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Climate experts have warned for decades of “tipping points” at which modern global warming might cause a cascade of accelerating, irreversible effects. Now geologists are beginning to identify similar junctures in the fossil record. For example, around 56 million years ago—when our small primate ancestors still hopped through the trees—volcanic eruptions may have sparked hothouse conditions that altered processes ranging from evolution to the direction of ocean currents. By studying climate shifts of the past, geologists hope to anticipate how our current, human-caused climate change could dramatically alter our world....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Since its invention around 100 B.C. in China, paper as a material for spreading information has greatly contributed to the development and spread of civilization. Even in today’s information age, with electronic media omnipresent in homes, offices and even our pockets, paper still plays a critical role. Our brains process information differently on paper and on screen....

Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human by Tom Boellstorff. Princeton University Press, 2008 Boellstorff, an anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine, applies the methods and theories of his field to a virtual world accessible only through a computer screen. This world, called Second Life, is owned by Linden Lab, a company that charges roughly $15 a month to “live” there and to buy virtual land....

The Citadel of Aleppo (aerial view at right) rises above the old city in northern Syria and contains the remains of palaces, mosques and bathhouses dating back to the 10th century B.C. This World Heritage site has been threatened, however, by the country’s civil war between rebels and the military of President Bashar al-Assad. Armed conflicts and natural disasters threaten human life and cultural sites, but putting feet on the ground to assess damage can prove impossible....

Silent Circle shuttered its encrypted e-mail service on Thursday, the second such closure in just a few hours in an apparent attempt to avoid government scrutiny that may threaten its customers’ privacy. Silent Circle, which makes software that encrypts phone calls and other communications, announced in a company blog post that it could “see the writing on the wall” and decided it best to shut down its Silent Mail feature. The company said it was inspired by the closure earlier Thursday of Lavabit, another encrypted e-mail service provider that alluded to a possible national security investigation....

The jagged granite peaks of Arizona’s Tinajas Altas Mountains, reminiscent of the Iron Throne in the television series Game of Thrones, are almost insurmountable to humans. But bighorn sheep have long climbed through them with ease—until their path was blocked by a 30-foot-high steel fence built atop a blasted-out right-of-way on the U.S.-Mexico border last spring. Just to the east, federal contractors have built more border fencing through the habitat of the endangered Sonoran pronghorn in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge....

Since the mid-1990s scientists have floated the idea that representations of numeric quantities, whether expressed as digits or as written words, are codified by the parietal cortex, a higher-processing region in the brain located just above the forehead. The notion is supported by calculation deficits observed in patients with damage to that brain region and in low birth weight children who exhibit reduced gray matter in adulthood. Still, it is unknown whether the parietal cortex—specifically its left hemisphere—processes numeric value independent of notation....

Imagine waking up on Monday morning to an e-mail in your inbox that was written entirely in capital letters—an e-mail that jolts you awake far quicker than the cup of coffee in your hand: “IS THIS A JOKE??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” With the caps lock key and the stroke of an exclamation point, your co-worker has just done the equivalent of shouting at you across the office. Yet these days this kind of encounter is almost commonplace....

Since 2011 the auto industry has successfully ramped up the fuel efficiency of vehicles it sells in the U.S. using standards mapped out in an agreement with the Obama administration. The overall target: A fleetwide average of 54.6 miles per gallon by 2025. But now, with Pres. Trump vowing to slash environmental regulations, automakers say the standards are too stringent. In February companies asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take the first step in rolling them back—and the Trump administration has signaled it intends to follow through....

An Italian neuroscientist promised in recent weeks that a new type of surgery—wait for it, a human head transplant—will be ready to try on real, live patients in the next two years. Unfortunately, according to many other neurosurgeons and transplant specialists, that’s an absurd claim. We won’t be swapping out our bodies for younger, fitter models for at the minimum decades, if not centuries—or ever. Still, some people have their heads frozen after death in the hope that future scientific advances may be able to bring them back, plop their heads on a new body—biological or robotic—and let them live forever....

Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re annoying or even frustrating. They can disrupt you at the most inconvenient times. No, I’m not talking about your family members—good guess, though! I’m talking about hiccups. What are hiccups? And are there scientific reasons behind why we get them? The world’s longest bout of hiccups According to the Guinness World Records book, the record for the longest bout of hiccups goes to Charles Osborne. He had the hiccups for 68 years, from 1922 to 1990, with an estimated 430 million hiccups....

Nehemiah Mabry has long imagined a world where people of color have fuller representation inside the world of science. That vision started with him. Mabry was raised by a mother and father who encouraged him to speak up and to develop a passion for math, science and engineering. That support led him to NASA, where he apprenticed while still a student in high school. The experience put Mabry on a path to becoming a structural engineer....

Mercury will cross the sun’s face from Earth’s perspective on Monday (May 9) in the first such “transit” since 2006, and the last until 2019. Most of the world will be in position to witness Monday’s Mercury transit, weather permitting, though observers will need a telescope to see it well. But remember: NEVER look directly at the sun without a solar filter or other appropriate eye protection; blindness can result. Mercury transits occur just 13 times per century, on average....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. A well-designed product equally elevates form and function. It is pleasing to look at, easy to use and solves a common problem. We reached out to five design professors and posed the following question: What’s the best-designed product of all time, and why? Their responses vary from cheap, everyday products to newer, more expensive ones....

Disposable and rechargeable batteries that power tens of millions of portable electronics could become obsolete over the coming decades as new technologies come to market that can convert ambient energy into usable electric power, new research shows. The concept, known as “energy harvesting” (EH), is becoming more viable as technology firms bring products to market that can transform electromagnetic, thermal and mechanical energy sources into power that can be stored and used....

Hot on the heels of Harvey, Hurricane Irma is headed for the U.S. The category 5 storm is one of strongest on record in the Atlantic, with peak winds of 185 miles per hour. It has already ripped through Barbuda, Anguilla, Puerto Rico and other islands, destroying buildings and leaving thousands of people without water or electricity. Florida is bracing for the storm’s arrival this weekend even as nearby Texas is still reeling from Harvey, a category 4 hurricane that put much of Houston underwater less than two weeks ago....

SHANGQIU, China – This is not the equivalent of Silicon Valley. There isn’t a lab in sight or a high-tech industrial park in the area. What attracts most of the attention is a two-floor factory building with a signboard that reads “Shangqiu Sanli New Energy Demonstration.” Still, this is a noteworthy place. It is healing one of China’s long-standing headaches. That headache is straw, basically an agricultural waste collected from nearby farms....

Compare the petite Chihuahua with the daunting Great Dane, or the lithe greyhound to the poofy Pomeranian. Many scientists agree that the domestic dog displays more morphological variation than any other known species, thanks to selective breeding by humans. But dog breeds differ in more than their outward appearances. A new study suggests that human preferences have dramatically altered the structure and position of the brain in certain dog breeds, potentially modifying their sense of smell and behavior as well....

The biggest extinctions in our planet’s history have been blamed, at various times, on asteroids, gas-emitting microbes or volcanic eruptions. The five mass die-offs destroyed most animals and plants on Earth, including the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. New evidence points strongly to cataclysmic eruptions as the real culprits.Highly accurate rock dates pin such eruptions to the same times as four of the major extinctions and tie the explosions to lethal changes in the atmosphere, as the illustrations here show....

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,1 it was the New York Times. Specifically, it was a Times article that discussed computer programs and other techniques designed to root out plagiarism.2 The article revealed that there is now software that can look for a lengthy passage, like a string of pearls,3 in a new document that is identical to a passage in a previously published work....