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Our civilization is built on plastics. In 2014 alone, industry generated 311 million metric tons, an amount expected to triple by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum.* Yet less than 15 percent of it gets recycled. Much of the rest is incinerated, sits in landfills or is abandoned in the environment—where, being resistant to microbial digestion, it can persist for hundreds of years. Plastic debris accumulating in the ocean causes all kinds of problems, from killing wildlife when mistakenly ingested to releasing toxic compounds....

Beacon Power Corp. broke ground today on a 20-megawatt, energy-storage facility in southeastern New York. The Rensselaer County project, slated for completion in 2011, would be the first in the nation to use a “flywheel” frequency regulation system to balance electricity supply and demand, according to the Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company. The $69 million facility would store electricity as kinetic energy in a matrix of massive discs when grid supply outstrips demand....

At his psychiatric clinic in the Connecticut Mental Health Center, Albert Powers sees people every day who experience hallucinations. The condition is often a hallmark of psychosis, occurring in an estimated 60 to 70 percent of people with schizophrenia, and in a subset of those diagnosed with bipolar disorder, dementia and major depression. Auditory hallucinations are the most common type experienced. Some patients report hearing voices; others hear phantom melodies. But increasing evidence over the past two decades suggests hearing imaginary sounds is not always a sign of mental illness....

Government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET show a split over electronic privacy rights within the Obama administration, with Justice Department prosecutors and investigators privately insisting they’re not legally required to obtain search warrants for e-mail. The IRS, on the other hand, publicly said last month that it would abandon a controversial policy that claimed it could get warrantless access to e-mail correspondence. The U....

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Saturday rallied conservatives and promised to rein in the agency. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Pruitt said he would focus on adhering to the formal rulemaking process and stick to the confines of federal law. At the same time, the new administrator said he would promote clean air and water and clean up Superfund sites. “There’s some very important work to protect and provide leadership in the government space....

The extraordinary success of Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong in limiting the impact of the sudden acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) demonstrates that it is possible to mount an effective response to an outbreak by major investment in pandemic preparedness. Despite their proximity to China, these three regions have managed to keep case numbers and fatalities low. By learning from previous coronavirus outbreaks where these territories bore the brunt, they were able to rapidly deploy widespread testing, combine it with digital surveillance to trace individuals’ movements, and impose strict quarantines in suspect cases, in addition to building large stockpiles of personal protective equipment....

Natural disasters in 2019 were dominated by historic spring flooding that submerged large swaths of the nation, from Louisiana to North Dakota, and by a spate of 10 separate wildfires that broke out across California in October and November. The events drew attention to two extremes of climate change: prolonged rainfall that flooded the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and prolonged drought that dried California’s forests and grasslands into a tinderbox....

Public tastes may exert a kind of “natural selection” that improves music’s appeal—up to a point—finds a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research supports the theory that culture and art are shaped by processes similar to those in biological evolution. Whereas past research using computer models has probed whether popular songs could evolve by selecting for particular musical attributes, “the real difference here is the selection process,” says Armand Leroi, professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College London and a co-author of the paper....

Here are some criteria to keep in mind when selecting songs for your workout playlist: Tempo: Most people prefer quick-paced songs when exercising. Try songs between 120 and 145 beats per minute (bpm). You can use songbpm.com or Google to determine the tempos of various songs. Some people choose even faster music, but recent research suggests that tempos above 145 bpm do not provide much additional motivation Rhythm response: Choose songs that make you want to get up and move....

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS), also known as neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) or electromyostimulation, is a protocol that elicits a muscle contraction using electrical impulses that directly stimulate your motor neurons. An EMS unit (like a Powerdot, Compex, Tone-A-Matic, or MarcPro) is a device that delivers this in the comfort of your own home. This stimulation creates muscle contractions that can be quick and frequent, fast with long pauses, or contractions that are held for several (uncomfortable) seconds or minutes at a time....

They also provide vital services for people by fertilizing agricultural land and feeding key fisheries and by acting as transportation corridors. But in efforts to ease ship passage, protect communities from flooding, and siphon off water for drinking and irrigation, humans have increasingly constrained and fractured these crucial waterways. “We try to tame rivers as much as possible,” says Günther Grill, a hydrologist at McGill University. In new research published in May in Nature, Grill and his colleagues analyzed the impediments to 12 million total kilometers of rivers around the world....

Congress is taking aim at how communities address some of the most troublesome properties that require repeated federal flood insurance payouts under the National Flood Insurance Program. Bipartisan legislation introduced yesterday would force communities to address patterns of repeated loss—one of the leading reasons many critics of the federally backed insurance program say it’s in trouble. The bill, which is sponsored by Reps. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), is expected to eventually be wrapped into the reauthorization of the flood insurance program next year....

I am done with Lego. And no, it’s not because I stepped on a brick in the middle of the night last night, suffering what can only be described as the worst pain in the world, although yes, that’s a permanent source of rage for every parent, really. No, I’m done with Lego because that sacred cow of millions of geeks who grew up happily constructing elaborate vehicles, castles, cities, and imaginary lands, is no longer the Lego of our childhood....

Pollution trends in the Middle East are unexpectedly declining, but for tragic reasons, a research team says. Before 2010, emissions in major cities such as Tehran, Cairo and Baghdad were rapidly trending upward, in tandem with the region’s robust economic growth. The upward trend was predicted to continue, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But a team of researchers in Germany, Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, studying data from satellites that monitor emissions of nitrogen oxides, found steep drop-offs that correlated to political and economic upheavals including the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and the extended sanctions on Iran in 2010....

When Christiana Figueres took the reins of the United Nations’ international climate negotiations in 2010, hopes were not high that the world would come together to forge an agreement to tackle global warming—especially after talks had fallen apart in Copenhagen the previous year. In fact, when she was asked at a press conference if she thought such a global agreement would ever be possible, she replied, “Not in my lifetime.” But when she walked out of that press conference, Figueres says, she realized she needed to shift her thinking and messaging to one of possibility—what she and Tom Rivett-Carnac, her chief strategist from 2013 to 2016, call “stubborn optimism” in a new book aimed at inspiring continued climate action....

Cities tend to warm faster than their rural surroundings, a trend that may undermine natural control systems for plant-killing pests, according to a recent study. Insects such as the emerald ash borer and scale insects are ravaging forests and crops throughout the United States, causing billions of dollars of damage and losses. Their effects are especially devastating for cities, which have fewer trees but rely on them to regulate temperatures with their canopies and by circulating moisture....

Unmooring sperm from their source of nourishment in the testis might become the basis for a form of male contraception. Researchers have designed a compound that homes in on the testis and prevents sperm from accessing a key tissue, halting their development. In mice that were fed the compound, fertility dropped to zero after a few weeks without causing the animals noticeable harm. The first generation of male contraceptives will likely employ hormones to block spermatic development....

Human emissions of greenhouse gases are driving rapid warming all over the globe — particularly in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at about twice the global rate. But there’s another form of carbon in the atmosphere that may also be playing a role. Black carbon particles, or soot, are collecting in the pristine Arctic, darkening the surface of the snow and ice and causing it to absorb more heat. Scientists believe that black carbon may be causing the region to warm and melt even faster than it otherwise would as the climate continues to change....

Severe thunderstorms, some producing tornadoes, are beginning to develop across the Midwest this afternoon. A potent storm tracking through this region is tapping into a warm, moist air mass, setting the stage for widespread showers and strong thunderstorms. Several tornado watches are now in effect from southeastern Missouri through much of Illinois, Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota. The area closer to the center of the storm stands the greatest chance for tornadoes through this evening....

From Nature magazine The ’three Rs’ of reading, writing and arithmetic could become four. Random electrical stimulation, a technique that applies a gentle current through the skull, leads to a long-lasting boost in the speed of mental calculations, a small laboratory study of university students has found. If unobtrusive brain stimulation proves safe and effective in larger classroom trials, the technology could augment traditional forms of study, says Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the study....