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NASA scientists may have debunked the claim that the world will end this December, but evidence suggests that the number of natural disasters has risen during the past few decades. This trend, combined with the accelerating growth of urban populations, has international aid organizations rethinking how crisis response strategies designed to help rural communities can be adapted for city folk. More than half of the world’s seven billion inhabitants live in urban areas, and that number is expected to grow to 6....

When Omicron started its gigantic surge across the country, many Americans took solace in data suggesting that this variant is milder than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But one urgent question is whether Omicron changes the risk of “long COVID,” a cluster of debilitating symptoms that include fatigue, headache, pain and shortness of breath that can last for months after an initial infection. Is Omicron less likely to cause this syndrome, or does the danger remain as high as with other variants?...

Myth: Hurricanes induce labor Hurricane Sandy’s potency came in part from the storm’s unusually low barometric pressure, which in theory could cause a pregnant woman’s amniotic sac to break—inducing labor. The claim isn’t new (see this 1985 study in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine), but it is contentious. In 2007 a study in the Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics suggested that deliveries increase on days with a marked change in barometric pressure....

In one of the first studies of its kind, scientists have found that tar sands production in Canada is one of North America’s largest sources of secondary organic aerosols—air pollutants that affect the climate, cloud formation and public health. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, showed that the production of tar sands and other heavy oil—thick, highly viscous crude oil that is difficult to produce—are a major source of aerosols, a component of fine particle air pollution, which can affect regional weather patterns and increase the risk of lung and heart disease....

“When a golden pheasant cock displays his brilliant plumage before the hen, we are accustomed to say he is courting her. Just what this expression means when applied to a nonhuman animal is far from clear; the idea is so obviously anthropomorphic that zoologists have been reluctant to pursue it seriously by taking up the study of animals’ so-called ‘courtship’ activities. Yet these strange, often grotesque activities are there, like Mount Everest, and they have challenged some of us to explore them....

In March 2020, when Los Angeles residents began sheltering in place amid the COVID pandemic, Angela Vázquez and her husband went out shopping for some essentials. A few days later they both experienced mild COVID symptoms: low-grade fever, upset stomach, fatigue, headaches, chills, loss of sense of smell—nothing serious enough for a doctor to order confirmation tests, which were being rationed at the time. But in the weeks and months after she was finally diagnosed with COVID a few days later, Vázquez’s condition worsened....

Researchers have exploited the twisty nature of topological physics to produce a high-quality beam of laser light—a step that could lead to the first practical application of this burgeoning field. A team of physicists describes its device, and the theory behind the technology, in two studies published on February 1 in Science. The demonstration “brings topological photonics substantially closer to real applications”, says Marin Soljai, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge....

Most of the action in oceans occurs in the top 300 feet (100 meters). Microscopic plants known as phytoplankton thrive there, capturing carbon as part of photosynthesis. When the plants die, they sink and travel into a “twilight zone” of dim light before reaching the eternal darkness of the ocean’s depths. According to a new survey, the biological activity in that zone acts as a gatekeeper, determining whether captured carbon is stored for millennia or quickly recycled to the surface....

Earthquakes cannot be forecast, but engineers can prepare for them. Seismic-isolation systems built into the bases of certain buildings in high-risk areas, such as San Francisco’s City Hall, use complex structures of concrete, rubber and metal to reduce quake damage by absorbing the ground’s horizontal oscillations, like a car’s suspension does with vertical motion. But such adaptations are expensive. Engineer Jian Zhang of the University of California, Los Angeles, says incorporating seismic isolation can increase construction costs by up to 20 percent....

As a clinical geneticist, Paul James is accustomed to discussing some of the most delicate issues with his patients. But in early 2010, he found himself having a particularly awkward conversation about sex. A 46-year-old pregnant woman had visited his clinic at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia to hear the results of an amniocentesis test to screen her baby’s chromosomes for abnormalities. The baby was fine—but follow-up tests had revealed something astonishing about the mother....

Lyme disease is an incredibly evasive adversary. No one is entirely sure how the bacterium that causes it spreads so widely throughout the body or why symptoms sometimes persist after the infection has been treated with antibiotics. Now researchers at the University of Toronto may finally have an explanation: The tiny, spiral-shaped bacterium called Borreliaburgdorferi can quickly grapple along the inner surfaces of blood vessels to get to vulnerable tissues or to hiding places where it can hole up beyond the reach of drugs....

Albert Einstein finally hit on the core idea underlying his famous theory of relativity one night after months of intense mathematical exercises. He had given himself a break from the work and let his imagination wander about the concepts of space and time. Various images that came to mind prompted him to try a thought experiment: If two bolts of lightning struck the front and back of a moving train at the same time, would an observer standing beside the track and an observer standing on the moving train see the strikes as simultaneous?...

WE ALL YEARN to feel important, powerful and popular. The desire for social status is one of the most important factors driving human behavior—our rung on the social ladder can determine whom we marry and how long we live, among other things. Recent research suggests, however, that some of our attempts to boost our place in the social hierarchy can backfire: our actions may make us feel better temporarily, but they increase the chances we will be stuck with lower status in the long term....

High on the Tibetan Plateau, paleontologists have uncovered the skull of a previously unknown species of ancient rhino, a woolly furred animal that came equipped with a built-in snow shovel on its face. This curiosity, a flat, paddle-like horn that would have allowed it to brush away snow and find vegetation beneath, suggests the woolly rhinoceros was well-adapted for a cold, icy life in the Himalayas about 1 million years before the Ice Age....

One year after a controversial recommendation to cancel its National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope, is searching for new partners to help support its $10-million annual operating costs. In the face of these potentially life-threatening cuts, some additional sources of revenue have been found—but the big telescope’s future still hangs in the balance. In August 2012 the NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences Portfolio Review Committee issued a report (pdf) that suggested divesting the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) by 2017....

EPA’s long-awaited rules cracking down on oil and gas methane will debut today in Glasgow, Scotland, forming the centerpiece of a U.S. offensive against the second-most important greenhouse gas. The proposed rules will cover new and existing infrastructure across the petroleum supply chain—including production, processing, storage and transmission. The administration has chosen the United Nations summit, known as COP 26, as the backdrop for the rollout of a broader methane initiative that includes the EPA draft rules plus actions by the departments of Energy, the Interior, Housing and Urban Development, and other agencies....

Each year, new electronics hit the market and capture consumers’ attention, giving them reason to throw away the old VCR or standard television and engross themselves in state-of-the-art gadgetry. Most of the time, the old electronics end up in the garbage, despite holding plenty of reusable material. But a push for recycling them has gained ground in recent years through both new state laws and a developing “e-recycling” industry. Imagine a fleet of miners flocking to landfills and disassembling the dated electronics for their batteries and power supplies....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The outcome of the presidential election shocked many people—and they pointed their fingers at misleading polls that didn’t do a great job predicting what actually happened. On Election Day, analyst Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight predicted that Clinton had a 71.4 percent chance of winning and ran the headline “Final Election Update: There’s a Wide Range of Outcomes, and Most of Them Come Up Clinton....

Ethanol as a fuel offers a host of potential benefits, according to its supporters. It can be grown and refined primarily in the U.S., whether made from corn, switchgrass or cellulose. It is already being used as a fuel additive—to help gasoline burn more completely and, thus, cut down on air pollution. And, because it is made from plants that pull carbon dioxide from the air, it does not add additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which are driving climate change....

Editor’s Note (5/12/22): This story was updated when the White House announced one million COVID deaths in the U.S. Laura Jackson feels the loss of her husband Charlie like she is missing a part of herself. He died of COVID early in the pandemic, on May 17, 2020, just weeks after the couple celebrated his 50th birthday. Charlie was an Army veteran who served in Iraq during Desert Storm, and Laura finds herself returning to images of war and loss—to those who have lost a limb but still feel its phantom tingle, who unthinkingly reach for a glass of water or try to step out of bed before realizing what has been lost forever....