahead with ambitious plans to reduce emissions. Now, their climate goals will be put to the test. The environmental plans of power companies are eclipsed by President-elect Joe Biden’s climate ambitions. While 33 utilities have pledged to eliminate their emissions by 2050, Biden campaigned on a promise to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035....

Remember this: gently boosting the electrical waves in the brain can improve memory. German researchers found that by running a weak electrical current through the brain of sleeping medical students, they could improve their performance on a word-recall task. The finding represents the first evidence that slow oscillations generated by groups of neurons in the brain are not simply a by-product of neural activity but rather critical to the formation of memory....

Key concepts Physics Kinetic energy Potential energy Conservation of energy Newton’s laws of motion Introduction Turn a pile of trash into a toy car—and watch it go! In this activity you will learn some physics concepts and use recycled materials to build a toy car that is propelled by a balloon. You can even find a friend, build two cars and race them against each other. Whose car will go the fastest?...