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(Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced new fuel and automobile rules, known as Tier 3 standards, that aim to cut soot, smog and toxic emissions from cars and trucks. The standards are expected to reduce tailpipe and evaporative emissions from cars, light trucks, medium-duty passenger vehicles and some heavy-duty vehicles. The allowable sulfur content of U.S. gasoline will also be reduced. The tailpipe standards will include phase-in schedules that vary by vehicle class but generally will start between model years 2017 and 2025, the EPA said....

You’re big, bulky—and hungry. So you lumber into a restaurant to get a bite. You scan the menu for a tasty meal, but when it comes time to order the waiter refuses to serve you. The reason? You’re too fat. Sound outrageous? You may want to steer clear of Mississippi, where legislation was recently introduced that would ban restaurants from serving proportion-challenged patrons. We kid you not. The controversial measure (state House Bill 282) would prohibit eateries from serving food to “any person who is obese based on criteria prescribed by the state health department....

The Senate’s global warming snowballs might be melting. Conservative politicians in Washington are subtly shifting their arguments on climate change as the body of evidence grows to show how the Earth is affected by humans. And they often fall short of muscular denial. Former Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Rex Tillerson says he believes in warming, but he doubts the accuracy of climate models. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) says scientists disagree about the “degree and extent of global warming....

The Mongol hordes led by Genghis Khan carved out the largest contiguous land empire history has ever witnessed, reaching at its apex from Asia’s Pacific coast to eastern Europe and down into Persia and southeastern Asia. Although conventional wisdom suggests drought may have pushed them across the steppe to conquer more bountiful lands, ancient, long-dead trees discovered in a forbidding lava field in Mongolia give evidence that unprecedented rains might actually have helped fuel their expansion....

Larry Stap’s fifth-generation family dairy farm has come a long way since his great grandfather established it in Lynden, Wash., in 1910. Now, as the 21st century gains ground in an ancient industry, Stap and his family have installed a robotic milking system that allows each of Twin Brook Creamery’s 200 cows to choose when and how often she wants to saunter into the milking parlor, where she enjoys a meal and gets milked—all without the need for human supervision....

The potato, whether fried, roasted or mashed, is one of the most popular foods in the world—not only is it delicious and versatile, it also needs little water and adapts well, thriving in extreme environments where other vegetables are hard-pressed to grow. And then there is its nutritional value. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, consuming a single russet-type potato can add nearly 10 percent of the daily recommended caloric load, providing four grams of fiber, five of protein and only two of sugar....

For the first time, carbon dioxide emissions from an electric power plant have been captured, pumped underground and solidified—the first step toward safe carbon capture and storage, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science. “This opens another door for getting rid of carbon dioxide or storing carbon dioxide in the subsurface that really wasn’t seen as a serious alternative in the past,” said study co-author Martin Stute, a hydrologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York....

How do you fight an insect that inflicts billions of dollars of crop damage every year, an invader that has spread to every inhabited continent and has a talent for evolving resistance to every new chemical designed to poison it? Maybe—just maybe—by releasing more of the same insect. This summer thousands of moths will be taking to the sky over a cabbage patch in upstate New York. Bred in a laboratory, the male bugs carry a gene designed to kill progeny they sire with wild female moths feasting on the cabbage....

Key concepts Plant biology Capillary action Water Dyes Colors Introduction Have you ever heard someone say, “That plant is thirsty,” or “Give that plant a drink of water.”? We know that all plants need water to survive, even bouquets of cut flowers and plants living in deserts. But have you ever thought about how water moves within the plant? In this activity, you’ll put carnations in dyed water to figure out where the water goes....

A mystery surrounding the way bacteria manage their vitamins piqued our interest in the fall of 2000. Together with growing evidence in support of a tantalizing theory about the earliest life on earth and our own efforts to build switches from biological molecules, the bacterial conundrum set our laboratory group at Yale University in search of an answer. What we found was a far bigger revelation than we were expecting: it was a new form of cellular self-control based on one of the oldest types of molecule around–ribonucleic acid, or RNA....

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) today issued a new report charging that users of eBay.com are behind two thirds of the online trade in endangered animals worldwide, specifically, ivory made from tusks ripped from poached elephants. The report comes just months after IFAW accused eBay, Inc., of failing to clamp down on the illegal animal sales and a day after the San Jose, Calif., company announced a global ban on the sale of most types of ivory (with the exception of “antique” items made before 1900 that contain small bits of ivory, such as antique piano keys or tables with ivory inlay)....

In the face of any new and infectious disease outbreak, our first reaction and natural hope is that we will be spared from the suffering. Despite the hard logic of increasing numbers of new infections and rising forecasts of total deaths, our tendency is to deny the reality around us. So many bad things already happen in the course of our lives—cars crash, tornadoes strike and hearts fail—why add another to the list?...

On a Saturday night in April Scott Kraus is getting ready to take out his boat from Sandwich, Mass., to spend the evening on Cape Cod Bay’s calm waters. Kraus, vice president of research at the New England Aquarium, and his two-member crew are not out for a leisure sunset cruise but are on a mission—they want to find out what North Atlantic right whales are doing at night. “It is like pulling an all-nighter in college, without the beer,” says Kraus, who has loaded an arsenal of militarylike night vision tools on the boat, including a high-resolution infrared camera, a light intensifying scope and a mirrorless, low-light digital camera....

Usually once you pay for something, you own it, and the transaction is complete. That’s how it works with, for example, sneakers, pretzels or dog shampoo. But in technology, you’re never really finished paying. Buying Microsoft Word, or Quicken, or an iPhone may feel like a one-time transaction, but it’s not. Every year you’ll be offered the chance to buy a newer, updated version. Since Word debuted in the 1980s, upgraded versions have been offered 14 times....

Life has spent the past few billion years working with a narrow vocabulary. Now researchers have broken those rules, adding extra letters to biology’s limited lexicon. Chemist Floyd Romesberg of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues manipulated Escherichia coli bacterial cells to incorporate two types of foreign chemical bases, or letters, into their DNA. The cells then used that information to insert unnatural amino acids into a fluorescent protein....

“Frequent and devastating” economic shocks brought on by climate change threaten to undermine the stability of the U.S. financial system, according to a first-of-its-kind report from a financial regulator. The watershed document was released yesterday by a climate-focused subcommittee within the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that regulates derivatives markets. The CFTC task force was created last year to investigate global warming’s potential to topple financial markets—and to determine what steps the federal government should take to prevent that outcome....

A team of astronomers announced they have discovered the smallest and potentially most Earth-like extrasolar planet yet. Five times as massive as Earth, it orbits a relatively cool star at a distance that would provide earthly temperatures as well, signaling the possibility of liquid water. “The separation between the planet and its star is just right for having liquid water at its surface,” says astronomer and team spokesperson Stephane Udry of the Observatory of Geneva in Versoix, Switzerland....

Doctors and nutritionists have long associated the Mediterranean diet with human health benefits, including a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A recent study of 1,880 elderly people living in New York City, for example, showed that those who strongly adhered to a Mediterranean diet over the study’s 14-year span had a 32 to 40 percent lower incidence of Alzheimer’s compared with those who did not. Extra virgin olive oil seems to be one of the main factors behind this risk reduction....

In 1901 the soon to be first president of the American Anthropological Association wrote that “through observation of a typical [Native American] tribe,” it was clear that “the savage stands strikingly close to sub-human species in every aspect.” An outgrowth of the pseudoscientific theory of racial and cultural hierarchy, William McGee’s words in American Anthropologist, anthropology’s flagship academic journal, echoed racist 19th-century views that justified mistreatment of Indigenous communities and propped up arguments for eugenics....

Scientific American presents Everyday Einstein by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. Hi I’m Dr. Sabrina Stierwalt, the Everyday Einstein, bringing you Quick and Dirty Tips to help you make sense of science. As an astrophysicist, I am happiest when I am at a telescope observing distant galaxies. My happiness is not just because I’m gathering data to further my research, but also because my body and mind feel their best at night....