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RESEARCH LEADER OF THE YEAR: 1.Angela Belcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR: 2.Swiss Re POLICY LEADER OF THE YEAR: 3.Vice President Al Gore Other Research, Business and Policy Leaders More Than Government Grants 4.Michael Kremer, Harvard University (policy) 5.Scott Johnson, Myelin Repair Foundation (policy) 6.Kathy Giusti, Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (policy) 7.Christiane Nsslein-Volhard, Christiane Nsslein-Volhard Foundation (policy) 8.Warren E. Buffett, investor/philanthropist (policy) On the Road to Green 9....

It is easy to see that red is closer to pink than to blue, but odors are harder to compare: Do almonds smell more like roses or bananas? According to a “smell map” created by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, almonds smell like roses—and the two scents elicit similar neural activity. Led by neurobiologist Rafi Haddad, the team identified 40 defining characteristics for odors, such as molecular shape and structure, then translated the resulting profiles of 450 scents into locations on a multidimensional map, as described in a May paper in Nature Methods....

The voicemail rant. The overheard insult. The lonely moral slip when your chips were down. Despite their sting, these unkind memories eventually slacken their grip. We manage, move on, shrug it off, and go about the business of filling our heads with thoughts of a better tomorrow. But for war veterans and victims of violent crime, the persistence of traumatic memories can mean a life of disability. Even when emotional demons are quieted with therapy or drugs, they are prone to return....

The women maneuvered their crude canoes down narrow alleys of brack­ish water. They dipped their paddles lightly, gliding slowly past scrap-built houses elevated on spindly sticks that held the structures just beyond the reach of the tide. Here and there a head popped out of one of the homes to check who or what was passing. In the small harbor where the women beached their boats, the shoreline was a work in progress....

I had long wanted to meet Edward R. Tufte–the man the New York Times called “the da Vinci of data” because of his concisely written and artfully illustrated books on the visual display of data–and invite him to speak at the Skeptics Society science lecture series that I host at the California Institute of Technology. Tufte is one of the world’s leading experts on a core tool of skepticism: how to see through information obfuscation....

Mothers are made, not born. Virtually all female mammals, from rats to monkeys to humans, undergo fundamental behavioral changes during pregnancy and motherhood. What was once a largely self-directed organism devoted to its own needs and survival becomes one focused on the care and well-being of its offspring. Although scientists have long observed and marveled at this transition, only now are they beginning to understand what causes it. New research indicates that the dramatic hormonal fluctuations that occur during pregnancy, birth and lactation may remodel the female brain, increasing the size of neurons in some regions and producing structural changes in others....

Demand for oil in developed nations peaked in 2005, and changing demographics and improved motor-vehicle efficiency guarantee that it won’t hit those heights again, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates says in a new report. Reduced petroleum demand in developed nations could make their economic growth less vulnerable to oil price shocks, the report states. Nonetheless, global oil demand is still expected to grow, overall, driven by China and other developing nations as the world economy recovers....

As the George W. Bush administration was drawing to a close, Scott Rayder faced a tough choice. Should he push to fund a new national climate service? Or should he direct those funds instead toward a set of sensitive scientific instruments for the government’s new polar-orbiting satellite system? At the time, Rayder was chief of staff at NOAA, where the concept of a national climate service had gained traction under NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher....

Some of us age more gracefully than others, but perhaps no animal group does it better than the tiny freshwater polyps known as hydras. In 1998 one biologist ventured that the tentacled creatures, by continually renewing their own cells, may stave off aging altogether to achieve a kind of biological immortality. More recently, the species Hydra magnipapillata was one of a few dozen organisms included in a study of aging diversity....

Representative Deb Haaland, who is expected to be sworn in as President Biden’s new secretary of the interior next week, already faces a pressing deadline. Under the wide-ranging executive order on climate change that Biden signed during his first full week in office, the interior secretary has until the end of April to recommend steps that the United States should take “to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030....

Subject 046M, two years old, was seated nervously across from me at the table, his hands clasped tightly together in his lap. He appeared to have caught an incurable case of the squirms. I resisted the urge to laugh and leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. “Today we’re going to play a game with Mr. Moo.” I produced an inviting plush cow from behind my back. “Can you say hi to Mr. Moo?...

After looking into the research around gifting (and there’s plenty of it), the reasons that cooler was such a home run are clear. Want to become that good a giver? Follow these three evidence-based rules for giving good presents—just in time for the holidays! #1 Simple and practical is good. A 2009 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that although givers tend to think a fancier, expensive gift will be appreciated more, receivers are actually happier with cheaper, more practical presents....

Rachel Carson’s classic best seller about ecological threats, Silent Spring, started a wave of American environmentalism. It played a direct role in the 1972 decision by the newly formed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban use of the pesticide DDT. Ernest Gruening, one of the first two U.S. senators from Alaska, said Carson’s writings had “altered the course of history.” It will be 60 years ago this June that the public was introduced to Carson’s arguments, as her book chapters were serialized in the New Yorker magazine....

For more than a decade researchers have been trying to supercharge human defense systems against cancer with the help of a vaccine. These injections are not designed to prevent cancer from starting. Instead they provide patients’ immune system with intel on what the enemy—cancer cells—looks like. Ordinarily, cancerous cells do not look different enough from normal cells to trigger an immune system response, but we have figured out ways to highlight and target some of the proteins that are unique to these malignancies....

Adouble layer of fat marks the property line that separates DNA, mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum and the rest of the elaborate internal machinery from everything that exists beyond the confines of a cell. Molecules of protein that poke through this lipid bilayer serve as communication channels for incoming and outgoing messages that regulate the body’s most basic activities. Biologists have tried for decades to produce a simple model of the cell’s plasma membrane, particularly the openings to the outside world known as ion channels....

NASA’s InSight lander has detected the first known “marsquake.” The spacecraft picked up the faint trembling of Mars’s surface on April 6, 128 days after landing on the planet last November. The quake is the first to be detected on a planetary body other than Earth or moon. The shaking was relatively weak, the French space agency CNES said on April 23. The seismic energy it produced was similar to that of the moonquakes that Apollo astronauts measured in the late 1960s and early 1970s....

Paul J. Ponganis and Gerald L. Kooyman of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at Scripps Institution of Oceanography provide the following answer. Image: COURTESY OF SCOTT HILL/ NOAA/NMMLA SPERM WHALE can dive down more than 2,000 meters and can stay submerged for up to an hour. Some sea creatures exploit great depths. The biggest physiological challenges in adapting to pressure are probably faced by those animals that must routinely travel from the surface to great depth....

I’ve had the same best friend since the first grade, although we haven’t lived in the same state since the Clinton administration, and we almost never call when we say we will. Without the obvious trappings of a good friendship, such as face time and basic thoughtfulness, how can we possibly feel so close? As I learned from talking to experts, those conventional friendly actions have much less to do with how satisfying a friendship is than with what you give each other on a more nuanced, psychological level....

The space agency will award an estimated $44 million to six U.S. companies to help along 10 “tipping point technologies” that could spur further exploration of the final frontier, NASA officials announced Wednesday (Aug. 8). “These awards focus on technology collaborations with the commercial space sector that leverage emerging markets and capabilities to meet NASA’s exploration goals,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. [Incredible Technology for Space Exploration]...

The moon will take the smallest of dips through the Earth’s shadow in a minor eclipse tonight (May 24) and you can watch the lunar event live online via a webcast. The lackluster lunar eclipse will star in a free webcast by the Slooh Space Camera, which offers live views of the night sky via remotely operated telescopes. The eclipse webcast will begin at 11:37 p.m. EDT (0337 May 25 GMT)....