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Opening a jar of pickles should not be that difficult. And while you are busy mumbling, grimacing, hopping on one foot and holding the jar against your hip until the lid pops open, a young brain may be analyzing the spectacle and learning from it. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found infants who watched an adult struggle and then succeed at something were more likely to show perseverance themselves when faced with a completely different task....

Re-engineering the Mississippi River will stem catastrophic economic and environmental losses from human development and climate change while raising billions of dollars in value, according to a report released yesterday. The paper, titled “Answering 10 Fundamental Questions about the Mississippi River Delta,” highlights the need to protect against land losses and preserve ecosystems along the Gulf Coast. Scientists and engineers from environmental advocacy groups and research institutions contributed to the report, noting that a quarter of the land on the bayou has eroded over the past 100 years, which they attributed to activities like damming the water for energy and flood control, dredging the riverbed for shipping and diverting the river for irrigation....

NASA has pulled off the first powered flight on another world. Ingenuity, the robot rotorcraft that is part of the agency’s Perseverance mission, lifted off from the surface of Mars on 19 April, in a 40-second flight that is a landmark in interplanetary aviation. “We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” says MiMi Aung, the project’s lead engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California....

There’s a new contender for the “most exotic exoplanet” title. The crown may have rested for a while now on the head of HD 189733 b, a cobalt-blue alien world where molten-glass rain whips sideways through the air at up to 5,400 mph (8,790 km/h). But a new study reports that iron rain likely falls through the thick, turbulent air of WASP-76 b, a bizarre “ultrahot Jupiter” that lies about 640 light-years from the sun, in the constellation Pisces....

MEXICO Small freshwater fish called sulfur mollies synchronously splash their tails to create waves, and scientists have now demonstrated that this strategy can deter hungry birds. Researchers triggered the wave-making process using slingshots and found that birds waited twice as long between attacks. CHILE An investigation of sedimentary rock cores revealed that a large, previously undocumented tsunami slammed into Chile’s coast in 1737. The finding suggests that tsunamis hit the country’s coastline more often than previously thought and that hazard assessments should consider both geologic and historical records....

ADDICTION has long been considered a man’s disease. Men are far more likely to use illicit substances, and partly for that reason, research on addiction for decades included only male users. Thus, far more is known about drug dependence in men than in women, and treatment programs and centers have been based on the needs of men. But there are signs that the gender gap is closing, as drug and alcohol use have become more socially acceptable for girls and women....

The sailfish’s sword-like bill looks as if it was made to slash at prey. But a study published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals that the bill is actually a multifunctional killing tool, enabling the fish to perform delicate, as well as swashbuckling, manuevers. By following throngs of predatory birds off the coast of Cancún, Mexico, the study’s authors were able to track Atlantic sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) hunting sardines, says co-author Alexander Wilson, a behavioural ecologist now at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada....

Figure skaters not only have to perform incredible feats of human strength and agility, but they also have to push the limits of what is humanly possible while making their movements look easy. Their motions appear graceful and smooth as they hurtle their bodies through the air with nothing but the hard ice below. As spectators, we take for granted that a figure skating routine will involve multiple jumps which incorporate triple and even quadruple spins in a single jump....

Grafted onto this evolutionary ethics is a new field called neuroethics, whose latest champion is the steely-eyed skeptic and cogent writer Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who in his book The Moral Landscape (Free Press, 2010) wields a sledgehammer to the is-ought wall. Harris’s is a first-principle argument, backed by copious empirical evidence woven through a tightly reasoned narrative. The first principle is the well-being of conscious creatures, from which we can build a science-based system of moral values by quantifying whether or not X increases or decreases well-being....

To most children, the picture of Davy Crockett’s rifle in their history book is like many aspects of school: boring. For a child who saw his father threaten his mother with a shotgun, however, the picture can trigger traumatic memories—and the resulting fidgeting and jumpiness can look to teachers and doctors like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In such cases, standard treatment with stimulants (which help to focus the ADHD brain) may do more harm than good....

A pair of NASA spacecraft are ringing in the new year in grand style, with both now successfully circling the moon after journeying through space for more than three months. The Grail-B probe entered lunar orbit today (Jan. 1) after firing its main engine at 5:05 p.m. EST (2205 GMT) in a 40-minute-long orbital-insertion burn, NASA officials said. It joins its twin spacecraft, Grail-A, which arrived at the moon yesterday evening (Dec....

WENDY SPENT FIVE YEARS in psychoanalysis, delving so deeply into her mind that she could no longer see the connection between her adult problems and her teenage episodes of “cutting” her wrists. After she and her analyst had their final session, during which he welcomed her to move on with her life, Wendy was not completely happy, but she was happier than she ever had been. And that, psychologists say, is successful therapy....

The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting brings a wealth of scientific minds to the shores of Germany’s Lake Constance. Every summer at Lindau, dozens of Nobel Prize winners exchange ideas with hundreds of young researchers from around the world. Whereas the Nobelists are the marquee names, the younger contingent is an accomplished group in its own right. In advance of this year’s meeting, which focuses on physics, we are profiling several promising attendees under the age of 30....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. In the run-up to the United Nations climate meetings in New York City last week the media served up two seemingly contradictory studies. The first concluded that global carbon emissions over the last decade have risen, thanks mostly to rapid economic growth in China and India. The second, put out by Lord Nicholas Stern and a cast of international luminaries and entitled The New Climate Economy, claimed that the transition to a clean-energy economy will be positive—short-term benefits associated with cleaner air and long-term benefits associated with a cooler climate will overwhelm the cost of moving away from fossil fuels....

President Biden confronted Republican hostility toward his $2.3 trillion infrastructure package yesterday by declaring it a pillar of his plan to address climate change. “Investing in clean energy to fight the effects of climate change is part of infrastructure,” Biden said in remarks aimed at pressuring political opponents to support his so-called American Jobs Plan. His comments dovetailed with indications from White House advisers that the sprawling infrastructure proposal could be used as a cornerstone of the administration’s 2030 climate goals, which are widely expected by outside observers to seek a roughly 50% reduction in carbon emissions....

For a fraction of a second in late April, a hyper-magnetized star in the Milky Way suddenly blasted out radio energy. Now scientists say that this sudden, strange blip could help to explain one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles: what powers the hundreds of other mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) that have been spotted much farther away in the Universe. The star, known as SGR 1935+2154, is a magnetar—a dense, spinning ember left behind after a supernova and wrapped in intense magnetic fields....

When Kevin was just 11 months old, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which led to other health problems as he grew up: loss of vision in his left eye and peripheral neuropathy, a painful condition caused by nerve damage. Then, in 2019, a colonoscopy revealed he had colon cancer. Feeling anxious and depressed, Kevin (a pseudonym) decided to try self-medicating with psychedelics, including psilocybin-containing “magic mushrooms.” Twice a week, the now 28-year-old delivery driver takes about half a gram of the outlawed fungi....

One of biggest mysteries in the solar system is why Venus has no moon. A new model suggests that our sister planet may have in fact had a moon, but that it was destroyed. Earth’s moon is thought to have formed when a Mars-size body struck the early Earth, hurling material into orbit, where it coalesced. Normally, material launched ballistically would merely fall back down to the surface, but the impact temporarily distorted Earth’s shape and therefore its gravitational field; the lopsided gravity allowed material to remain in orbit....

Get this: gossip is useful. Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have found that gossip triggers self-reflection, helping the listener improve behavior and identify threats. In experiments designed to measure the effects of gossip, college students either recalled real gossip or role-played as sales reps hearing gossip about fictional co-workers. Hearing positive gossip about others prompted a desire for self-improvement. Negative gossip boosted listeners’ egos but also put them on guard—it would be only too easy to become one of the disgraced....

According to eminent psychologist and emotion researcher Dr. Paul Ekman, lying comes in two flavors. First are “low stakes lies,” which almost all of us engage in; these are lies like, “Oh no, I never got your message,” or “So sorry I’ll be out today—it must have been something I ate.” By contrast, “high stakes lies”—”I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” or “I’m not in love with David Patraeus"—are, thankfully, less common....