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On 18 February next year, a NASA spacecraft will plummet through the Martian atmosphere, fire its retro-rockets to break its fall and then lower a six-wheeled rover named Perseverance to the surface. If all goes according to plan, the mission will land in Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometre-wide gash near the planet’s equator that might once have held a lake of liquid water. Among the throngs of earthlings cheering on Perseverance, John Sutherland will be paying particularly close attention....

By the time we’re in our 30s, most of us have already reached our peak in terms of lean muscle mass. From that point on, most of us are gradually losing muscle. It’s not obvious at first, but by the time you’re in your 60s or 70s, the difference in body composition is really dramatic. At that age, you usually see a lot less firm muscle tone and a lot more soft flesh and loose skin....

The Indian monsoon, a seasonal event that brings key moisture to an agricultural region where about 20 percent of the world’s population resides, is getting more extreme, researchers report. A new study released yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change found that extreme wet and dry spells within the monsoon period have increased since 1980. “In the most fundamental sense, we are identifying climate change,” said study co-author Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University researcher and fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment....

Each year, millions of people visit the Louvre in Paris to gaze upon arguably the most iconic work of art in history: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Most visitors are drawn to the painting’s aura of mystery. But some behold a deeper beauty there, too—the Mona Lisa’s hazy landscape and beguiling expression alike arise from Leonardo’s use of sfumato, a complex technique in which soft outlines emerge from many delicate layers of paint, like figures from a fog....

By now the world is aware that the oceans are dying a silent death because of coastal development, pollution, overfishing and climate change. Scientists know how to halt or reverse the chronic threats, but in the political arena they have faced defeat after defeat in trying to implement management that actually works. We need a radical shift away from the piecemeal regulation of small areas that has resulted. We need comprehensive zoning of the world’s oceans....

Twenty-five years ago this month, a conjecture shook the world of theoretical physics. It had the aura of revelation. “At first, we had a magical statement … almost out of nowhere,” says Mark Van Raamsdonk, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. The idea, put forth by Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., hinted at something profound: that our universe could be a hologram....

“Drunken” trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes—all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains—a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. Now new research published in Nature Geoscience shows that such frozen Arctic soil holds nearly twice as much of the organic material that gives rise to planet-warming greenhouse gases as previously estimated....

From Nature News From April 2013, science papers must be made free to access within six months of publication if they come from work paid for by one of the United Kingdom’s seven government-funded grant agencies, the research councils, which together spend about £2.8 billion (US$4.4 billion) each year on research. The policy, announced this morning by the agencies’ umbrella body Research Councils UK (RCUK), makes clear that researchers should shun science journals that don’t allow authors to follow this mandate....

Plants rule the planet—at least in terms of sheer mass. Many tallies of Earth’s life use biodiversity as a measurement and simply count the number of species. A new census, based on biomass, compiled data from hundreds of studies to determine which kingdoms, classes and species carry the most global heft. The results show that plants (primarily those on land) account for 80 percent of the total biomass, with bacteria across all ecosystems a distant second at 15 percent....

Without algorithms that compress data to encode information into fewer bits, hard drives would clog up and Internet traffic would slow to a snail’s pace. Now, a group of physicists in Canada has shown for the first time that it is possible to compress the kind of data that might be used in the computers of tomorrow — known as quantum bits, or qubits. Quantum computers promise to perform certain tasks, such as cracking encryption keys or searching databases, exponentially faster than conventional computers can....

Remarkable Brains: The Superhuman Mind: Free the Genius in Your Brain by Berit Brogaard and Kristian Marlow Hudson Street Press, 2015 ($25.95) Ask about the color of a painful toothache or the sound of a delicious lamb shank, and most people will respond with confusion. But artist Carol Steen would say that pain is orange, and researcher Lidell Simpson might tell you that all the noise in the restaurant makes it difficult to hear the flavor of the food....

If a farmer can grow it, a brown marmorated stinkbug can destroy it. This invasive scourge has ravaged apples, peaches, tomatoes and more than 100 other crops across North America. Once farmers notice an infestation, they are nearly powerless to halt it. But there is hope: Borrowing techniques from aquatic science, researchers have discovered a genetic beacon that could raise the alarm in the earliest stages of an invasion—when there is still time to act....

Martin never learned to ride a bike, could not play football with his friends and wore a crash helmet when playing in the garden, just in case he bumped his head. His parents had good reason to be protective: his severe haemophilia B meant that the gentlest touch could lead to a serious, debilitating bleed. “It’s very frustrating, growing up with haemophilia,” says Martin. “You want to be like the other kids, but you can’t....

As Ukraine braces for the possibility of an imminent invasion by Russia, several Ukrainian scientists have told Nature that they and their colleagues are taking measures to protect themselves and their work, including gathering items for self-defence and preparing to flee. The escalating tensions come eight years after a revolution that pushed Ukraine to cut ties with Russia—including those related to research—and forge closer links with the European Union. Researchers fear that fresh conflict will plunge Ukraine into turmoil and halt the progress that it has since made in science....

When you do not know the answer to a question, say, a crossword puzzle hint, you realize your shortcomings and devise a strategy for finding the missing information. The ability to identify the state of your knowledge—thinking about thinking—is known as metacognition. It is hard to tell whether other animals are also capable of metacognition because we cannot ask them; studies of primates and birds have not yet been able to rule out simpler explanations for this complex process....

Self-control goes by many aliases: willpower, discipline, restraint. It’s even that Frank Ocean song. No matter the name, it has huge influence over our health and our success. Self-control helps determine whether we study or party, save or spend, keep or lose our temper, or focus on work or get pulled into the black hole of procrastination. Lack of self-control is even a symptom of a host of challenges, including depression, OCD, ADHD, and specific impulse-control disorders like hairpulling or compulsive shoplifting....

The world’s biggest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, will come on line in a few months. Even so, for the next few years it may have a hard time upstaging the Tevatron collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill., which appears to have generated “single” top quarks. The finding, reported last December, helps to narrow the search for the long sought after Higgs particle and raises the possibility that Fermilab will find it before the LHC does....

The Defense Department’s pursuit of carbon-free power has led to solar generation at Sun Belt bases from Florida to California, and geothermal systems at installations with suitable geologies. But what of Alaska? Deep winter there brings less than four hours of direct sun daily, and thawing permafrost—itself driven by climate change—threatens the very existence of some bases. Eielson Air Force Base may have a solution: micro-scale nuclear energy. Last month, the Air Force issued a request for proposals to construct a 2....

Until very recently, whenever we thought of microbes — especially around babies — we considered them only as potential threats and were concerned with getting rid of them, and it is no surprise why. In the past century, most human communities have experienced the benefits of medical advances that have reduced the number and the degree of infections we suffer throughout life. These advances include antibiotics, antivirals, vaccinations, chlorinated water, pasteurization, sterilization, pathogen–free food, and even good old-fashioned hand washing....

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – In a shallow arm of the bay, where Pacific tides cause hardly a ripple, hundreds of harbor seals lounge, mate and bear young. With placid expressions on bewhiskered faces and bulky bodies reclining on shorelines, the seals belie a disturbing burden they carry. Living on the edge of a metropolitan hub, these seals are under scrutiny by scientists. There’s a mystery afoot in San Francisco Bay: A manmade chemical, pulled from production 12 years ago, is still turning up at high levels in the seals....