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POLICY LEADER OF THE YEAR Fred Kavli Founder, Kavli Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif. This technology entrepreneur and philanthropist has dedicated millions to help inspire revolutions in astrophysics, nanoscience and brain research Fred Kavli has always followed the road less traveled. The Norwegian engineer came to the U.S. in 1956, shortly after earning a degree in engineering physics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology. Two years later he launched his own company, Kavlico Corporation, which, on the basis of his designs, patents and leadership, grew into one of the world’s largest manufacturers of sensors for the aeronautics and automotive industries....

With the market for hybrid automobiles picking up steam, it makes sense for tomorrow’s engineers to get a feel for designing and building cars powered by a combination of internal combustion and electricity. Hybrid technology is far from an exact science, however, as student engineers found out last week at the Formula Hybrid International competition held at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, N.H. Dartmouth College’s fifth-annual Formula Hybrid competition called on student teams to conceive, design, fabricate, develop and drive formula-style hybrid-powered cars—weighing 180 kilograms to 270 kilograms—in a series of exercises testing their hot rods’ acceleration, maneuverability and endurance....

Debate over the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus emerged from a laboratory has escalated over the past few weeks, coinciding with the annual World Health Assembly, at which the World Health Organization (WHO) and officials from nearly 200 countries discussed the COVID-19 pandemic. After last year’s assembly, the WHO agreed to sponsor the first phase of an investigation into the pandemic’s origins, which took place in China in early 2021. Most scientists say SARS-CoV-2 probably has a natural origin, and was transmitted from an animal to humans....

On a Friday morning this past February champion sprinter Mike Rodgers got strapped into a safety harness suspended from the ceiling above a custom-built treadmill. “No one’s ever fallen, but you can be the first,” he was told. Rodgers smirked and steeled himself to run. He was training for the Olympic trials. But that day he was not completing one of his standard, punishing drills on the track or in the weight room at his gym....

In the wake of the historic detection of gravitational waves by a terrestrial US experiment, a space-borne European effort is drawing interest from a range of parties. But although advisers to the European Space Agency (ESA) recommended increasing international contributions to the billion-euro gravitational-wave detector on April 12, regulatory hurdles may hinder proposed partnerships with the United States and China. In February, researchers working on the US-based Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)announced that they had detected ripples in space-time that had been produced by the merger of two black holes....

Kirby Stafford, Connecticut’s state entomologist, knows only one surefire way to reduce tick populations enough to cut Lyme disease rates: killing deer. Otherwise, he says, “very little by itself really reduces tick numbers enough.” But in some Connecticut neighborhoods Stafford has been testing a new strategy, one he hopes might show real promise after years of stymied efforts to drive new Lyme infections down: a vaccine for mice. Roughly half of ticks carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, pick it up by biting infected white-footed mice....

Home to more than 60 species of venomous snakes, India bears the world’s largest burden of death and disability caused by snakebites. The gold-standard treatment is an antivenom raised against the combined venom of four widespread species that are responsible for most attacks, collectively referred to as the “big four.” Although this critical treatment routinely saves lives, a new study published in early December in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases shows that it comes up short against the venoms of other Indian snakes whose bites can be deadly....

LONDON – The seas around Britain are starting to teem with fish species once deemed exotic as climate change raises water temperatures, forcing the former dominant occupants to flee northward toward the Arctic and opening the way for those from the hotter south, according to marine and fisheries scientists. Such is the extent of the migration already observed, which is expected to grow in coming decades and could even force a change in the country’s fish menus....

Most people spend a major chunk of their waking hours at work, where often the boss looms large. Just how influential the boss is on an employee’s self-image might depend on culture, a study in the February 16 PLoS ONE reports. Teams of researchers in California and China showed a rapid series of photographs to student volunteers, sometimes asking them to press a button when they saw themselves and other times to press it when they saw their boss....

An unfair situation is enough to get anyone’s hackles up. But is our aversion to inequity innate or the product of our social mores? A new study published in Nature suggests that biology does play a role: the brain’s reward centers respond more strongly to situations in which people are treated equally as opposed to unfairly, even when fairness comes at a personal cost. Researchers gave pairs of young men $30 each and then randomly picked one of them to receive a $50 bonus....

A most-wanted list of toxic substances—including PCBs, dioxins, mercury, lead and pesticide—has lingered in western New York State’s Eighteen Mile Creek for decades, leaving its salmon, trout and other fish unsafe to eat and jeopardizing its wildlife. Now the nation’s sour economy has complicated and delayed the already daunting cleanup of the Lake Ontario tributary, as well as several dozen other toxic hot spots around the Great Lakes. “Given the fiscal situation in the State of New York, it’s really up in the air if the cleanup will get done,” said Victor DiGiacomo, Jr....

The most powerful machines are also the most destructive, a rule that applies even in the confines of the body’s cells. Mitochondria, the cell’s energy powerhouses, can fuel the development of many chronic and poorly understood conditions, including cancer, heart disease, and neuro­de­generative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The disease process starts when environmental factors such as polluted drink­ing water or cigarette smoke perturb mitochondria, causing cellular levels of high-energy molecules called reactive oxygen species to spike....

A 10-year-old boy, Orlando Serrell, knocked unconscious one day by a baseball, discovered afterward that he could bring to mind the exact day of the week for any date after the accident and could remember the weather for each day since the trauma as well. He could also recall the most minute daily events. Jason Padgett, the victim of a brutal mugging in 2002 that left him with a severe concussion, soon afterward began to see what he describes simply as “images....

The dream of intelligent, mobile robots that assist people during their day-to-day activities in homes, offices and nursing facilities is a compelling one. Although a favorite subject of science-fiction writers and robotics researchers, the goal seems always to lie well off in the future, however. Engineers have yet to solve fundamental problems involving robotic perception and world modeling, automated reasoning, manipulation of objects and locomotion. Researchers have produced robots that, while falling far short of the ideal, can do some remarkable things....

Efforts to develop blood substitutes that could be used to treat soldiers or trauma victims in remote settings have held great promise as a way to infuse oxygen-carrying liquids into patients, thereby saving their lives when real or safe blood is in short supply. Biotech companies have even come up with long shelf life replacements that would work for all blood types without the need for refrigeration. The companies developing these hemoglobin-based blood substitutes, however, are now fighting for their own lives—enduring failures and financial hardships in order to stay in business long enough to see their creations come to market....

LONDON (Reuters) - Several expensive cancer medicines will no longer be available on Britain’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) following an overhaul of an over-budget drug funding scheme, NHS England said on Monday. The revamp was triggered by the escalating cost of supplying modern cancer therapies, which often cost tens of thousands of pounds for a course of treatment. Drug companies have been in urgent talks with the health service about the cuts....

Disney likes to remind visitors that its theme parks are where “dreams come true.” But events there this past December sparked a serious wake-up call. Lurking among the fantastical floats and rides of Disneyland was the measles virus, which ultimately infected 111 visitors. To prevent such infections in the future, California State Sen. Richard Pan (D), a pediatrician, has proposed a bill that would eliminate vaccine exemptions based on personal beliefs....

Dave Johnson refuses to eat fish farmed near Minneapolis. The retired construction worker, who lives in a rural area 150 miles north of the Twin Cities, claims “tourists’ garbage, salt runoff and fertilizer” make the metropolitan area’s farmed fish inedible. But for Johnson, the “divide between city people and rural people” is about much more than fish: it’s about how individuals relate—or don’t relate—to the environment. “People in cities are busy living in the fast lane, while rural communities are really attuned to what’s going on in nature,” explains Johnson, who says he voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and links the country’s bitter urban-rural divide to bad policy making: “A lot of the politicians at the state capital pass laws because there’s peer pressure,” he says....

After sending robots to the Moon, landing them on Mars and building its own space station, China is now eyeing distant solar systems. This month, scientists will release detailed plans for the country’s first mission to discover exoplanets. The mission will aim to survey planets outside the Solar System in other parts of the Milky Way, with the goal of finding the first Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star just like the Sun....

A recent study by German researchers presents the possibility of “carbon farming” as a less risky alternative to other carbon capture and storage technologies. It suggests that a significant percentage of atmospheric CO2 could potentially be removed by planting millions of acres of a hardy little shrub known as Jatropha curcas, or the Barbados nut, in dry, coastal areas. But other experts raised doubts about the study’s ambitious projections, questioning whether the Barbados nut would be able to grow well in sandy desert soils and absorb the quantity of carbon their models predict....