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In the cells of fruit flies, Chinese scientists say that they have found a biological compass needle: a rod-shaped complex of proteins that can align with Earth’s weak magnetic field. The biocompass—whose constituent proteins exist in related forms in other species, including humans—could explain a long-standing puzzle: how animals such as birds and insects sense magnetism. It might also become an invaluable tool for using magnetic fields to control cells, report researchers led by biophysicist Xie Can at Peking University in Beijing, in a paper published on November 16 in Nature Materials (S....

Extreme heat and a wildfire in Oregon pushed California to the brink of switching off power to thousands of people over the weekend as climate-related disasters affect communities across the parched western United States. Flames from the Bootleg Fire in Oregon threatened an electricity inner tie that sends power to Northern California, eliminating about 5,500 megawatts of power bound for the Golden State. That’s equivalent to the generating capacity of about 10 large natural gas-fired power plants....

In early December, Jane Flegal was asked for her “optimal policy mix” to address climate change. Flegal was a program officer with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation at the time, a position from which she was able to steer money to many of America’s preeminent climate researchers, nonprofits and advocacy groups. On this day, she was sitting for an interview on a podcast hosted by Jason Bordoff, a Columbia University professor who served as a climate adviser to former President Obama....

One year ago NASA’s Perseverance rover plunged through the Martian atmosphere and safely landed in Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometer-wide gouge that scientists suspect once hosted a deep, long-lived lake. The rover’s ultimate target is near Jezero’s western edge: a large, fan-shaped pile of sediments that washed into the basin through a notch in the crater rim about 3.5 billion years ago. In other words, the target is a river delta—the exact type of environment that could preserve signs of ancient Martian life-forms....

Every 11.7 minutes in the U.S., a person takes his or her own life. That figure, the latest available, makes suicide the 10th leading cause of death in this country. Rates have been rising every year for the past dozen years. It’s nothing short of an epidemic. Yet those most well placed to stop this public health crisis are not equipped to do so: few doctors and less than half of U....

Today is a very special episode of the Math Dude. To begin with, it’s episode 300. And because we humans have 10 fingers, we love to give special meaning to multiples of 10. But while that’s fun, it’s not the big news of the day or what makes this episode special to me. The big news is that this 300th episode is my last. Between my day job as a physics and astronomy professor and my day-and-night job of being “Dad” to an awesome and bustling 3-year-old, my free time for Math Dude duties has dwindled....

If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on. Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics. “It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr....

Part of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, the Jardin des Plantes, on the left bank of the Seine River, hosts a collection of galleries and gardens. A couple of miles away, the larger museum also includes the Museum of Mankind, which is, in part, an exploration of what it means to be human. There, like in many other museums worldwide, you can view a collection of stone tools used by the earliest humans....

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. –Richard Feynman, California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate I violated Feynman’s first principle during a recent book tour. I traveled daily through congested airports, crowded jets and crammed bookstores amid sneezing, coughing, germ-infested multitudes. One day, while squeezed into the sardine section of coach, with the guy behind me obeying the command of the germs in his lungs to go forth and multiply, I cursed myself for having forgotten my Airborne tablets, an orange-flavored effervescent concoction of herbs, antioxidants, electrolytes and amino acids that fizzles into action in a glass of water....

Ambitious plans to protect millions of square kilometers of Antarctic seas have been sunk by a surprise legal objection from Russian diplomats. There was widespread hope that new reserves in the Ross Sea and in East Antarctica would be approved this week at an international meeting in Bremerhaven, Germany. The plans had the backing of scores of scientists, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments including the United States, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and would have safeguarded species including penguins, seals and fish (see: Bid to protect Antarctic waters gets second chance)....

By Matt Kaplan An analysis of how ants quickly find new routes in a changing maze reveals techniques that could be useful to systems engineers. The research, reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, shows that Argentine ants (Linepithema humile), do not just retrace their steps when presented with a barrier–as might be expected. Instead, the ants begin a localized search that seems to take into account the direction in which they were planning to go....

If mutations occur at random over a species’ entire genome, how can an organ as complex as an eye evolve? —V. Rautenbach, London University of Utah biology professor Jon Seger explains: Although it is highly unlikely that such an intricate and useful organ would arise spontaneously from random hereditary accidents, an eye can easily evolve through the same ongoing interaction between mutation and selection that drives the evolution of other adaptations....

Neutrino astronomy is poised for breakthroughs. Since 2010, the IceCube experiment in Antarctica—5,160 basketball-sized optical sensors spread through a cubic kilometre of ice—has detected a few score energetic neutrinos from deep space. Although these are exciting finds that raise many questions, this paltry number of extraterrestrial particles is too few to tell their origins or to test fundamental physics. To learn more will require a new generation of neutrino observatories. Neutrinos are subatomic particles that interact only weakly, so they can travel far through space and even penetrate Earth....

Instead, the “Green Cup” has become a flash point for social injustice. And while it’s proving environmentally unsustainable on several levels, the lasting legacy of the 2014 World Cup may ultimately be a shift in how future global sporting events are marketed and built. Since the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, most international sporting “mega-events” have tried to market themselves as environmentally sustainable. But various scholars and sustainability experts agree that none of these events – with their massive carbon footprints and huge infrastructure needs – have lived up to that claim in the long term....

If anyone thought scientists were somehow different from ordinary people—nobler, more ethical, more pure—then events over the past two years have been a sharp wake-up call. As with just about any area of human endeavor where men hold the lion’s share of power, the world of science and technology is plagued by sexual harassment. Women in STEM fields have long known this, of course. But just as in Hollywood, where the predatory behavior of producer Harvey Weinstein was long whispered about but never discussed openly, the phenomenon of professors and researchers hitting on undergrads, grad students, postdocs and colleagues has mostly been hushed up—not only by victims fearing retaliation but also by institutions determined to keep their good name untarnished and their superstars happy....

This story is a supplement to the feature “Digital Forensics: How Experts Uncover Doctored Images” which was printed in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American. Photography lost its innocence not long after it was born. As early as the 1860s photos were already being manipulated—only a few decades after Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created the first photograph in 1826. With the advent of high-resolution digital cameras, powerful personal computers and sophisticated photo-editing software, the manipulation of digital images has proliferated....

You wouldn’t expect Scientific American to take a particularly positive view of a movie that espouses intelligent design over evolutionary biology. Then again, you wouldn’t expect the producers of said film—in this case, Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—to offer the editors of said magazine a private screening. Associate producer Mark Mathis showed up at our offices with a preview of Expelled in hand. That’s right, the unexpected screening happened. The unexpected positive reviews did not....

Public health efforts depend heavily on predicting how diseases such as that caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus, now named COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, spread across the globe. During the early days of a new outbreak, when reliable data are still scarce, researchers turn to mathematical models that can predict where people who could be infected are going and how likely they are to bring the disease with them....

Imagine that you are booking a vacation cruise online, and you’re deciding between a modest ocean-view cabin and a luxurious suite with a private balcony. In the midst of this decision, your cell phone rings, and a friend on the other end of the line exclaims, “You’ll never believe what happened to me today!” You are intrigued, but before you can learn the answer, the call cuts out, and you are unable to reconnect....

Dear EarthTalk: A friend of mine told me that our government kills thousands of wild animals like bears and wolves every year in the name of protecting livestock. How can the government, which is supposed to protect dwindling numbers of animals, instead be killing them?—Amy Pratt, Troy, N.Y. Actually, the federal government kills some 100,000 carnivores every year under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Wildlife Services program. While the program does much more than so-called “predator control”—threatened and endangered species conservation, invasive species mitigation, wildlife disease monitoring, airport bird strike prevention, rabies and rodent control—killing bears, wolves, coyotes and mountain lions to protect livestock does take up $100 million of the federal budget each year....