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By Lisa Anderson NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Women must take a greater leadership role in fighting climate change because its effects fall hardest on women, the head of UN Women said this week. “Women are on the frontlines, bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of the United Nations agency dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. She spoke on Monday at the start of a discussion focused on the needs of women in terms of climate policy....

A Chinese court on Monday sentenced He Jiankui, the scientist who made the world’s first genetically edited babies last year and in turn incited a global uproar, to three years in prison for conducting an “illegal medical practice,” Chinese state media reported. A court in Shenzhen, where He was based, concluded the He and two colleagues violated Chinese regulations and ethical principles when they edited the DNA of twin IVF embryos and then started a pregnancy with them, the state news agency Xinhua reported....

Many people seem to think NASA has secret training rooms in which gravity can be turned off. Aside from the long-running Anti Gravity column in Scientific American, however, there is no such thing as antigravity. Gravity is a force arising among any two masses in the universe. Our most familiar run-in with it is the attraction that pulls our bodies, our houses and everything else in our lives toward the planet Earth beneath us....

These allusions to the past aren’t surprising considering how drastically the clinical trial changed gene therapy and, in particular, the career of James M. Wilson, the medical geneticist who headed Penn’s Institute for Human Gene Therapy, where the test took place. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned it from conducting human trials, and Wilson left his post at the now defunct institute (but he continued doing research at Penn). He disappeared from the public spotlight until 2005, when the agency announced he could begin clinical trials with a designated monitor but could not lead trials for five years and asked him to write an article about the lessons he has learned....

PASADENA, Calif.—When ground controllers begin powering up the Juno spacecraft’s science instruments on July 6, one of their most important goals will be to get the microwave radiometer up and running. The radiometer is charged with taking water-vapor readings that will help locate Jupiter’s birthplace in the solar system and plumb its atmospheric structure, including the roots of the mysterious Great Red Spot. “This is a totally new concept specifically designed for Jupiter,” says Michael Janssen of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the leader of the Microwave Radiometer Team....

This may come as a shock, but only 55 million years ago, our planet had no polar ice caps; in fact, it nearly became a steamy, runaway greenhouse world, with CO2 levels exceeding 2,500 ppm. Then, all of a sudden, something intervened, causing a shift. Atmospheric carbon dioxide began to drop, steadily generating today’s world, with ice caps at both poles. But why did this happen? And better yet, could whatever triggered this drastic switch be used to temper today’s climate?...

Key concepts Brain Psychology Memory Cognition Introduction Have you ever wondered why some things are easy to recall whereas others need hours of study? For example you might be able to recollect what happened at your birthday party without any practice, but you need hours of study before you can recite a few lines for a theater play. Our mind stores and remembers information in fascinating ways. Remember to do this activity, and you will be surprised at what your memory can do for you!...

As the life sciences become more global and collaborative, researchers have become more productive—and their work potentially more dangerous. White House officials in the past year delayed publication of two scientific papers out of concern for safety and security. In an interview for our October 2012 report on the state of the world’s science, Paul Nurse, president of the British Royal Society and former president of Rockefeller University in New York City, said that the issue had been handled poorly, and called for a “grown up” discussion of the subject....

Edited by Dava Sobel For any liquid, there are two ways to arrive: condensation or melting, a gas finding shape or a solid losing it. For any liquid, leaving depends on pressures and one of two ways out: to evaporate is to lift from its own surface, the bonds broken, the substance cooling with each molecular departure; to boil is to reach the elemental point of no return, through and through....

In the classic nightmare scenario of dystopian science fiction, machines become smart enough to challenge humans—and they have no moral qualms about harming, or even destroying, us. Today’s robots, of course, are usually developed to help people. But it turns out that they face a host of ethical quandaries that push the boundaries of artificial intelligence, or AI, even in quite ordinary situations. Imagine being a resident in an assisted-living facility—a setting where robots will probably become commonplace soon....

The private spaceflight company aims to bring the first stage of its two-stage Falcon 9 rocket back for a soft touchdown on an uncrewed ship in the Pacific Ocean during Sunday’s launch of the Jason-3 Earth-observation satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The news was first reported by space journalist Charles Lurio via Twitter, and subsequently confirmed by NBC News. SpaceX has attemped a Falcon 9 sea landing twice before, once in January 2015 and again in April of that year....

Particularly relevant are the analysis and the setting of “default-options.” A default is the option that a decision maker receives if he or she does not specifically state otherwise. Are we automatically enrolled in a 401(k), are we organ donors by default, or is the flu-shot a standard that is routinely given to all citizens? Research has given us many examples of how and when defaults can promote public safety or wealth....

Earlier this year scientists announced that on April 22—Earth Day—they intended to, in their own words, “walk out of the lab and into the streets.” Organizers of this March for Science were dismayed by a new administration and a Congress pushing policies likely to increase pollution, harm health, reduce our ability to forecast natural hazards such as hurricanes—and toss accepted science out the window. The protests, planned for Washington, D.C., and other cities around the U....

Every year, more than one million children under the age of five die as a result of diarrhoea. It is the second-biggest killer in this age group, after pneumonia, and 40% of diarrhoea deaths are caused by rotavirus. That horrific toll could soon fall, thanks to the first major roll-out of rotavirus vaccines in Africa, where half of rotavirus deaths occur. The programme was unveiled this week by the GAVI Alliance — formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation — based in Geneva, Switzerland....

By Deborah ZabarenkoWASHINGTON (Reuters) - For weeks, gawkers lined up at the U.S. Botanic Garden, hoping to be among the lucky ones to catch the show when a giant-sized corpse flower bloomed for the first time in seven years.Its legendary stench was part of the attraction. On Sunday afternoon, when the 8-foot-tall (2.4-metre) Titan Arum plant finally began opening its petals, a smell almost strong enough to stop traffic lured tourists inside from the sweltering National Mall....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The deadly tornado outbreak that tore through communities from Arkansas to Illinois on the night of Dec. 10-11, 2021, was so unusual in its duration and strength, particularly for December, that a lot of people including the U.S. president are asking what role climate change might have played—and whether tornadoes will become more common in a warming world....

The world of math is complex … in more ways than one. Sure, it’s full of complex ideas that are all tied up and packaged within beautiful and often times complex wrapping paper that is adorned with complex looking mathematical symbols. But it’s also literally complex … by which I mean it’s built upon a fundamental set of numbers called complex numbers. Wait, yet another type of number? Yep! You know all about real numbers, and last time we dove deep into the pool of imaginary numbers, but there is one more set of numbers for you to wrap your head around—they’re called complex numbers....

Calling all rock hounds, the Deep Carbon Observatory(DCO) wants you. According to a new predictive model, more than 140 carbon mineral species on Earth have yet to be discovered, and DCO scientists have launched a citizen science project called the Carbon Mineral Challenge to find them. Over the next four years, teams around the world will study samples of carbon minerals submitted not only by academic mineralogists, but by amateur collectors and explorers....

A reported world-first in fertility therapy—a baby boy conceived with a controversial technique that mixes DNA from three people – has made headlines across the world. But with no way of verifying the claim because the specialists behind the procedure aren’t releasing data until October, some researchers are questioning the ethics of the procedure. In particular, they ask why the US-based team behind the operation chose to carry it out in Mexico, a country with less-clear oversight of human embryo modification than, for instance, the United Kingdom or the United States....

The vibrant blue hues of morpho butterflies’ wings have long captivated not only lepidopterists but also chemists. The latter’s interest stems from the intricate nanoscale protein structures that are layered within the wings: their shapes act like prisms, reflecting a stunning cerulean color. Materials scientists hope to eventually harness these structures’ properties to make products such as paint and cosmetics—without dyes and pigments that can be harmful to human health and the environment....