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Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado’s phone started ringing. CNN’s Jake Tapper had just used the Republican city leader’s question about climate change and sea-level rise in a GOP presidential debate, and the candidates for president were being asked about what might be the greatest threat to jobs, housing and the wider economy of the Sunshine State. “I started answering the phone,” Regalado said. “People kept me awake until midnight.” Regalado may not have gotten the exact answer he was looking for from fellow Republicans....

By Mari Saito TOKYO (Reuters) - Fishermen working near Japan’s destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant agreed on Tuesday to allow the release of uncontaminated groundwater around the facility into the ocean, a fisheries union official said, a rare victory for the operator. Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the operator of the Fukushima station that suffered triple nuclear meltdowns after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, is trying to contain radioactive water at the site....

During President Obama’s final State of the Union address, he called for reforms to the voting process, saying, “We’ve got to make it easier to vote, not harder. We need to modernize it for the way we live now.” Just ahead of Super Tuesday and in the midst of the presidential primaries—where we’ve already witnessed record turnout and long lines in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada—it’s a good time to reconsider the president’s appeal to modernize the voting process, and review an encouraging effort to do just this....

Fire and ice have created a doubly dangerous and disruptive volcanic disaster in Iceland that is being felt around the world as locals are evacuated and thousands of flights to and from Northern and Western Europe have been grounded. At least 800 people have been evacuated from the area around the Eyjafjallajokull glacier (about 120 kilometers outside of the capital Reykjavik and from under which the volcano is erupting), to protect them from rushing floodwaters....

We stopped in front of what looked like a small tree but turned out to be a large vine. Julio told us Tsimane’ use it when they are in the old-growth forest and need water. He began whacking at the vine from all sides with his machete, sending chips of bark flying with each stroke. Within two minutes he had cut off a meter-long section. Water started to pour out of it....

SINGRAULI, India—Here at the foot of a mountain of coal mining debris live 150 people in one of the most polluted places on Earth. The air is dense with coal dust and other particulates. The drinking water source is a spring that emerges from the coal dump. When the rains come, landslides from the rock pile threaten to crush the small mud homes at its foot. Kunti Baiga, who is 25 or 30 years old by her best reckoning, lives there with her kids—two boys and a girl....

The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, suggests a huge assessment of the region. The warming is hastening the melting of Arctic ice and boosting sea-level rise. The report, compiled by more than 90 scientists, documents the myriad changes already under way across the Arctic because of climate change—from declining sea ice and melting glaciers to shifting ecosystems and weather patterns. From 2011 to 2015, the assessment finds, the Arctic was warmer than at any time since records began around 1900 (see ‘Arctic warming’)....

Mixing COVID-19 vaccines is emerging as a good way to get people the protection they need when faced with safety concerns and unpredictable supplies. Most vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 must be given in two doses, but multiple studies now back up the idea that mixing the Oxford–AstraZeneca jab and the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine triggers an immune response similar to — or even stronger than — two doses of either vaccine. Results announced on Monday 1 by a UK group suggest that the combination sometimes outperforms two shots of the same vaccine, and a similar picture is emerging from German studies....

Two generations ago babies were born pretty much spontaneously, around the clock. But today in the U.S., about half of all births are cesarean sections prescheduled by Mom or deliveries induced by doctors concerned about the mother’s or baby’s health. These medical procedures have skewed the days of the week, and hours of the day, during which those little bundles of joy arrive. The procedures dominate because more than 98 percent of infants are born in a hospital, despite what seems to be the rising popularity of home births....

The first helicopter on Mars is officially on Martian soil. NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity touched down on the surface of the Red Planet after being dropped by its mother ship, the Perseverance rover, the space agency announced late Saturday (April 4). The helicopter’s first flight is just over a week away. “#MarsHelicopter touchdown confirmed! Its 293 million mile (471 million km) journey aboard @NASAPersevere ended with the final drop of 4 inches (10 cm) from the rover’s belly to the surface of Mars today,” officials with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California wrote in a Twitter announcement....

By Daniel Wiessner ALBANY N.Y. (Reuters) - A New York appeals court will consider this week whether chimpanzees are entitled to “legal personhood” in what experts say is the first case of its kind. For Steven Wise, the lawyer behind the case involving a chimp named Tommy, it is the culmination of three decades of seeking to extend rights historically reserved for humans to other intelligent animals. On Wednesday, a mid-level state appeals court in Albany will hear the case of the 26-year-old Tommy, who is owned by a human and lives alone in what Wise describes as a “dark, dank shed” in upstate New York....

Editor’s note [03/01/2017]: On March 1, the Senate confirmed Ryan Zinke as Interior Secretary. Read the resurfaced article below for insight into Zinke’s views on public lands and the environment. Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Interior, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke (R), started his confirmation hearing Tuesday by aligning himself with one of the giants of American conservation. “Upfront, I am an unapologetic admirer of Teddy Roosevelt,” Zinke said, adding that Roosevelt “had it right” when he protected millions of acres of federal lands and created the U....

MENOPAUSE AND HEALTH I appreciate that Scientific American is working to bring attention to the issue of female reproductive health in its “Future of Medicine” report. But I am disappointed by the absence of any information about menopause, which means you do not address the full cycle of the female reproductive experience in this series of articles. Further, not mentioning menopause reinforces the cultural message to women that their value, even in the realm of scientific research, lies in their reproductive capabilities....

Propelled by winds and high temperatures, it burned for 10 days, charring more than 250 acres of land. Once-a-century no more The 2005 drought – considered a once-in-a-century event – resulted in unprecedented wildfires in Acre, the western Brazilian state bordering Peru. Flames scorched the tree canopy, and at one point the front face of the fire stretched nearly seven miles. As many as 1.2 million acres of forests were affected in Acre and the neighboring regions of Pando in Bolivia and Madre de Dios in Peru....

Doses of the vaccine candidates are expected to be delivered to Uganda this week. The clinical trial is the latest effort to stem an outbreak that has already spread to nine districts, including three densely populated areas, according to the WHO. The candidates for the trial include one that is a bivalent (meaning it targets two viral strains) and two that are monovalent (targeting a single strain each): a bivalent adenovirus vectored vaccine made by the University of Oxford and the Jenner Institute in England, a monovalent adenovirus vectored vaccine developed by the Sabin Vaccine Institute and a monovalent vaccine from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative....

When you think of Neandertals, freckles probably aren’t the first facial features that come to mind. But, a new analysis of genetic material from the remains of two Neandertals indicates that some members of the ancient hominid population may well have been pale-skinned redheads. An international team of researchers reached that conclusion after studying a segment of the gene MC1R that controls melanin, which is responsible for skin and hair color....

One minute you’re enjoying a nice buzz, the next your brain stops recording events that are taking place. The result can mean having vague or no memory of a time period ranging anywhere from a few minutes up to several hours. Scary—isn’t it? Unfortunately, alcohol-induced blackouts aren’t a rarity, either. A 2015 survey of English teenagers who drank showed 30 percent of 15-year-olds and 75 percent of 19-year-olds suffered alcohol-induced blackouts....

John Peever, director of the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory at the University of Toronto, and Brian J. Murray, director of the sleep laboratory at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, respond: The function of sleep has mystified scientists for thousands of years, but modern research is providing new clues about what it does for both the mind and body. Sleep serves to reenergize the body’s cells, clear waste from the brain, and support learning and memory....

The phrases “perpetual-motion machine”—a concept derided by scientists since the mid-19th century—and “physics Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek” wouldn’t seem to belong in the same sentence. But if Wilczek’s latest ideas on symmetry and the nature of time are correct, they would suggest the existence of a bona fide perpetual-motion machine— albeit one from which energy could never be extracted. He proposes that matter could form a “time crystal,” whose structure would repeat periodically, as with an ordinary crystal, but in time rather than in space....

Computers and phones have made life easier for most of us, but perhaps harder for an unlucky few. Technology-related injuries, ranging from irritating neck and shoulder pain to fatal accidents, are the flip side of gadgets that are generally helpful. Some of these injuries come on suddenly, while others, such as those caused by doing repeated tasks, take a long time to develop. And the number of cases are growing. A national study published in 2009 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that sudden computer-related injuries are rising rapidly in the United States, and that young children are most affected....