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Around 12,300 years ago, a family set up camp in a marshy, verdant landscape in what is today northwestern Utah. They’d walked some 60 miles to get there, likely lured by the promise of now-extinct big game like mammoths and camels—and with a plentiful supply of duck to keep them fed between hunts. They built a fire and carved up a few birds using sharp, flaked stones. After finishing their meal, they did what many people today still do: they enjoyed some tobacco....

On July 30 Florida governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order barring local school districts from requiring their students to wear masks, claiming that mask mandates in schools lack “a well-grounded scientific justification.” On August 27, when a Leon County, Florida, judge suspended the governor’s ban, DeSantis’s office maintained that there was no evidence that masks prevent infection in schools, issuing a statement that the ruling was “not based in science and facts....

When Gulf corvina mate, they are not shy about making noise. Every year the species’ entire population gathers off the coast of Mexico to spawn. Like crickets, cicadas and frogs, male corvina produce a thumping love song that likely acts as a come-hither signal for females. The resulting underwater din turns out to be the highest-decibel fish noise ever recorded, even rivaling whale song—making it one of the loudest naturally produced sounds in the ocean, according to a study published last December in Biology Letters....

Large sections of New York City’s subway system remain waterlogged or destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which is raising questions on how to protect East Coast and other transportation networks from severe weather events in the future. One of the major lessons learned from the storm “is the recognition that climate change is a reality; extreme weather is a reality; it is a reality that we are vulnerable,” said New York Gov....

Until recently, the American particle collider was a thriving species spanning a variety of habitats from coast to coast. But now it finds itself on the endangered list. Since 2008 the number of colliders in the U.S. has dwindled from four to one. And the last surviving member of the species, the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., may soon fall victim to the same budgetary blight that has already felled so many other towering scientific facilities....

Editor’s note: The article originally appeared in the February 11, 1911 issue of Scientific American. ALTHOUGH the recent epidemics of bubonic plague in China, India, and other parts of the world have been always associated with outbreaks of the same disease among rats, the historical study of plague throughout the world reveals the singular fact that previous to 1800 very few references to a coincident mortality among rats have been put on record....

The Head Lines section of Scientific American Mind’s September/October issue mentioned the following articles in brief. Click on the links to learn more about them. A tendency to pursue numerous richly stimulating activities strongly predicts creativity. Your “roaming entropy,” or the frequency and variety with which you get out and about, likely affects your brain health. In a study of adult mice, the animals with higher roaming entropy had a greater proliferation of adult-born neurons....

(Reuters) - A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck near the Solomon Islands on Sunday morning, triggering a tsunami warning that was later cancelled, according to U.S. government agencies, and there were no immediate reports of damage. The quake was centered 100 km (60 miles) south of Kira Kira on the island of Makira at a depth of 29 km (18 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. “So far we have received no reports of damage,” said Constable Taylor Fugo from Kira Kira police....

In an ischemic stroke a clot blocks a blood vessel to the brain, depriving oxygen and nutrients to part of the crucial organ. Without immediate treatment this can cause irreversible tissue damage, leading to complications ranging from behavioral changes to paralysis. Stroke is the fifth-highest cause of death in the U.S., and the leading cause of long-term disability. Ischemic strokes are the most common type, accounting for more than 80 percent of all cases....

A new study of a proposed geoengineering technique to artificially shade the Earth shows that troublesome side effects could be minimized by injecting particles into the atmosphere from points on the planet farther away from the equator. The results of one model simulation suggests that droughts, major rainstorms and more rapid polar ice melting might be reduced by changing the places and the frequency of injections. The research on what scientists call SRM, or solar radiation management, took three months running a sophisticated global climate model on one of the world’s fastest computers....

If you ask the average person “Do you know your true self?” you might prompt in him or her a wave of anxiety. And no wonder. From the moment we’re born we are constantly told “to be authentic,” “you do you” and “you are one of a kind.” But studies show that people struggle to define their real selves (even to themselves). We seem to identify with, and want to present to the world, the most admirable versions of ourselves— the kindest, the most generous and compassionate—but where does that leave the less savory (read: human) aspects of our personality?...

Have a spare polar icebreaker lying around? The National Science Foundation would like to hear from you. The agency is scrambling to secure a ship to lead its annual resupply convoy to McMurdo Station, the largest of the three U.S. research stations in Antarctica. For the past five years, NSF has relied on a Swedish ship, the Oden, to break a channel in the ice for ships carrying fuel and cargo to McMurdo....

There’s no doubt that female doctors are especially in demand. This is because women tend to search for female doctors. But what about men? Do they tend to have a preference? I’ve heard both sides of the camp. I’d love to hear from you in your comments here or on my Facebook page. Here’s a not uncommon scenario when I see some of my brand new male patients for a physical exam:...

In the 1970s, archaeologist Peter Bogucki was excavating a Stone Age site in the fertile plains of central Poland when he came across an assortment of odd artifacts. The people who had lived there around 7,000 years ago were among central Europe’s first farmers, and they had left behind fragments of pottery dotted with tiny holes. It looked as though the coarse red clay had been baked while pierced with pieces of straw....

Sure, it is just on a computer but a new reconstruction of human metabolic activity, created by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, could revolutionize the study of how the body breaks down food into energy and assembles hormones and proteins to power biological processes crucial to daily life. The work could lead to new treatments that target common metabolic maladies such as high cholesterol and diabetes as well as hemolytic anemia, which occurs when red blood cells break down prematurely....

One of the strongest predictors of becoming an alcoholic is family history: the offspring of people with the disorder are four times more likely than others to develop it, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). But new research shows a family history of alcoholism (FHA) affects more than your desire to drink. It also changes how your brain transitions from one task to the next—going, say, from cooking breakfast to thinking about a work deadline....

Those affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are clinically thought of as inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive. However, people with ADHD are also perceived as being very spontaneous, curious, inquisitive, enthusiastic, lively and witty, a perception that creates an impression they are more creative than those without ADHD. But is there truth to this idea? Creativity is generally the ability to generate something original and unprecedented. The ideas must not only be new and surprising, but also useful and relevant....

LE BOURGET, PARIS—More than 300 watts per square meter of sunshine hits the top of Earth’s atmosphere each year. A third is reflected and the sky, sea and land absorb the rest. Much of that warmth tries to escape back to space but only a little over half makes it each year. That proportion is declining as concentrations of gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide, edges ever upward. The result: global warming....

By Keith CoffmanDENVER (Reuters) - Two miners who died in a gold and silver mine in Colorado over the weekend were killed when they were exposed to fatal levels of carbon monoxide following an explosion, federal safety officials said on Monday.At least 19 other miners were sickened in the incident in the Revenue-Virginius mine in Ouray County in southwestern Colorado early on Sunday morning. All have since been released from two area hospitals....

Rich countries overwhelmingly dominate paleontology research, even when the fossils do not originate there, a new study shows. Researchers analyzed 26,409 paleobiology papers from 1990 to 2020 and found that scientists in high- or upper-middle-income countries contributed to 97 percent of fossil research. And those from former colonial powers disproportionately controlled fossils from their former colonies. For example, French researchers conducted a quarter of all paleontology studies in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria; German scientists carried out 17 percent of research on fossils from Tanzania; and 10 percent of studies on South African and Egyptian fossils were conducted by British investigators....