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The biggest debate among experts on the Anthropocene is when, exactly, a geologic epoch marked by humanity’s influence began. As an astrobiologist who studies major historical transitions in planetary evolution, I am more interested in another question: When, and how, will the Anthropocene end? Epochs are relatively short periods of geologic time. Much more consequential are the boundaries separating the geologic timescale’s longest phases, the billion-year-scale chunks of history called eons....

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s Health Ministry will set up a national network within five years to provide a way of monitoring the long-term impact of chronic air pollution on human health, state media said on Monday.The network will gather data on PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers, in different locations around the country, the report said, citing a ministry statement.“The document noted that the absence of a long-term, systematic monitoring system has prevented the country from uncovering the link between air pollution and human health,” the report said....

Lower-income residents and people of color are more likely to live in the hottest neighborhoods in cities across the country, putting them at greater risk of heat-related illnesses and death. A trio of studies presented yesterday at the American Geophysical Union’s annual fall meeting underscored that sobering point. “Disparities in urban heat exposure as a direct result of urban planning and design, environmental racism, and the policies such as redlining … do in fact exist,” said Angel Hsu, an environmental policy expert at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and lead author of one of the studies....

MALWARE, THE MENAGERIE of malicious software that includes Trojan horses and worms, first made its appearance in the early 1970s, before personal computers had entered the public consciousness. A self-replicating program called Creeper infected the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. This virus was not malicious—it simply printed on a screen, “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!”—but it triggered the first antivirus program, Reaper, which removed it. Viruses went public in a big way with the proliferation of the personal computer during the 1980s....

Key concepts Physics Energy Collisions Introduction How many ball sports can you name? How many of those have several balls at once in the game? Almost none, right? Games that do use several balls at a time most likely use balls of the same mass, volume and material. Would having two balls of different masses make a game very difficult? In this activity you will explore what might happen if you were to add a tennis ball to a basketball game or a tiny ping-pong ball to a tennis game or any other combination....

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Every artist was first an amateur.” He likely never thought those words would apply to machines. Yet artificial intelligence has demonstrated a growing aptitude for creativity, whether writing a heavy-metal rock album or producing an original portrait that is strikingly reminiscent of a Rembrandt. Applying AI to the art world might seem unnecessarily derivative; there are, of course, plenty of humans delivering awe-inspiring work....

Gerry suddenly clutched at his chest. His heart was racing, and he could barely breathe. Ten minutes after the call to 911, he was on his way to the nearest emergency room in an ambulance. There an electrocardiogram and blood tests provided the big shock: Gerry hadn’t suffered a heart attack at all. The hospital doctor reassured him: “Physically, you are fine. Your problems are psychological in origin.” Gerry’s experience is not unusual....

We all have our soft spots—the tender underbellies of our psyche. But to the hypersensitive among us, a gentle poke can feel more like a thwack from a meat tenderizer. Comments don’t slide off of us like water from a duck’s back. Instead, we feel more like a sitting duck. Why we’d want to toughen up seems obvious: criticism hurts more when we’re sensitive or take things personally. But aside from protecting ourselves from pain, not taking things personally pays off in other ways as well....

Psychologists have lots of evidence that implicit social biases—our automatic, knee-jerk attitudes associated with specific races, sexes and other categories—are widespread, and many assumed they do not evolve. The feelings are just too deep. But a recent study finds that over roughly the past decade, both implicit and explicit, or conscious, attitudes toward several social groups have grown warmer. The study used data from a standard test of implicit attitudes collected via a Web site called Project Implicit....

ANTARCTICA A yellow-brown mineral called jarosite—rare on Earth but abundant on Mars—has been identified deep in an Antarctic ice core. This discovery suggests the brittle substance forms from dust accumulating and reacting inside massive ice deposits. BRAZIL Scientists recorded groups of more than 100 electric eels working together to circle shoals of small prey fish and herd them to shallow waters in a lake in North Brazil. Once the fish were corralled, up to 10 eels would move in and unleash a synchronized shock....

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Do sugar-sweetened beverages like soda and fruit drinks cause obesity and diabetes? The answer may depend on who funds the research asking the question. An analysis of 60 studies found 26 out of 26 papers that failed to find a link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity or diabetes were funded by industry sources, compared to one industry-funded study out of the 34 that did find a connection....

Editor’s Note: This store is part of our feature “Living With Cancer: Lessons and Advice from Kris Carr” which was originally printed in the Special Report “New Answers for Cancer” from Scientific American. Rather than surrendering to despair and impersonal medical treatments, growing numbers of cancer patients are empowering themselves with information and control over their therapies. The trend is finding acceptance in mainstream medicine and helping people with cancer lead healthier lives....

Key Concepts Chemistry Temperature Crystallization Calibration Introduction Bakers (and those who help bakers!) know that at some point in every baking recipe the instructions will tell you to preheat your oven to a certain temperature. But if you’ve ever tried to bake cookies and they come out flat or take too long, it’s possible that your oven is to blame. You might set your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit but how do you know that the inside of your oven actually reaches that temperature?...

Joe Leader’s heart sank as he descended into the South Ferry subway station at the southern tip of Manhattan in New York. It was 8 p.m. on 29 October, and Hurricane Sandy had just made landfall some 150 kilometers south in New Jersey. As chief maintenance officer for the New York City subway system, Leader was out on patrol. He had hoped that the South Ferry station would be a refuge from the storm....

Many people assume that an addict’s substance abuse is responsible for the damage done to his or her brain. New research shows that some of that “damage” may have been there to begin with. Chronic drug users have fewer dopamine D2 receptors than nonusers in the reward pathways of their brain, which often makes them less sensitive to natural pleasures such as food and attractive mates. Scientists believe this receptor deficit may reinforce addiction by causing users to seek from drugs what they are unable to get naturally—the “high” caused by a surge of dopamine....

Earthlings have big plans for Mars. Next year NASA will launch Mars 2020—its most ambitious rover yet—to prepare for a future effort to robotically return samples of Martian rock to Earth to seek signs of past or present life. The agency also plans to send astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s, and new heavy-lift rockets being developed by SpaceX could conceivably land humans on the Red Planet even sooner. Meanwhile the meteoric rise of small, low-cost interplanetary CubeSats—the first of which flew by Mars late last year—suggests large numbers of more modest missions to Mars could soon be in the offing....

On January 13, 2008, an unvaccinated seven-year-old boy returned home to San Diego from a family vacation in Switzerland. He and his family were unaware at the time that he had been infected with measles during their trip. He became sick within a week of arriving home, and only received a diagnosis of measles the following week. Public health officials scrambled to assess the situation and ultimately determined that, by unintentionally importing the virus causing measles, he had exposed 839 people in the San Diego area to it, of whom 11 also developed the disease, including a hospitalized infant who was too young to be vaccinated....

While taking a walk on a lunch break from fieldwork in Alberta, Canada, paleontologist Michael Ryan came across a couple of bones. In one hand he gripped an antler from a modern mule deer. In the other he held a piece of an ornithischian dinosaur bone. Ryan couldn’t help but notice that both bones bore highly similar bite marks. And that’s when it hit him. “These bite marks were almost identical, but the bones were separated by 75 million years,” Ryan says....

Key concepts Physics Heat Molecules Forces Introduction Have you ever noticed that some objects tend to expand when they get hot and contract when they cool down? For example, you might run hot water over the lid of a jar that’s stuck—this causes the lid to expand, making it easier to twist off. Does this effect work the same way for all materials? Try this fun activity to find out! Background Materials are made up of atoms and molecules....

TAIPEI/MANILA (Reuters) - The Taiwan military was collecting and distributing sandbags to guard against possible flooding on Tuesday as a typhoon bore down on the island after brushing the Philippines. Typhoon Matmo, a category-two cyclone on Tropical Storm Risk’s scale of one to five, was approaching from the southeast and was expected to strengthen until it hits on Tuesday night and moves on to China. “People everywhere should prepare for strong winds and rain,” weather forecaster Lin Chih-hui said....