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As ICU beds filled with COVID-19 patients last spring, hospitals learned that very sick patients were able to breathe better when they were flipped onto their stomachs. This positioning, called proning, has been used for decades to improve clinical outcomes for those suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the lung condition that patients with severe COVID-19 cases develop. Proning for ARDS was first described in 1976 in an article published in the journal Critical Care Medicine by ICU nurse Margaret Piehl and physician Robert Brown....

At the top of the globe in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, near the North Pole, a thin layer of soil above the permafrost thaws for just three months each year. When it does, the tundra bursts into bloom. The flowers are favorite summer foods of the Peary caribou, Rangifer tarandus pearyi, a petite, white-bearded subspecies of reindeer. With their noses stained red from the flowers of purple saxifrage, they are truly red-nosed reindeer in the summer....

Scientists have a wide range of attitudes toward human spaceflight. Some think it incompatible with, even inimical to, scientific goals. Others think the two not only compatible but essentially the same thing—for them, curiosity-driven science and because-it’s-there exploration are two sides of the same exploratory urge. Others think that humans will eventually want to leave the planet, out of either desire or desperation, even if the time has not yet come....

WE TAKE IT for granted that any kind of surgical procedure, whether extracting a wisdom tooth or replacing a heart valve, will be painless and won’t leave any bad memories. Every year tens of millions of patients worldwide remember being prepared for an operation—then nothing, until they wake up in the recovery room. This is the magic of general anesthesia, which safely knocks out that most precious of life’s possessions, conscious experience, then reliably restores it without any lasting consequences....

Talk about taking a dim view of things. Researchers have obtained ultrasharp images of weakly illuminated objects using a bare minimum of photons: mathematically stitching together information from single particles of light recorded by each pixel of a solid-state detector. The achievement is likely to support studies of fragile biological materials, such as the human eye, that could be damaged or destroyed by higher levels of illumination. The development could also have applications for military surveillance, such as in a spy camera that records a scene with a minimum of illumination to elude detection....

What do polar ice caps, guinea worm disease and wildfires have in common? All are being modeled with cutting-edge mathematics. Mathematical societies and institutes around the world are participating in “Mathematics of Planet Earth,” or MPE, this year. They aim to study the math that underpins geologic and biological processes on our planet as well as encourage more math researchers to tackle these problems. Events are planned for the year 2013, but the organizers hope that the initiative will have lasting effects....

I was reminded of my 4 A.M. tromp upon the arrival of the new book The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. Most people are probably more frightened of sharks than they are of mosquitoes—it’s tough to get too worked up over something you can swat. But as author Timothy Winegard points out, sharks kill fewer than 10 people annually, whereas the average yearly mosquito-related death toll over the past two decades is about two million....

In October a blog post circulated widely in the science journalism community. Larry Husten mused at CardioBrief.org about the potential benefits to society if only mainstream newspapers covered science with as much dedication as they cover baseball. Indeed, it might be wonderful. But as a big sports fan, I know that there could be unexpected consequences of heightened media interest in science. For example, imagine all-science talk radio: “Aaaaand good afternoon, everybody, how are your vital signs today?...

The US government should restrict or eliminate support for research with human fetal tissue obtained from abortions because it is of little use to medicine, a special panel of the US House of Representatives said on January 3. The panel said that the US National Institute of Health (NIH) should develop a system to determine whether fetal tissue is “the most appropriate model” for projects seeking government funding. The panel also urged Congress to commission studies on the feasibility of using tissue from stillborn and preterm infants....

Editor’s Note (9/23/2016): This article has been updated from the original to include Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson’s responses. This year’s highly unusual presidential election resembles the past two campaigns in at least one way. The candidates of the two major parties—Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump—provided answers to 20 questions about the most important science-based issues the U.S. faces in coming years. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson answered the questions as well....

Americans will soon be able to surf the Internet, hold a video call and connect with friends on social media all via the dashboard of their car while sitting in the driver’s seat. Further down the road, no one may need to be in the driver’s seat at all. Humans have been at the helm of the vehicle for the past 120 years. But now cars are starting to think for themselves and talk to smartphones, intersections and each other through what are broadly called intelligent transportation systems, or ITS....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Britain’s warm, wet winter brought floods and misery to many living across southern England, with large parts of Somerset lying underwater for months. When in January rainfall was double the expected average over wide areas, many people made cautious links between such extreme weather and global climate change. There were nay-sayers at the time but it now seems that there is evidence for those links....

A new pressure-sensing technology is helping doctors to read some of the innermost secrets of the heart. This cardiac monitor uses electromechanical dynamics to detect crucial pressure levels in a patient’s pulmonary artery and relay those readings to physicians wirelessly, obviating the need for clunky moving parts or external power sources. For the some 5.8 million people in the U.S. faced with chronic heart failure, trips back to the hospital can be frequent, costly and dangerous....

The young field of quantum thermodynamics, which tries to reconcile quantum theory with the 200-year-old science of heat and entropy, is booming. It’s also causing some heated disputes. Many physicists hope that rebuilding thermodynamics from the laws of quantum mechanics will help to settle long-debated conundrums. There are practical implications, too. The field could help to resolve whether the concepts of heat and efficiency apply to tiny electronic components and even atom-sized machines....

The Tissue Issue “Ultra” brands of toilet paper such as Charmin, Cottonelle and Quilted Northern may feel soft on your bum, but they’re hard on the environment because they’re made from virgin fiber and bleached with chlorine. Virgin fiber typically comes from trees grown for pulp production or from sawmill leftovers after trees are cut into lumber. The alternative: brands made from 100 percent recycled fiber, preferably with at least 80 percent postconsumer content....

Inspiration struck during one of the most critical rituals of university life: a coffee break. “We need coffee to boost our energy,” Rui Wang told Jingjing Xue, a fellow graduate student in the engineering department of the University of California, Los Angeles. Maybe, Wang suggested jokingly, we should caffeinate our experimental solar cells to make them work better, too. Xue’s response: That might actually work. It was a moment of “pure luck,” says U....

Like many teachers, I’ve agonized over what to tell my students about the crises convulsing us lately, the pandemic and U.S. presidential election. What lessons can we draw from what’s happened? I’ve decided to double down on the anti-wisdom I lay on all my classes: Distrust authorities, including me. I’ve inadvertently demonstrated that precept for my students. I’m a lefty with an optimistic streak, so I predicted that Joe Biden would win handily on election night; that was my take on polls showing Biden leading Trump in Florida, Ohio and other swing states....

On a normally peaceful residential road outside The Hague, the Dutch city that serves as seat of government, the whine of a hoisting crane and welding tools heralds a not-so-quiet housing revolution. Four workers standing above me on a scissor lift next to an apartment complex guide a thermally insulated facade 40 feet wide and one story tall into place against the existing wall. Its brickwork pattern of muted brown, grey and beige, and the triple glazed windows, perfectly fit the building’s existing frame and openings....

Man-made global warming increased the risks of wildfires by adding to extreme heat and droughts in some regions, according to Global Forest Watch (GFW). This year, California and Portugal have been among places suffering deadly blazes. Worldwide, global tree cover losses rose 51 percent in 2016 from the previous year to 297,000 square kilometers (114,672 square miles), according to data from the University of Maryland compiled by Global Forest Watch (GFW)....

What if the brainpower used playing video games could be channeled toward something more productive, such as helping scientists solve complex biological problems? A team of biochemists and computer scientists from the University of Washington (U.W.) in Seattle now reports that they have successfully tapped into this human problem-solving potential. Their competitive online game “Foldit,” released in 2008, enlists the help of online puzzle-solvers to help crack one of science’s most intractable mysteries—how proteins fold into their complex three-dimensional forms....