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Governments around the world are gearing up to use an old regulatory tool for a new purpose: protecting the economy from climate change. Financial regulators for years have used “stress tests” to gauge whether major banks are prepared to stay afloat amid extreme, unanticipated—yet entirely plausible—economic shocks. They were widely implemented in the United States and abroad following the 2007-08 global financial crisis to help prevent systemwide catastrophes down the line....

The original farmer probably did not have an outsized impact on the world. Scattering some seeds, guarding them and perhaps clearing a few other species of plants, this proto-agrarian would have been the first to harness the power of photosynthesis for humanity’s benefit. Now, thousands of years later, modern agrarians—along with engineers, foresters and consumers—directly control 23.8 percent of all the world’s photosynthesis, according to a new analysis. Using Food and Agriculture Organization statistics through the year 2000 on areas farmed, crops harvested and animals grazed—as well as models of the photosynthetic production of vegetation worldwide and global data on forested areas—ecologist Helmut Haberl of Klagenfurt University in Austria and his colleagues calculated the difference between the energy produced by plants in the absence of humans and the actual amount of photosynthetic energy available to ecosystems after humans have taken their share....

Elementary, middle and high schools in the U.S. are opening this month, allowing students to fully attend in person as the country struggles to get back to normal. But open schools have put many parents in an agonizing position. Pediatric hospitalizations for COVID have reached all-time highs in some regions, several governors have banned public school mask mandates, and no vaccines are yet available for children under age 12. And all eyes are on how the march of the Delta variant across the country might affect child safety and disrupt back-to-school plans....

JANUARY 8 Most Holocaust survivors spend their lives trying to forget the horrors of the era, but neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, who fled Austria in 1939 to escape the Nazis, went on to investigate how we remember. His groundbreaking research led to a new understanding of how memories are formed, eventually winning Kandel the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work. Now German filmmaker Petra Seeger has profiled Kandel’s life in an eloquent film called In Search of Memory....

Fish sex might not seem very consequential, but countless couplings over the course of millennia can leave a mark on the landscape. In a recent study, researchers modeled how spawning affects rivers in the Pacific Northwest and concluded that salmon sex actually helped to carve the region’s mountainsides. Salmon return from the sea to the rivers and streams of their birth to reproduce. Once a female finds a spot with the right size rocks or gravel, she digs a pit for her eggs....

In our powerful cover story this month, sociologist Aldon Morris explains how social justice movements succeed. When the Civil Rights Movement began, some social scientists were dismissive of activists and described protests as unthinking mobs. Morris and his colleagues conducted immersive interviews with leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and similar struggles against injustice around the world and found that meticulous planning, cultural resources, discipline and creativity powered the movements, along with emotions ranging from righteous indignation to empathy and love....

Sebastian Tobler’s doctors thought his legs would never move again after a mountain-biking accident completely paralyzed them. When he signed up for a study at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland, Tobler’s injury was so severe that the researchers had doubts their experimental treatment would work. “I was like, should we enroll this participant? It’s very rare to see a spinal cord that was this silent,” says Grégoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, referring to an almost undetectable level of electrical activity in Tobler’s lower spine....

Despite our (usually modest) efforts to protect our personal information, thieves and hackers are constantly accessing our records. These data breaches have soared since 2005. Although crooks still account for most invasions, many of the largest breaches are now made by “hacktivists”—individuals or groups who are angry about a company or organization’s actions and expose its records as a way to protest or to strike back. Despite recent media coverage of electronic espionage, however, snatching a laptop and even dumpster diving are still on the list of ways that snoops get your data....

Editor’s note: The following is an edited excerpt from a chapter in Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (The Cooking Lab, 2011), a six-volume set consisting of 2,348 pages of text and photography. Scientific research on foodborne pathogens provides the foundation for all food safety rules. Generally speaking, two kinds of research inform us about issues of food safety. The first is laboratory experimentation: for example, testing how much heat will kill a pathogen or render it harmless....

If evolution is about survival of the fittest, how did humans ever become moral creatures? If evolution is each individual maximizing their own fitness, how did humans come to feel that they really ought to help others and be fair to them? There have traditionally been two answers to such questions. First, it makes sense for individuals to help their kin, with whom they share genes, a process known as inclusive fitness....

All around the world, ecosystems are silently breathing. Plants take in carbon dioxide to use for photosynthesis. At the same time, as they grow and burn energy, they release carbon dioxide back into the air in a process known as respiration. It happens in rainforests, grasslands, tundras and deserts—anywhere vegetation can be found. For now, on average, the world’s land-based ecosystems are storing more carbon than they’re releasing. In fact, scientists estimate that they soak up at least a third of all the carbon emissions humans produce by burning fossil fuels....

Medicaid, the publicly funded insurance program for low-income and disabled individuals covers 43.1 percent of all births in the U.S. Unfortunately, vital pregnancy-related coverage ends just 60 days after giving birth for most people on Medicaid. Black and Latinx women, as well as other birthing people of color, make up a disproportionate share of Medicaid enrollees. Research has shown that closing gaps in coverage could improve lactation and human milk feeding support, assist with family transitions and the physical and emotional recovery of birthing people....

The Web is awash with “free” content—but of course we pay a price to view it: We have to negotiate a virtual minefield of ads, perhaps hundreds of them every day. These auto-play videos, rollovers and pop-ups can be a major nuisance, making content a challenge to read and discouraging some people from even trying. Ad-blocking software has for years offered a respite, but not without collateral damage to companies placing ads no one sees....

We already know eating your greens is vital for good health, but immersing yourself in green space might be just as important. Whether it’s a remote mountaintop or an urban oasis, green space is emerging as a powerful force for good mental health. Exposure to green space can help alleviate depression, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and more. One particularly astounding study found that green space is nothing less than a superhero: it actually fights crime....

Taking action to protect our planet can seem like a daunting or even futile task. Scientists have to navigate a complicated ecosystem with many interwoven variables in order to link an effect (like increased droughts or unusually intense storms, for example) with a cause. Politicians spanning many countries and cultural differences then have to come up with a plan, and entire industries have to agree to invest in that plan. As we ring in the new year of 2017, let’s look at one of my favorite science stories from 2016: a story that tells us that all of that is possible....

A planetary stethoscope will soon be on its way to listen to the heartbeat of Mars. On 5 May, NASA plans to launch its US$994-million InSight spacecraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The mission’s main job will be to place a seismometer on the Martian surface and listen to seismic waves pinging around the planet’s interior. If the effort succeeds, it will mark the first unequivocal detection of tremors known as marsquakes—and explain long-standing mysteries about the planet’s inner structure and how it evolved....

Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Only about 5% of the universe consists of ordinary matter such as protons and electrons, with the rest being filled with mysterious substances known as dark matter and dark energy. So far, scientists have failed to detect these elusive materials, despite spending decades searching for them. But now, two new studies may be able to turn things around as they have narrowed down the search significantly....

Although any T. Rex–enthralled kid will tell you that a gigantic asteroid wiped the dinosaurs off the planet, scientists have always regarded this impact theory as a hypothesis subject to revision based on further evidence gathered from around the globe. Other possible causes, such as volcanism and smaller, multiple asteroid strikes, never actually went away, and over the years researchers raised important points that did not fully jibe with a history-changing celestial impact near the Yucatan peninsula one awful day some 65....

Where is the universe expanding to? —A. KENNY, CANISBAY, SCOTLAND Astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center offers this explanation: The evolution of the universe is described by the physics of general relativity discovered by Albert Einstein during the early 20th century. In general relativity, space and time are merged into one continuum and the universe can be represented as a four-dimensional spacetime grid. When viewed from this perspective, the universe’s expansion does not push it into new territory—rather the spacetime grid itself is expanding....

From Nature magazine Rather than kicking off the expected cycles of extinction, periods of warming in Earth’s history were accompanied by increased biodiversity, according to a report published this week. But this does not mean that the mass extinctions that are taking place today, with Earth warming at an unprecedented rate, will be reversed in future. Researchers examined the number of known families of marine invertebrates, as well as sea-surface temperatures, over the course of 540 million years of Earth’s history1....