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Converting a home to run on renewable energy has never looked more appealing. Oil and gas prices have surged while material costs for solar panels and other clean technologies continue to fall. Billions of dollars have been proposed for decarbonizing efforts in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan. And, of course, the climate crisis is urgent. In the U.S., an estimated 13 percent of total carbon emissions come from fuel used for heating and cooking in residential and commercial buildings....

As I wrote in my Scientific American column this month, the early smartwatches aren’t exactly flying off store shelves. Clearly, something’s wrong—with the design, the price, the features or the concept itself. Or all of the above. Maybe, therefore, someone should poll the public. Someone should ask them what features a smartwatch should have. That’s exactly what I did. I asked my Twitter followers (I’m @pogue) a simple question: “The first smartwatches don’t seem to offer features people want....

The good news: countries have been increasing their ambitions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The bad news: it’s not nearly enough. World leaders, scientists, activists and negotiators are gathering in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), this year’s annual global meeting aimed at implementing climate action, including the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. Current emissions reduction pledges are far short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius, preferably 1....

[Editor’s note: This story was corrected to say that a mantle plume emerges from the mantle and not the core on March 10, 2016] Simmering deep below the geysers and hot springs of the Yellowstone caldera is a dormant supervolcano—a powerful behemoth with the ability to blanket the western U.S. with many centimeters of ash in a matter of hours. What could spark such a powerful eruption? Scientists have long debated over the origins of Yellowstone’s supervolcano, with the most widely accepted idea suggesting that it was formed by a mantle plume—a column of hot rocks emerging from deep within our planet, in the mantle layer....

The extreme heat that obliterated temperature records in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 will likely occur just once every 10,000 years. Researchers from UCLA used multiple climate models to determine that the extraordinary heat disaster last year was a highly improbable event, even in the age of climate change. Previous studies suggested that the deadly heat wave, which killed about 800 people, had a probability of near zero. “Accounting for the fact that things have gotten warmer, and even given the amount of warming we’ve seen in the region due to climate change, this event still came up as a highly, highly unusual event,” said Karen McKinnon, assistant professor of statistics and the environment at UCLA....

By Richard LovettA three-year study of hundreds of artifacts looks set to settle several long-standing debates about Egypt’s ancient dynasties.The study, which appears in the June 18 issue of Science, is the first to use high-precision measurements of radioactive carbon isotopes to produce a detailed timeline for the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs from about 2650 BC to 1100 BC.“It is a very, very important finding,” says Hendrik Bruins, an archaeologist and geoscientist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, who was not associated with the work....

By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed a ban on imports of fish from Sri Lanka for not tackling illegal fishing properly and lifted a ban on fish imports from Belize following the reform of its vessel inspection practices. The Commission on Tuesday also lifted warnings on Fiji, Panama, Togo and Vanuatu, saying they had implemented concrete measures to combat illegal fishing. The four countries thus avoided being placed on the “red list” of nations that are not allowed to sell fish to the 28-nation European Union, the world’s biggest fish importer....

Key concepts Chemistry Crystallization Freezing Molecules Introduction Pop science quiz: What happens to water when it reaches 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit)? Answer: It freezes! But does water always freeze when it reaches this temperature? Believe it or not, water can sometimes be cooled to temperatures below its freezing point and still remain liquid. In this state the water is supercool. How can this happen? In this activity you will create your own supercool water and initiate its transition from liquid to solid....

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” That saying leads us to believe that we can readily interpret a chart correctly. But charts are visual arguments, and they are easy to misunderstand if we do not pay close attention. Alberto Cairo, chair of visual journalism at the University of Miami, reveals pitfalls in an example diagrammed here. Learning how to better read graphics can help us navigate a world in which truth may be hidden or twisted....

Nine days after the announcement of the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL, software widely used to secure Internet traffic, we have a much better understanding of the extent of the damage. (Thanks to the invaluable xkcd Web comic, we also have a better understanding of how Heartbleed works.) The good news is that the first guesstimate for the number of afflicted Web sites—as many as two thirds of the total—proved to be wildly pessimistic....

The archetypal Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci draws wide admiration for his unequaled range of intellectual passions. The creator of the Mona Lisa and other artistic masterpieces in the second half of the 1400s and early 1500s was also an accomplished musician, entertainer, scientist and engineer whose inventions included ball bearings, instruments to measure the specific gravity of solids, and fantastic war machines (although he abhorred the “most bestial insanity” of battle)....

For decades researchers have known that our ability to remember everyday experiences depends on a slender belt of brain tissue called the hippocampus. Basic memory functions, such as forming new memories and recalling old ones, were thought to be performed along this belt by different sets of neurons. Now findings suggest that the same neurons in fact perform both these very different functions, changing from one role to another as they age....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Have you ever clicked on a link like “What does your favorite animal say about you?” wondering what your love of hedgehogs reveals about your psyche? Or filled out a personality assessment to gain new understanding into whether you’re an introverted or extroverted “type”? People love turning to these kinds of personality quizzes and tests on the hunt for deep insights into themselves....

While on a train ride to visit his sister in the Netherlands in 2002, where monstrous wind turbines now mar scenic views, Alex van der Beek got an idea: Instead of ruining the natural landscape with conventional technology, why not generate electricity from something that blends in—a fake tree? Van der Beek—whose previous professional experience was teaching alternative medicine—founded Solar Botanic, Ltd., in London last year on the concept. Solar Botanic’s ambitious plan involves bringing together three different energy-generation technologies—photovoltaics (aka solar power, or electricity from visible sunlight), thermoelectrics (electricity from heat) and piezoelectrics (electricity from pressure)—all in the unassuming shape of a leaf on its stem....

Accurately distinguishing friend from foe is a matter of life and death for ants: mistaking an invader for a nest mate—or the reverse—can lead to fatal chaos. Scientists have long observed ants deftly navigating through crowds, attacking only individuals that might be hostile. New research confirms how smell receptors on the insects’ antennae hold the key to this selective violence: without them, ants are socially blind and will not attack. “The current consensus was aggression between ants follows a simple rule: if [an ant] smells something different from the home colony, attack,” says Laurence Zwiebel, a co-author on the new study and a biologist at Vanderbilt University....

By Jane ChungSEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea has revised down its future reliance on nuclear power, although growing energy demand and the shutdown of aging reactors mean it is still likely to need more nuclear-fired plants over the coming two decades.Asia’s fourth-largest economy has been under pressure to curb its use of nuclear power in the wake of a safety scandal that led to the shutdown of some nuclear reactors to replace parts supplied with fake safety certificates....

The controversy began about 10 years ago, when it emerged that the National Football League had first tried to cover up evidence linking repetitive head injuries in players to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, and then to discredit the scientists doing the work. Since then, evidence supporting this link has grown as an increasing number of players have come forward to report that they are suffering from depression, and some have committed suicide....

“Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don’t we do something about natural stupidity?” computer scientist Steve Polyak once joked. The latter might be a tall order. But AI, it appears, just took one small step for robotkind. New research published June 14 in Science reports that for the first time scientists have developed a machine-learning system that can observe a particular scene from multiple angles and predict what it will look like from a new, never-before-observed angle....

Last July a female orca named J35 captured worldwide attention for her unprecedented vigil. J35, also known as Tahlequah, is a member of the closely monitored Southern Resident population of orcas in the Salish Sea, off the coast of Washington State and British Columbia. She had just given birth, following a nearly year-and-a-half-long gestation period. It was her second offspring, a daughter, and the first live birth in the declining Southern Resident community in three years....

Depression strikes some 35 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, contributing to lowered quality of life as well as an increased risk of heart disease and suicide. Treatments typically include psychotherapy, support groups and education as well as psychiatric medications. SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, currently are the most commonly prescribed category of antidepressant drugs in the U.S., and have become a household name in treating depression....