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Split-second judgments about a politician’s competence can predict an election’s outcome better than chance alone, a new study reveals. The results indicate that superficial inferences can contribute to voting choices, a process hoped to be rational and deliberative. Alexander Todorov and his colleagues at Princeton University showed more than 800 people pictures of two candidates who competed against each other in races for either the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives....

I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science of Sound and Language by Lydia Denworth Dutton Adult, 2014 ($26.95) Language, it is often said, is what makes us human. So what happens when the acquisition of language is impeded? Without language, how does one fully participate in the great drama of human life, let alone function in society? These questions lie at the heart of Denworth’s new book....

Thomas Jefferson would be appalled. More than two centuries after he helped to shape a government based on the idea that reason and technological advancement would propel the new United States into a glorious future, the political party that now controls that government has largely turned its back on science. Even as the country and the planet face both scientifically complex threats and remarkable technological opportunities, many Republican officeholders reject the most reliable sources of information and analysis available to guide the nation....

By 2100 devastating flooding of the sort that Superstorm Sandy unleashed on New York City could happen every two years all along the valuable and densely populated U.S. east coast—anywhere from Boston to Miami. And unless extreme protection measures are implemented, people could again die. Hyperbole? Hardly. Even though Sandy’s storm surge was exceptionally high, if sea level rises as much as scientists agree is likely, even routine storms could cause similar destruction....

The solar system beyond Neptune is a dark and mysterious place. It is also crowded. Besides Pluto and its moon Charon, there are planetesque chunks of rock and ice like Sedna and the recently discovered 2003UB313 as well as a host of asteroids and comets in the Kuiper belt and beyond. Determining which of these objects constitute new planets and which do not remains controversial work currently under review by the International Astronomical Union (IAU)....

Texas already had the most restrictive abortion laws in the U.S.—and they just got tougher. On Wednesday, a new law took effect that adds penalties of jail time and a fine of up to $10,000 for anyone who prescribes pills for medication abortions through telehealth or the mail. Texas bans all abortions after cardiac activity can be detected in the embryo, which typically occurs about six weeks into pregnancy—often before people realize they’re pregnant....

In Mel Brooks’s The Producers–also known as the Enron business plan, as noted in this space in October 2002–Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom conspire to sell 25,000 percent of the Broadway show Springtime for Hitler. In a moment of introspection, Max asks, “How much percentage of a play can there be altogether?” To which Leo gently responds, “You can only sell 100 percent of anything.” Until recently, I accepted this statement as fact....

I was among the many people excited by fitness trackers and purchased one soon after they came out. It was fun. Look, 20,000 steps in one day (trip to a new city)! Two nights this week of uninterrupted sleep and 21 miles walked! There’s something captivating about numbers, which can explain the existence of the quantified-self phenomenon—that is, people who measure many things about themselves. Nowadays a smartwatch or even just your phone can keep track of a wide variety of markers, including heart rate, sleep patterns, steps in a day and even arrhythmias....

By Andrea Shalal and Ayesha Rascoe WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States needs billions of dollars of new equipment including ice-breaking ships, better satellite service and fiber-optic networks as it prepares for climate change and melting ice in the Arctic, a top U.S. official said on Tuesday. The total cost will not be clear until the U.S. government inventories its investment needs, former Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp, who became the first U....

After more than two years of disrupted lessons during the pandemic, it’s clearer than ever that schools are more than just places to learn: they are vital safe spaces for students to build friendships, receive nourishing meals and talk to trusted adults. And they can be more—schools can also provide health care. Around 3,000 school-based health centers operate in more than 30 states all around the U.S., offering primary and preventive care for students who live in medically underserved areas....

The National Institutes of Health has suspended enrollment in a study aimed at investigating whether moderate alcohol consumption helps cardiovascular health following concerns over the alcoholic beverage industry’s role in the study. In testimony before a Senate subcommittee Thursday, NIH Director Francis Collins said that enrollment had been halted a week ago as officials investigate how the funding for the study was raised and if the study is still worth pursuing....

Americans take more antidepressants than they do any other type of prescription drug, and pregnant women are no exception. One out of every eight pregnant women in the U.S. takes selective serotonin re­up­take inhibitors (SSRIs) to treat depression or other mood disorders. A handful of recent studies suggest that these drugs could have adverse effects on infant health: they may increase the risk for rare heart defects, premature delivery, low birth weight and withdrawal symptoms....

Philosophical leanings might seem impossible to pin town with exacting word problems. But recent work by Geoffrey Goodwin and John Darley shows that it might be possible to employ a simple mental puzzle to assess a person’s perspective on moral questions. This quiz can help you find out whether someone is a relativist, who believes that no one single answer exists to a particular moral problem, or whether that person is an absolutist, who embraces only one “true” answer to these weighty conundrums....

Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize Sean B. Carroll Crown, 2013 ($28) Carroll, an evolutionary biologist, recounts the surprising tale of how two of France’s most extraordinary 20th-century minds, biologist Jacques Monod and writer Albert Camus, each survived and rebelled against the Nazi occupation of France only to become close friends in the years leading up to their fame and receipt of Nobel Prizes....

This month NASA plans to launch its latest and most sophisticated mission ever to the Red Planet: the Mars Science Laboratory. After a dramatic landing in Gale Crater using a skycrane for the final descent, the nuclear-powered rover will drive around one of the richest deposits of clays and sulfates on the planet—the remains of a water-rich era when rivers carved out valley networks. The size of a small car, the rover (named Curiosity) will spend a Martian year exploring the base of the central peak in the crater, thought to be the oldest section....

A large, multi-lab replication study has found no evidence to validate one of psychology’s textbook findings: the idea that people find cartoons funnier if they are surreptitiously induced to smile. But an author of the original report—published nearly three decades ago—says that the new analysis has shortcomings, and may not represent a direct replication of his work. In 1988, Fritz Strack, a psychologist now at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and colleagues found that people who held a pen between their teeth, which induces a smile, rated cartoons as funnier than did those who held a pen between their lips, which induced a pout, or frown....

Thaim Kamara is 60 years old and would like to retire this year. But he is one of only eight remaining surgeons in Sierra Leone, a west African country of about six million people. Kamara lost two friends to Ebola in 2014—Martin Salia and Thomas Rogers, fellow surgeons at Connaught Hospital in the capital, Freetown. In light of the dire circumstances, Kamara has postponed his plan to retire. Although the rate of new Ebola infections in Sierra Leone, along with neighboring countries Guinea and Liberia, is finally falling, more than 800 health care personnel have been infected with Ebola in the hot zone and nearly 500 have died since the epidemic began, according to a January report by the World Health Organization....

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are one of the greatest mysteries of our universe. Coming from deep space, these outbursts can flash and fade in a matter of milliseconds, yet in each instance can release as much energy as the sun does in a year. They pop up all across the sky multiple times a day, but most appear to be one-off events and are thus hard to catch. First discovered in 2007, FRBs have challenged and tantalized scientists seeking to uncover their obscure origins and to use them as unique tools for probing the depths of intergalactic space....

Kids are wildly better than adults at most types of learning—most famously, new languages. One reason may be that adults’ brains are “full,” in a way. Creating memories relies in part on the destruction of old memories, and recent research finds that adults have high levels of a protein that prevents such forgetting. Whenever we learn something, brain cells become wired together with new synapses, the connections between neurons that enable communication....

A previously infertile woman has given birth to a healthy baby after undergoing a procedure that involved removing her ovaries and stimulating them in the lab to produce eggs. The fertility treatment, dubbed in vitro activation, could offer hope to millions of women who have problems with ovulation. In vitro activation addresses a condition called primary ovarian insufficiency, or premature ovarian failure, whereby egg-containing ovarian follicles do not grow in the way that they are supposed to....