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Every month, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. This month we focus on topics from our third annual “World Changing Ideas” feature, which captures innovative concepts with the potential to make big impacts. Key information from this month’s issue: • ENERGY Better battery technology is a challenge for the electric car industry....

The more astronomers learn about the clunkily-named Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the stranger it seems. The icy wanderer is currently hosting the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe, which entered the comet’s orbit roughly a year ago. Since then the spacecraft and its robotic lander Philae have revealed a trove of new insights about the comet—many of them contradictory. Now scientists analyzing the data are in a muddle, wondering how 67P ever acquired its bizarre combination of traits, in particular its seemingly incongruous chemical composition and shape....

General Motors Co. said yesterday it will pour more resources into electric vehicles, in the form of $8 billion and two new factories to build batteries. The news comes amid a busy week for electrification at GM. On Monday, the company announced new support for electric autonomous vehicles and said it would furnish batteries and fuel cells for electric trains. The new money demonstrates how America’s largest automaker is quickening its move toward EVs....

Murder, She Wrote Handwriting analysis may reveal dishonesty A new study adds “writing with large strokes and applying high pressure on paper” to the list of telltale signs that someone might be lying. Researchers at Haifa University in Israel could tell whether or not students were writing the truth by analyzing these physical properties of their handwriting. Lying requires more cognitive resources than being truthful, says lead author Gil Luria. “You need to invent a story, make sure not to contradict yourself, et cetera....

“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense that Energy is the fundamental concept in physics . . . The laws of social dynamics are laws which can only be stated in terms of power.” – Bertrand Russell Three-quarters of a century ago, Bertrand Russell asserted that power is the driving force behind much of social behavior. Consistent with Russell’s theoretical musings, there has been an explosion of empirical research in the past decade – in social psychology, sociology, economics, and political science – demonstrating that power governs the many important social relationships that make up our political, business and family lives....

As urgency grows around the need for stronger climate action, so does demand for a deeper understanding of how the planet is already changing—and what to expect in the coming decades. From the world’s melting ice sheets to its warming oceans, scientists are diligently investigating the finer details of the climate system and the consequences of global warming. Climate scientists have published study after groundbreaking study in the past year. They’ve investigated the ways climate change has influenced extreme weather events, including everything from Hurricane Florence to record-breaking heat in Europe....

New data seem to show that galaxies collide all the time. In fact, the oldest and largest galaxies in the universe most likely formed from such intergalactic combinations. Astronomer Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University used some of the longest and deepest sky surveys ever conducted to try to determine whether the oldest, largest galaxies–called ellipticals because they lack the swirling arms of the spiral type, like our own Milky Way–formed from the collapse of ancient clouds of gas or the accretion of smaller galaxies bumping into each other....

NASA will not launch its InSight spacecraft to Mars in March as originally planned, because of a leak in a French-built seismometer that is the spacecraft’s primary scientific instrument. Technicians at CNES, the French space agency, have worked for months to repair a leak in a vacuum seal on the seismometer. OnDecember 22, NASA announced that it would suspend the launch. The delay means that InSight will not go off in 2016, but will have to wait 26 months until the Earth-Mars orbital geometry is once again favourable for launching a mission to the red planet....

MINAMATA, Japan – Determination takes on a special meaning here. Despite twisted limbs, tremors and confinement to wheelchairs, people afflicted by the world’s most infamous mercury poisoning still struggle for justice. As a new international mercury treaty is launched, they hope that no one ever again will suffer as they have. Minamata’s rolling hills and striking beauty contrast with its brutal history. Chisso Corp. discharged methylmercury into Minamata Bay from 1932 to 1968, poisoning the city’s food supply....

Editor’s Note: Read our blog series on psychiatry’s new rulebook, the DSM-5. In February 1969 David L. Rosenhan showed up in the admissions office of a psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania. He complained of unfamiliar voices inside his head that repeated the words “empty,” “thud” and “hollow.” Otherwise, Rosenhan had nothing unusual to report. He was immediately admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Between 1969 and 1972 seven friends and students of Rosenhan, a psychology professor then at Swarthmore College, ended up in 11 other U....

It’s long been a sticking point between the public and science: a disaster befalls us unexpectedly, and we, of course, want answers immediately. But in the cruelest kind of irony, most science cannot be done in a rush. The beauty of the scientific method is its careful use of observation over time—tracking the migration patterns of birds for decades, for example. Or, when it comes to drug development, the gold-standard randomized controlled clinical trial, where an equal proportion of patients are given no treatment at all to serve as a baseline against which researchers can compare any effects of the drug being given to the other participants....

As a favor to friends in my academic department, I have frequently been a guinea pig in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. In most of these cases, I fight valiantly against slumber as the stimuli flash on the small screen in front of me and the hypnotic, high-pitched beeps of the scanner reverberate all around. This time, though, it was different. Martin Monti, a fellow neuroscientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England, was going to read my mind....

For hobbyists like Colette Theriault, a photographer who lives in Ontario, orchids are an addiction. Theriault bought her first Phalaenopsis in 1999 and nurtured it for three years before it bloomed its first pink flowers. The success led to more, until she had 25 orchids crowding her windowsills. In March she discovered yellow spots on the leaves of her collection—a telltale sign of a virus, like those plaguing the orchid industry....

As a time-honored way to make decisions in Japan, adults often resort to janken, a local version of the child’s game of rock, paper, scissors. Japanese scientists have developed a new twist on this tradition, a machine that can read minds and then form the “weapon” of choice on a mechanical hand–in effect, a mind-controlled robot. The joint project by Kyoto-based Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Institute International and Honda Research Institute Japan is a novel “brain-machine interface....

After two harrowing years of beating back Ebola in communities across west Africa the nightmare is finally, officially over, the World Health Organization declared today. Until now Liberia was the lone country waiting for the all-clear from WHO, and it now has reached the 42-day disease-free designated cutoff—twice the incubation period of the virus. Ebola halted daily life, ravaged families and derailed the economies of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone since its first known appearance in December 2013 in a remote area of southeastern Guinea....

As a nutrition professor, I am constantly asked why nutrition advice seems to change so much and why experts so often disagree. Whose information, people ask, can we trust? I’m tempted to say, “Mine, of course,” but I understand the problem. Yes, nutrition advice seems endlessly mired in scientific argument, the self-interest of food companies and compromises by government regulators. Nevertheless, basic dietary principles for our weight-conscious society are not in dispute: eat less; move more; eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and avoid too much junk food....

If NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover is still alive, we should hear from it relatively soon. The solar-powered Opportunity hasn’t made a peep since June 10, when a worsening dust storm plunged the rover’s environs—a spot on the rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 kilometers) Endeavour Crater called Perseverance Valley—into deep darkness. That storm grew to encircle the planet by June 20. But it started dying down in late July, and Opportunity’s handlers think a return to normal conditions is finally just around the corner....

How JLo can you go? (Credit: Fox Carolina screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET) Look around your living room. Go up to your bedroom. Scour your attic. There might be old movies there that aren’t technically yours. You might once have rented them from your local Blockbuster or equivalent and, as you and your Blockbuster aged, both of you forgot about it. I mention this only because of the experience of Kayla Michelle Finley....

Nineteen countries with major economies reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement over the weekend, highlighting U.S. isolation a month after President Trump pulled the United States out of the deal. In the official communiqué and a separate action plan adopted Saturday at the close of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, leaders made it clear that America stands alone in rejecting emissions commitments and in promoting fossil fuels as a remedy for energy poverty abroad....

The Zika virus attacks cells in mouse testes crucial for sperm and sex hormone generation and hampers reproduction, according to new research that raises the possibility that the virus could affect fertility in men. There are major caveats to the research, which was published Monday in the journal Nature. The study was conducted in mice, and many findings from mouse studies do not hold up in people. The researchers also used a very powerful dose of Zika when infecting the mice....