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The nuclear agreement thrashed out between Iran and six world powers last week represents a landmark piece of diplomacy, with science at its heart. The ‘framework’ deal is designed to ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme is used for peaceful means. In exchange, the country will obtain some relief from sanctions that have crippled its economy. The result of eight days of intense negotiation in Lausanne, Switzerland, the deal is still preliminary and does not exist in written form, though it has been outlined in a document released by the United States....

Mammoths are among the best-known inhabitants of the last ice age. Fossils usually offer a static snapshot of an animal’s life, but researchers recently used one to track every place a male mammoth traveled from birth to death. By analyzing the chemicals in a 17,100-year-old tusk, scientists found the mammoth walked far enough to loop around the world twice—likely in search of food and a mate. “Tusks are like time lines,” adding layers each year that contain chemicals from the environment, says Matthew J....

How we think strongly influences our physical and emotional well-being. But according to physician and researcher Hilary Tindle, being optimistic may have a more far-reaching effect. In Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging (Hudson Street Press/Penguin Group, 2013), Tindle reveals that seeing the world through rosier-colored glasses can improve physical health and slow the aging process. She provides readers with seven strategies to enhance their outlook, such as meditation techniques, to help them put a more positive spin on life....

When it comes to protecting their nests, reed warblers have something in common with Super Bowl hopefuls, the Pittsburgh Steelers: both believe the best offense is a great defense. But whereas the Steelers must stop the Arizona Cardinals, the songbirds need to steel themselves against marauding cuckoos. The reason: reed warbler nests are a favorite target of cuckoos, which are always on the lookout for places to lay their eggs and foist off the hard work of child rearing onto an unsuspecting dupe....

Ernie Button was never a whisky drinker, but his wife loved the stuff. So, in an attempt to develop his palate the Phoenix-based photographer began sampling everything from blended malts to single grains. Along his culinary journey he became intoxicated not only with sipping the amber liquid but with photographing it, too. His subject, however, was not a two-fingers’ pour but the dried drops left over in the bottom of the glass, which—as he discovered one morning while loading the dishwasher—leave intricate, lacelike designs in their evaporative wake....

Using a new technique, scientists have discovered reserves of helium in Tanzania said to be equivalent to seven times the amount of the noble gas consumed worldwide each year. The new source could alleviate recurrent shortages of helium that have plagued users of scientific instruments and medical imaging equipment. Working with the start-up firm Helium One, scientists at Oxford and Durham universities uncovered the reserves in Tanzania’s East African Rift Valley....

Does speech–that uniquely human trait–come from our genes, or is it learned? Luminaries such as linguist Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have championed the role of evolutionary inheritance over that of culture. But for many years, proponents of this position could only look to languages themselves for evidence. They observed that many tongues share grammatical structures and other attributes, bolstering the argument that speech is innate. The suspicion that a “speech gene” might exist, however, remained unresolved....

At a tiny outpost in the middle of Antarctica, Russian scientists are poised to become the first humans to reach a massive liquid lake that has been cut off from the sunlit world for millennia, and may house uniquely adapted life forms that are new to science. Researchers are racing against the fast-approaching bitter cold and total darkness of Antarctic winter to complete a drill hole to Lake Vostok, one of the largest lakes on Earth, and the largest of the nearly 400 ice-buried lakes discovered on the frigid continent so far....

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo Heart and biochemistry monitors blink beside a woman curled up on a camp bed in an Ebola treatment centre. Her bed is encased in a transparent plastic cube to contain the virus, and an experimental drug flows through her veins. The race to develop treatments for Ebola has accelerated since the largest epidemic in history devastated West Africa between 2014 and 2016....

Key concepts Mathematics Geometry Three-dimensional Volume Introduction Have you ever had fun making different figures or colorful shapes out of Play-Doh? You can squish and stretch a single piece of Play-Doh to make all sorts of shapes. How does changing the shape affect its volume? In this science activity you will find out by investigating how a piece of clay’s shape affects its dimensions (length, width and height) as well as how these changes are related to its volume....

Editor’s Note: We are republishing this October 2004 Anti Gravity column by Steve Mirsky as part of our in-depth report on Science at the Movies. They’re baaack. I’m not referring to some horror movie monster, although that’s what the line most likely conjures up in the imagination. I’m talking about May R. Berenbaum and Richard J. Leskosky, who have once again teamed up to write a scholarly piece sure to interest all fans of the science in science fiction....

• View the slideshow of quantum erasure in action • Discuss the experiment in the blog Quantum effects are not usually the kind of thing you expect to see around the house, but the May issue of Scientific American includes an experiment you can do at home that illustrates the odd phenomenon known as quantum erasure. All it requires are a laser pointer, some polarizing film and a few household objects....

In 2010, former President Obama pulled the plug on a cap-and-trade proposal to push through other parts of his domestic agenda. A decade passed before Congress tackled climate policy again. When it did, President Biden chose the opposite path of his former boss. The reconciliation package announced by Biden yesterday calls for $555 billion in climate and clean energy spending, making it the largest climate investment in American history and the biggest section of the $1....

When Phillip Tafoya was a young boy in the 1960s, the mountains astride Santa Clara Canyon in northern New Mexico were cloaked in deep green ponderosa pines and Douglas firs. The people of Santa Clara Pueblo, Tafoya’s home, have relied on this forest for cultural uses, food, firewood and recreation for centuries. Today it is mostly gone. Ten years ago the Las Conchas fire—one of the largest in state history—scorched 156,000 acres in the pueblo and surrounding federal lands....

What do you do when, say, a friendly conversation accidentally triggers a bitter memory? You probably try to put the dark thoughts out of your mind and carry on with the chat. Now a recent study in Nature Communications suggests that trying to banish that memory may cause you to forget the details of your conversation more quickly than you would have otherwise. In the study, participants started by memorizing a number of word pairs....

We all know someone who is not as smart as we are—and someone who is smarter. At the same time, we all know people who are better or worse than we are in a particular area or task, say, remembering facts or performing rapid mental math calculations. These variations in abilities and talents presumably arise from differences among our brains, and many studies have linked certain very specific tasks with cerebral activity in localized areas....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. One of the largest icebergs ever recorded has just broken away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Over the past few years I’ve led a team that has been studying this ice shelf and monitoring change. We spent many weeks camped on the ice investigating melt ponds and their impact—and struggling to avoid sunburn thanks to the thin ozone layer....

We have entered into the sixth great extinction of the earth’s species, according to many biologists. The previous five were caused by natural events—meteorite impacts and global temperature change—but this latest is decidedly human-generated, primarily through habitat destruction. Around 20 percent of all species on the planet are now threatened with extinction. In this collection (with descriptions by conservationist Baillie), photographer Flach captures the personality and character of some of the earth’s most threatened denizens....

1972 Sunlight on Venus “Additional knowledge about the cloudy planet Venus has been gathered by the Russian space probe Venus 8, which made a soft landing in July. One of the debates about Venus was whether or not its cloud cover was so thick that sunlight would not penetrate to the surface. Venus 8 carried a photometer that gave readings as the probe parachuted through the atmosphere for nearly an hour before landing....

Ralph Demicco feels as if he has watched the 53-minute surveillance video 100 times, searching it for clues to preventing tragedy. He sees a young man walk into his gun shop in Hooksett, N.H. The man asks about buying a handgun. “He engaged the clerk in small talk, totally disarmed the clerk,” Demicco says. “No way in heck that clerk would suspect that three quarters of an hour after the conversation that person would take his life....