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For kids in Singapore, the pressure for academic success is intense. After the regular six- to eight-hour school day, many children attend extra classes at private schools and devote long hours to homework in the evening. In recent decades as study hours have expanded, so has the country’s rate of nearsightedness—to epidemic proportions. An astonishing 80 to 90 percent of newly minted high school graduates in Singapore are myopic. The same is true in China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea—all places where kids now spend far more time hunched over a desk or computer than did previous generations....

When it comes to sea ice, old age can be a good thing. So it’s troubling to researchers that older layers of Arctic sea ice—which have persisted for multiple years in a row—are increasingly melting away. Since 1984, the percentage of multiyear ice cover has declined from 61 percent to just 34 percent, according to a new report from the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC). And the oldest sea ice—ice that’s been frozen for at least five years—now accounts for just 2 percent of the ice cover....

Key Concepts Physics Balance Forces Gravity Lever Introduction Have you ever seen a mobile? Not a mobile phone—but a hanging art sculpture? You might have had such a mobile in your room when you were little. These mobiles hang in the air and are usually made up of layers of hanging balanced rods, which, in turn, have objects hanging from them. When you look at a mobile sculpture you might wonder how it stays balanced—even when it is in motion....

A U.S. report was offered for a conference on how the global battle against climate change is progressing—but it wasn’t put there by the United States. A group of Caribbean islands led by St. Lucia posted the 2017 U.S. National Climate Assessment special report—released under the Trump administration in November—as one of its submissions ahead of Sunday’s dialogue on progress and ambition for the Paris Agreement. It’s a forum intended to encourage countries to increase the ambition of their Paris pledges by 2020....

Newly published analyses of a 2004 survey indicate that Americans’ social safety net is shrinking. On average, the 1,467 respondents listed only two people with whom they discuss important matters. In 1985 a similar mix of volunteers answering a comparable large survey reported an average of three confidants. Also surprising: the most frequently reported number of confidants was zero, rather than three in 1985. Principal investigator Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University, speculates that recent increases in time spent at work and frequent changes of residency could explain this striking change....

The first of what could be as many as 1,000 flood-destroyed Houston homes may soon be purchased and torn down as part of a sweeping program to move Hurricane Harvey victims out of the floodplain. The Trump administration approved $25.6 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency hazard mitigation grants to Harris County, Texas, to avoid future property losses for tens of thousands of people whose homes line creeks and bayous that are subject to repetitive flooding....

By Corie LokSeveral gene-synthesis companies yesterday finalized a code of conduct that outlines how to screen orders for synthetic DNA that could be used for terrorist activities.The code, which has been in the works from the International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) in Heidelberg, Germany, for a year and a half, reflects for the most part what has become common practice in gene-synthesis companies. Before filling orders, the firms compare the gene sequences with those from organisms on lists of pathogens, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s select-agents list....

An upcoming case in the US Supreme Court might hasten the end of abortion across roughly half of the United States—a right that the country has defended for nearly 50 years. More than 800 scientists and several scientific organizations have provided evidence to the court showing that abortion access is an important component of reproductive healthcare. The researchers, some of whom have studied the impact of abortion for many years, are rebutting arguments made to the court that abortion has no beneficial effect on women’s lives and careers—and might even cause them harm....

The Advances section of Scientific American’s July issue chronicles tree-saving tortoises, the largest spider fossil ever discovered, an update on the hunt for dark matter, and many other developments. For those interested in learning more about the news described in the section, a list of selected further reading follows below. “Tortoises to the Rescue,” page 16 “Resurrecting Extinct Interactions with Extant Substitutes,” in the April 21 issue of the Current Biology, explains how tortoises are helping restore a depleted population of ebony trees on the island of Mauritius....

Listen and Learn Learning by listening to information as we sleep has long been a mainstay of science fiction—and wishful thinking—but a new study suggests the idea may not be so farfetched. What we hear during deep sleep can strengthen memories of information learned while awake. Researchers at Northwestern University taught 12 subjects to associate 50 images with specific positions on a computer screen. When the subjects saw each image, they also heard a matching noise—for instance, on seeing a cat, they heard a meow....

STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss.—The second time was a charm for NASA’s massive new moon rocket. The core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that NASA is developing to take astronauts to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations, fired up for a critical preflight test on Thursday (March 18). Smoke and flames billowed from the four RS-25 engines that power the SLS core booster as it roared to life while perched atop a test stand here at NASA’s Stennis Space Center....

Miniscule, invisible neutrino particles are ubiquitous but nearly impossible to catch. They fly though the Earth—and us—every moment, by the billions. They are the smallest known matter particles in the universe and were predicted to be massless. Strangely, though, they are not. The reason why is still a mystery, and scientists do not yet know how massive they are. Now a new experiment aiming to measure their mass directly has found they cannot weigh more than one electron volt (eV)—that is one 500,000th the mass of the electron, the next-lightest particle....

NASA’s New Horizons probe is about to wake up from a long slumber and get ready for its highly anticipated Pluto flyby next summer. New Horizons is scheduled to emerge from a 99-day hibernation on Dec. 6, then gear up for a six-month Pluto encounter that peaks with the first-ever close flyby of the mysterious dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. “New Horizons is healthy and cruising quietly through deep space, nearly 3 billion miles [4....

To save dwindling populations of Eastern monarch butterflies, researchers in Mexico are trying something controversial: moving hundreds of fir trees 400 metres up a mountain. Their goal is to help the trees, which serve as winter habitat for the migratory butterflies, keep up with the changing climate. Forest geneticist Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero at the Michoacan University of Saint Nicholas of Hidalgo (UMSNH) in Morelia, Mexico, has been relocating oyamel firs (Abies religiosa) in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, about 100 kilometres northwest of Mexico City, for the past 3 years....

Meyer Landsman, the Sitka, Alaska–based protagonist of Michael Chabon’s award-winning novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, “swayed in the canvas webbing of the weary old 206.” The 206 is a single-engine Cessna that can be converted to a floatplane, a factoid I happened to know when I read that line late on August 28 because earlier that day I rode shotgun in a 206 that took off from the water strip that parallels the main runway at Juneau International Airport....

NASA’s Kepler space telescope and other instruments have revealed the existence of thousands of alien planets. Most of them are “super-Earths”—rocky worlds with Earth- to Neptune-size masses. But the existence of so many super-Earths seems to contradict astronomers’ understanding of planet formation. Indeed, observations of newborn solar systems show features that seem to need the presence of more massive gas giants like Jupiter. Scientists may have just solved that mystery, or at least part of it....

The rocky planet circling the closest star to the sun got hammered by a superpowerful flare last year, a new study reports. That’s a bit of bad news for anyone hoping that the alien world, known as Proxima b, hosts life. “It’s likely that Proxima b was blasted by high-energy radiation during this flare,” study lead author Meredith MacGregor, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., said in a statement....

Habitual readers of this column may recall me mentioning that I have two cats. Or perhaps I should rephrase in light of the old adage “dogs have owners; cats have staff.” So let’s say that two cats have deigned to live with me in return for various services I provide, such as food delivery, health care and the administration of belly rubs. I contemplate cats to the point that when I see a reference to the chemical entity known as a phorbol, I pronounce it “fur ball....

Dear EarthTalk: The recent explosion at the West, Texas, fertilizer plant that killed many people really alarmed me. Places like this must exist near many communities around the country. How do I know if my own community might be at risk of a similar disaster?—Mary Cyr, Sarasota, Fla. Many people may not realize that what happened on April 17, 2013 in the town of West, Texas—a fertilizer plant with an unreported large stockpile of explosive ammonium nitrate blew up, killing 14 and rendering hundreds of others injured and homeless—could happen almost anywhere....

A little-known fact: the tongue is directly connected to the brain stem. This anatomical feature is now being harnessed by scientists to improve rehabilitation. A team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison recently found that electrically stimulating the tongue can help patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) improve their gait. MS is an incurable disease in which the insulation around the nerves becomes damaged, disrupting the communication between body and brain. One symptom is loss of muscle control....