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I’ve had it with these $#&@?! dead snakes biting me Farmer Danny Anderson, 53, must have thought he had things under control after using a shovel to hack the head off a snake that had slithered onto his farm in central Washington State. He couldn’t possibly have predicted what happened next: The severed head did a “backflip almost” and bit his finger, the AP reports, sending Anderson to the hospital as his tongue swelled from venom....

We exist, and we are living creatures. It follows that the universe we live in must be compatible with the existence of life. However, as scientists have studied the fundamental principles that govern our universe, they have discovered that the odds of a universe like ours being compatible with life are astronomically low. We can model what the universe would have looked like if its constants—the strength of gravity, the mass of an electron, the cosmological constant—had been slightly different....

With a little help from computer simulations and fluid dynamics, engineers have finally optimized the craft of crepe making. So suggests a new study involving these paper-thin, tricky-to-make pancakes, which are often filled with chocolate, cheese or jam. By simulating the behavior of batter poured across a tilting and rotating hot surface, a pair of engineers—separated by half the world but united in their passion for brunch—mathematically determined the pan-angle-and-swirl conditions that give rise to ideal crepes....

As a nuclear-powered icebreaker crunched through 10 feet of August ice at the North Pole, Russian sailors readied two deepwater submersibles for their two-and-a-half-mile descent. Dubbed Mir 1 and Mir 2 (mir meaning “world”), the subs were aptly named—their deployment was about to catch the world’s attention. A hole opened in the ship’s wake, and the subs were lowered. At the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, one sub took seabed samples, the ostensible purpose of the mission, while the other deposited a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag, symbolically claiming this undersea turf for its homeland....

Okay, you probably know that redwood forests are beautiful, but when you see them through a camera lens they can take on a mystical quality. The Save the Redwoods League recently revealed the winners of its 2013 photo contest. The league, based in San Francisco, challenged visitors in redwood parks to “capture every angle of the redwood forest, from the smallest critters inhabiting the forest floor to the lofty tree canopy....

Scientists have a new tool that could help them predict earthquakes induced by the effects of pumping wastewater from oil and gas operations deep underground—and it’s in orbit. A team of geophysicists analyzed more than three years of radar data from the Japanese Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) and found they could see the land deform above wastewater disposal wells near Timpson, Texas. Two years later, in 2012, a magnitude 4....

LOS ANGELES—When Steven Lisberger made the original 1982 cult film TRON, he was ineligible for an Academy Award for visual effects, because he’d used computers—and believe it or not, that was considered a form of cheating at that time. Fast forward 28 years to the sequel, TRON: Legacy, and not only have computers become a celebrated part of its filmmaking, but the movie’s story and design address the significant advances made in the fields of quantum computing and artificial intelligence since then....

Protection against the disease pertussis, or whooping cough, doesn’t appear to be as strong with the currently administered vaccine when compared with the older version administered up until the 1990s, according to a new study in Pediatrics. During a pertussis outbreak in 2010–11 in California teens who had received four doses of the current vaccine were at almost six times more likely to get pertussis as those who had received four doses of the older preparation....

What allows a creative enterprise—a film studio, a design firm, a start-up—to flourish? It’s an old question but one that has become increasingly relevant as we transition to an economy built on the exchange of knowledge and information. Linda A. Hill, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, has studied how creative teams come together and how certain leadership qualities build these collectives. Recently Hill pooled her knowledge with colleagues from Pixar, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions to co-author Collective Genius, which offers insight into innovative groups....

That crop has spoiled in the ground. Earlier this year Range Fuels closed its newly built biorefinery without selling a drop of ethanol. Turning biomass into a commercially viable, combustible liquid is tougher than anticipated, the company has found. As expensive equipment sits idle, the firm is searching for more funding to try to solve the problem. Range Fuels is not the only biofuels company to fall short. Cilion in Goshen, Calif....

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.—A driver plowed a sedan forcefully up Arizona Avenue, which had flooded to knee height during a winter storm as high tide approached. The wake from the passing Honda buffeted low brick fences lining the tidy homes of working-class residents of this failing casino city, pushing floodwaters into Eileen DeDomenicis’s living room. “It wasn’t bad when we first moved in here—the flooding wasn’t bad,” DeDomenicis said on a stormy morning in March, after helping her husband put furniture on blocks....

A new coronavirus strain has appeared on Danish mink farms. Since June mink-related variants have infected more than 200 people, about a dozen of whom had a mutation called “Cluster 5.” In order to prevent further spread, on November 4 the Danish government announced that all mink in the country would be killed, although the plan was subsequently put on hold amid opposition from lawmakers. The fear is that this mutation has the potential to decrease the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently under development....

Call it getting in your own way, call it self-defeating behavior, call it accidentally-on-purpose shooting yourself in the foot. Whatever you call it, if you have a goal, you can make sure it doesn’t happen with self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is any action that gets in the way of achieving your goals. On a diet? Kids’ pizza crusts have no calories if they’re inhaled standing over the sink, you know? Want to rock your work assignments and get that promotion?...

From November 2013 through January 2014, the jet stream took on a remarkably extreme and persistent shape over North America and Europe. This global river of eastward-flowing winds high in the atmosphere dipped farther south than usual across the eastern U.S., allowing the notorious “polar vortex” of frigid air swirling over the Arctic to plunge southward, putting the eastern two thirds of the country into a deep freeze. Ice cover on the Great Lakes reached its second-greatest extent on record, and two crippling snow-and-ice storms shut down Atlanta for multiple days....

As figures emerge about the disproportionate toll that COVID-19 is taking on people of colour in the United States, scientists are suggesting measures to help mitigate the inequalities. They say that better data are needed on the incidence of the disease, that testing needs to be ramped up and that hospitals serving people at-risk need to better prepare. Researchers and some US lawmakers are now calling for a national commission devoted to identifying racial disparities in health that would act as a unified voice in trying to overcome them....

A skeuomorph is a design element that’s supposed to replicate the look of something that was a functional necessity in some previous incarnation of the product—such as fake woodgrain on vinyl flooring. In software, skeuomorphs are everywhere: recycle bin icons for discarded documents, floppy-disk icons for the save button, and so on. But design critics say that Apple’s recent love of skeuomorphism has gone too far. Truth is, the average Apple customer probably doesn’t care nearly as much as the design critics (and neither do I)....

The novel coronavirus is slowly changing the mix of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. The most profound changes in carbon dioxide were measured late last month by Columbia University in New York City, where there were 10% reductions in CO2 and a whopping 50% drop in carbon monoxide. “The air is the cleanest I’ve ever seen it,” said Roisin Commane, an atmospheric chemist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. As yet, however, the reductions haven’t registered with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, which gives worldwide estimates based on “well-mixed air” measured at remote sites, such as its observatory at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii....

Michael Mann knows his students and his subject. The topic of the graduate seminar: El Nio and radiative forcing. The beer he will be serving: Corona, “because I’m going to be talking about tropical climate.” Not surprisingly, attendance is high. Mann is most famously known for the “hockey stick,” a plot of the past millennium’s temperature that shows the drastic influence of humans in the 20th century. Specifically, temperature remains essentially flat until about 1900, then shoots up, like the upturned blade of a hockey stick....

New research shows that a controversial chemical in plastic baby and water bottles, cups and food containers may be linked to heart disease and diabetes, prompting new fears about the ingredient. Bisphenol A (BPA), the subject of much scientific debate this year over its potential health effects, was associated with type 2 diabetes, angina, coronary heart disease and heart attack in adults with elevated levels of the chemical. The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on urine samples from 1,455 participants in a government health survey....

HONG KONG—The Chinese government for the first time has said publicly that it will cap carbon dioxide emissions from two major polluting industries, but its impact on the nation’s overall climate change mitigation remains unclear. The announcement was made in a guideline published Tuesday by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economy planner. The State Council, China’s Cabinet, approved the guideline in September, but its full content was made public only earlier this week....