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As winter arrives in South Africa, anticipation begins to build for one of the planet’s largest and most spectacular migrations: the KwaZulu-Natal sardine run. In the waters off the southern tip of Africa, hundreds of millions of the slender, silvery fish coalesce into massive shoals and begin to travel hundreds of kilometers northeast along the rainbow nation’s eastern coast. The mass migration attracts a deep roster of predators that includes sharks, dive-bombing cormorants, Bryde’s whales and dolphin megapods....

For several days in late September 2015, heavy rains soaked the earth surrounding the district of El Cambray II in Guatemala. On the first night of the following month, steep slopes, long held in place by thick, tropical tree roots, suddenly gave way, burying hundreds of homes in mud up to 15 meters deep. At least 280 people died. Officials had warned residents for years that the area was at risk, but a mixture of poverty and mistrust leads some of the poorest people in Central America and beyond to build and live on marginal land....

Editor’s note: The following is the introduction to the November 2014 issue of Scientific American Classics: Antarctica: Life on Ice. Antarctica has long been a place of mystery and scientific surprises. In his 1965 semiautobiographical novel “Forbush and the Penguins,” New Zealand writer and seafarer Graham Billing tells the story of a young ornithologist who is assigned to monitor an Adelie penguin rookery on Ross Island in Antarctica. Arriving in mid-October, he is miffed by the failure of the penguins to arrive on schedule....

Jim Patton brushes a packrat’s furry white belly with a vibrant green marker as his wife, Carol, croons over the animal. “We’re making you beautiful — punk mice!” Patton, a retired mammologist, is trapping and releasing desert wildlife as part of an ambitious project to repeat surveys conducted by renowned ecologist Joseph Grinnell from 1908 to 1939. Known as the ‘father of field notes’, Grinnell criss-crossed California in his Ford Model T to catalogue its birds and mammals....

The atomic bomb that incinerated the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the close of World War II contained about 60 kilograms of chain-reacting uranium. When the American “Little Boy” device detonated over the doomed port, one part of the bomb’s charge–a subcritical mass–was fired into the other by a relatively simple gunlike mechanism, causing the uranium 235 in the combined mass to go supercritical and explode with the force of 15 kilotons of TNT....

Jancy Chang, a high school art teacher in San Francisco, had been painting since she was a child. She varied her technique from Western-style watercolors to classical Chinese brushstrokes, but she always strove for realism: painting landscapes and people in social settings as literally as she could. Then, in 1986, at age 43, she began to have problems performing her job. Grading, preparing for class, putting together lesson plans–everything that she had previously done with ease–became increasingly difficult over the next few years....

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has just reached its final destination—around a gravitationally special spot in space known as the second Lagrange point, or L2. The US$10-billion observatory could spend 20 or more years there, gathering unprecedented insights about the Universe as it stares into deep space. Webb, which is the most complex telescope ever built, has been heading towards L2 since its Christmas Day launch. On 24 January, it fired a set of thrusters and nudged itself into orbit around the point, which it will circle once every six months or so....

The world’s longest-running study of predators and prey is on the endangered list — but it could soon get a reprieve from the US government. Scientists have been charting the changing fortunes of wolves and moose on Isle Royale in Lake Superior for nearly 60 years, but a sharp decline in the wolf population — now reduced to just two closely related animals — has threatened to end the project. Now, after years of debate, the US agency that manages the island in Michigan has proposed introducing up to 30 wolves from the mainland....

Name: Kelli Hoover Title: Professor of entomology, Pennsylvania State University Location: University Park, Pa. You recently identified a gene known as egt that allows a specific group of viruses to control the behavior of caterpillars. Tell me what it does. Gypsy moth caterpillars have a normal behavior they do every day. They climb out onto the leaves to feed at night. During the day they climb back onto the branches or bark to hide from predators because they’re very obvious when they’re on the leaves....

1971 Computer Architect “The computer ILLIAC IV, which is now nearing completion, is the fourth generation in a line of advanced machines that have been conceived and developed at the University of Illinois. ILLIAC I, a vacuum-tube machine completed in 1952, could perform 11,000 arithmetical operations per second. ILLIAC II, a transistor-and-diode computer completed in 1963, could perform 500,000 operations per second. ILLIAC III is a special-purpose computer designed for automatic scanning of large quantities of visual data....

His finalist year: 1961 His finalist project: Figuring out ways to diagnose diseases using blood and urine samples What led to the project: Bernard Rappaport grew up in a family of persuasive talkers. His earliest memories are of conversations and debates around his Staten Island, N.Y., kitchen table with his lawyer father and teacher mother back in the 1940s and 1950s. Some of his favorite dinner guests were his father’s physician clients....

For a handful of large U.S. companies and organizations, employee benefits are extending beyond the three-legged stool of health care, retirement and vacation to include clean energy delivered to employees’ homes at little or no upfront cost. This week, four major firms—3M Co., Cisco Systems Inc., Kimberly-Clark Corp. and the National Geographic Society—said they would provide uniform discounted pricing for rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems for employees who chose to participate in what is being billed as “the first nationwide bulk solar purchase program....

This January the Food and Drug Administration warned parents not to pour hot liquids into plastic baby bottles and also to discard bottles that get scratched. Otherwise, a potentially harmful chemical might leach out of the plastic. This warning was the agency’s first, tentative acknowledgment of an emerging scientific consensus: many widely used chemicals once deemed safe may not be. But a warning was all the FDA could offer worried consumers....

The first lunar sample-return mission since the 1970s is underway. China’s robotic Chang’e 5 mission launched today (Nov. 23) from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, rising into the sky atop a Long March 5 rocket at about 3:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT; 4:30 a.m.on Nov. 24 local time in Hainan). If all goes according to plan, the bold and complex Chang’e 5 will haul pristine moon samples back to Earth in mid-December—something that hasn’t been done since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976....

Like the opposite of a good perfume, a chemical humans use to protect crops may have the unexpected side effect of making certain bees less attractive to mates, potentially threatening populations of these crucial pollinators. The common pesticide fenbuconazole is classified as relatively safe for bees because it specifically targets fungi (which are taxonomically very different from bees) and because exposure to it does not typically kill bees directly. Previous research had found that insecticides deemed “low risk” for bees can still impact their development, feeding behavior and learning; fungicides such as fenbuconazole had not been studied as extensively but were thought less likely to be harmful....

Summer will officially begin at 7:09 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, and for much of the east, the season will kick off with near-record heat. A ridge of high pressure was taking shape across the Great Lakes region on Tuesday, the last full day of spring. Afternoon highs in the low to middle 90s were recorded Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit to Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. The heat will be nothing new in this part of the country....

Model airplanes took off as a hobby in the U.S. after the Wright brothers credited their toy helicopter as the inspiration behind their flights in the early 20th century. Comprehensive books were published on the subject, and thousands of model aircraft clubs were established. Perhaps it was the nation’s fond history of model planes that prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), not officially established until 1958, to avoid regulating these tech toys....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. This summer, the fifth installment of the Jurassic Park franchise will be on the big screen, reinforcing a love of dinosaurs that has been with many of us since childhood. There is something awe inspiring about the biggest, fiercest, and “deadest” creatures that have ever walked the planet. But the films have had an additional benefit—they have sparked an interest in dinosaur DNA....

Ever since her senior year in high school, Kay Redfield Jamison has spent days and even weeks exploding with energy. She would stay up all night, sometimes for weeks in a row, feeling euphoric and productive. She would become lively, extroverted and impulsive. She would make bizarre purchases–a stuffed fox one day and a dozen snakebite kits the next. Then, suddenly, it would end, and Jamison would descend into darkness. She would lose interest in work, friends and hobbies....

The launch of NASA’s newest Earth-observing spacecraft today (Oct. 28) could not have gone more smoothly, researchers and officials said. The $1.5 billion NPP weather and climate satellite blazed a white-hot trail through the predawn California sky this morning, ticking off milestones like clockwork as it climbed. The spacecraft separated from its Delta 2 rocket right on time, and its power-generating solar panels deployed on schedule as well, mission managers said....