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I don’t often get to report and write my own stories anymore. But I do deeply enjoy the privilege, as editor in chief, of seeing our crackerjack team of journalists and scientists identify large themes in the evolving flow of science as it is being applied to discovery and to solving society’s pressing challenges; scientists, of course, serve both as protagonists in our feature articles and as authors. In this issue, for instance, let us look together at our species’ continuing efforts to manipulate our own body’s inner mechanisms to treat diseases and generally improve public health....

Scientific American will make another television appearance tonight (other TV roles include the topic of conversation on episodes of the sitcoms Cheers and Mad about You as well as set dressing on House of Cards and Breaking Bad). In the plot of the Thursday, March 12 episode of The Big Bang Theory, (spoiler alert) the magazine runs a story about a scientific paper that characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter published about superfluid vacuum theory....

Adapted from Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding the Allure of Trump, edited by Mari Fitzduff, with permission from ABC-CLIO/Praeger, Copyright © 2017. Editor’s note: All but the last section of this article was written before Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, making its insights all the more remarkable. It was updated for Scientific American Mind. It is easy and common to dismiss those whose political positions we disagree with as fools or knaves—or, more precisely, as fools led by knaves....

Key concepts Biology Plant science Temperature Data Introduction Depending on where you live, this time of year the ground might be covered in snow, ice and, most importantly, pinecones! We see pinecones everywhere during the winter—in wreaths, on trees and in our yards. But did you know that pinecones have a vital job? They keep pine tree seeds safe, and protect them from the freezing temperatures during the winter! To protect their seeds, pinecones can close their “scales” tightly, keeping out cold temperatures, winds, ice and even animals that might eat their precious cargo....

One fall night I lay awake wondering how I should begin this essay. I imagined a variety of ways I could write the first sentence and the next and the one after that. Then I thought about how I could tie those sentences to the following paragraph and the rest of the article. The pros and cons of each of those options circled back and forth in my head, keeping me from drifting off to sleep....

In my Scientific American column this month I noted that micro video has become enormously popular: very short videos, or moving photos—or something in between. Phone apps like Vine have lit this new category on fire. Even though Vine got all the headlines when Twitter bought and backed it, dozens of apps follow the same principle; call it ultrashort-attention-span theater. Here are a few examples that, if the concept intrigues you, are worth exploring....

1970 Lunar Laser Reflector “In July of last year the astronauts of Apollo 11 placed on the surface of the moon an array of prism-like reflectors that has made it possible to measure the distance between the earth and the moon with an accuracy approaching six inches. The important quantity, however, is not the absolute distance between the earth and the moon but the variations in distance measured over a period of months and years....

After three rocky years under the leadership of bioethicist Glenn McGee, faculty members at the Alden March Bioethics Institute (AMBI) at the Albany Medical College are breathing a sigh of relief that he was sacked. For McGee, however, the battle to preserve his storied reputation—and his six-month severance package—has just begun. “The feeling at AMBI is that this has been a very difficult time,” says Bonnie Steinbock, a University at Albany, State University of New York, philosopher who teaches a reproductive ethics course for AMBI....

Ah, wormholes. The intergalactic shortcut. A tunnel through space-time that allows intrepid travelers to hop from star system to star system without ever coming close to the speed of light. Wormholes are a workhorse of sci-fi interstellar civilizations in books and on the screen because they solve the annoying problem of “Well, if we stuck to known physics, 99.99999 percent of the story would be as fascinating as watching people sleep....

How do we remember smells for so long if olfactory sensory neurons only survive for about 60 days? —A. A. Bozorgi, Irvine, Calif. Donald A. Wilson, a zoology professor at the University of Oklahoma and co-author of Learning to Smell (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), replies: We recognize an old scent, despite having replaced at least a subset of the olfactory sensory neurons that first interacted with that odor, because the overall pattern of activity within the olfactory system remains relatively constant over time....

Researchers have stumbled on a surprising aphrodisiac for a single-celled organism: a protein secreted by a bacterium. They suggest it’s the first time that bacteria have been found to have a hand in controlling the sexual behaviour of eukaryotes—the domain of life that includes fungi, plants and animals. The organism involved belongs to the choanoflagellates: sperm-like creatures that are among the closest living single-celled relatives of animals. Biologists study them to understand how unicellular organisms evolved to become the earliest multicellular animals....

The fossilized remains of a pair of 53-million-year-old bats may have solved the biggest mystery in bat evolution: which came first—flight or echolocation? Researchers report in Nature this week that the fossils, each measuring less than four inches (10 centimeters) long, represent the oldest and most primitive bat species yet. The creatures had wings much like those of modern bats—except for tiny claws capping their toes and elongated fingers—meaning they likely fluttered through the air....

The universe really is expanding faster than scientists had thought, new research suggests. Astronomers have pegged the universe’s current expansion rate—a value known as the Hubble constant, after American astronomer Edwin Hubble—at about 44.7 miles (71.9 kilometers) per second per megaparsec. (One megaparsec is about 3.26 million light-years.) This newly derived number is consistent with a calculation that was announced last year by a different research team, which was led by Nobel laureate Adam Riess....

CLIMATEWIRE | The city of Portland was baking last June and Bureau of Emergency Management Director Jonna Papaefthimiou was in crisis mode. Sweltering in temperatures 40 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal in a city where air conditioning isn’t common, Papaefthimiou tried every possible last-ditch effort to help keep residents cool and healthy. There were the jury-rigged misting stations at public parks, stadium shelters kept open through the night and the hundreds of calls Papaefthimiou and her staff made to subsidized housing managers begging them to check on elderly residents....

Firefighters plan to take an unusually aggressive approach to battling wildfires this year in an effort to avoid mass evacuations and encampments during the coronavirus pandemic. State fire officials told members of Congress yesterday that their goal is to suppress wildfires quickly to forestall the need for large evacuation shelters and sprawling base camps for firefighters at a time when the risk of contracting the virus remains high. “The key for all of us is to have an aggressive initial attack....

At long last researchers have teleported the information stored in a beam of light into a cloud of atoms, which is about as close to getting beamed up by Scotty as we’re likely to come in the foreseeable future. More practically, the demonstration is key to eventually harnessing quantum effects for hyperpowerful computing or ultrasecure encryption systems. Quantum computers or cryptography networks would take advantage of entanglement, in which two distant particles share a complementary quantum state....

The Milky Way’s closest-held secrets may soon come to light, when the scientists behind the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft release the mission’s second batch of data on April 25. Designed to create the best-ever three-dimensional map of our galaxy, Gaia is poised to deepen our appreciation not only of the Milky Way but also of its most mysterious denizens: brown dwarfs, strange objects that lie uncomfortably between astronomers’ standard definitions of stars and gas-giant planets....

“FASCINATING” APTLY describes the October 2005 issue. Consider Dennis Drayna’s “Founder Mutations,” which covered genetic changes resulting in conditions such as sickle cell and lactose intolerance that can be used to trace human migrations over thousands of years and also lend support to the Out of Africa theory. And “The Forgotten Era of Brain Chips,” in which John Horgan conjured up an odd nostalgia for mid-20th-century brain-chip technology as he looked back on the achievements of brain-stimulation pioneer Jose Delgado and his then controversial vision of a “psychocivilized society....

Scientists have crafted a trap for the dengue virus using a scaffold made from fragments of DNA. The star-shaped structure is engineered to single out the virus in the bloodstream and latch on to it with precision, providing a powerful yet simple test to detect the mosquito-transmitted disease. Dengue is the world’s fastest-growing vector-borne disease, with multiple serious outbreaks in 2019. In its severe forms, it can cause internal bleeding and is sometimes fatal....

A handful of Republican staff members in Cleveland for the GOP convention were reported to be suffering Tuesday from a possible norovirus infection. And if there are a few people with norovirus, it’s likely there will be more. As many as 11 members of the California delegation’s advance team are showing symptoms that are consistent with the norovirus, according to Peter Schade, the Erie County health commissioner, who is investigating the outbreak....