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The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday declared that jet engine exhaust endangers public health by contributing to climate change, a key milestone as it works to develop regulations that will cut carbon emissions from commercial aircraft. Large commercial jets account for 11 percent of all emissions from the global transportation sector. Aircraft emissions are expected to grow by 50 percent by 2050 as demand for air travel increases. Regulating aircraft emissions is part of the Obama administration’s goal under the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce U....

Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres have dropped to minute levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading—notably mask wearing and social distancing—also stop the flu. Influenza viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and they are less effective at jumping from person to person....

Vice President Mike Pence last night swore in Rex Tillerson to become the 69th secretary of State, hours after the Senate narrowly confirmed the former Exxon Mobil Corp. chief to be America’s top diplomat. Tillerson takes the reins of an agency in turmoil and steps onto the international stage as foreign leaders struggle to come to grips with many of President Trump’s recent foreign policy pronouncements. Speaking in the Oval Office, Tillerson said strangers sent him messages of encouragement during the confirmation process, which he described as a stark reminder that he now works for all Americans....

When the U.S. military attacked Iraq in March 2003, it brought to bear the most advanced technology then available for identifying potential terrorists by their physical features. The equipment measured all sorts of physical features—from fingerprints to images of the iris—but it was not particularly easy to use. The apparatus weighed a hefty 50 pounds and consisted of a hardened laptop hooked up to a camera, an iris scanner and a fingerprint device....

Barry Lienert, a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii, provides the following explanation. We start by determining the mass of the Earth. Issac Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation tells us that the force of attraction between two objects is proportional the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between their centers of mass. To obtain a reasonable approximation, we assume their geographical centers are their centers of mass....

Early humans living about one million years ago were extremely close to extinction. Evidence from a novel genetic approach, one that probes ancient DNA regions, suggests that the population of early human species back then, including Homo erectus, H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens, was 55,500 individuals, tops. Lynn Jorde, a human geneticist at the University of Utah, and his colleagues came to this conclusion after scanning two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, which are short snippets of DNA that move between regions of the genome....

The White House this week released its plan to confront the national opioid crisis, roiling urban and rural communities alike. In a three-page document circulated to news outlets and later posted on the White House Web site, Pres. Donald Trump lays out a strategy focused on scaling up law enforcement actions, boosting education about substance use and expanding access to treatment. But critics, including some human rights and public health groups, say aspects of the plan are too reminiscent of the “war on drugs” approach that has failed in the past....

Schizophrenia, the psychotic disorder marked by hallucinations, delusions and cognitive disorganization, affects roughly 1 percent of the U.S. population.* Many of those afflicted, however, also have reduced reproductive fitness, which means they are less likely to pass a genetic profile associated with the condition onto their offspring. “It’s sort of a genetic paradox,” explains Steve Dorus, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Bath in England. “Why is this disease found at such a high prevalence?...

Key concepts Cardiovascular system Exercise Energy and metabolism From National Science Education Standards: Personal health Introduction When you exercise, do you notice that you get out of breath? What about feeling your heart rate—your pulse—increasing? These two changes are not coincidental—they are both important, and natural, reactions of your cardiovascular system to exercise. From your brain down to your fingers and toes, your body needs plenty of oxygen to keep going....

For a while, Adam Martiny and some of his fellow scientists had suspected something was not right in how researchers understand the oceans. The object of their suspicion was something called the Redfield ratio, a principle stating that, when nutrients are not limiting, ocean microorganisms always have the same ratio of three elements: carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. This matters now because the Redfield ratio is used to help modelers and biogeochemists understand how important elements like nitrogen and carbon cycle in the oceans....

A leaked draft of a trade agreement under negotiation among 12 Pacific rim countries, including the US and Japan, contains language that could delay the entrance of generic competition for much-needed medicines and keep pharmaceutical prices high, according to the Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR), an international non-profit headquartered in New York. The organisation is lending its voice to those expressing similar concerns, like humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders. Although details of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have been kept confidential, leaked texts of the treaty have offered some clues, such as its embrace of intellectual property protections that go further than previous free trade agreements and expand existing intellectual property (IP) protections on pharmaceutical products, amfAR says in a new report released on May 8....

The field of psychology must bolster its ability to address the health effects of climate change, according to a new report from the nation’s largest professional organization of psychologists. The American Psychological Association says its more than 133,000 members can do more to address climate change by broadening their impact on everything from mental health care to climate education and communication. The report comes just one day after the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that there is a “limited amount of time left” for humans to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change (Climatewire, Feb....

By Ed Yong of Nature magazine Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman has issued a strongly worded call to one group of psychologists to restore the credibility of their field by creating a replication ring to check each others’ results. Kahneman, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, addressed his open e-mail to researchers who work on social priming, the study of how subtle cues can unconsciously influence our thoughts or behavior....

Dear EarthTalk: I don’t hear much about the environmental impacts of our consumer culture any more, but it seems to me that our “buy, buy, buy” mentality is a major contributor to our overuse of energy and resources. Are any organizations addressing this issue today?—M. Oakes, Miami There is no doubt true that our overly consumerist culture is contributing to our addiction to oil and other natural resources and the pollution of the planet and its atmosphere....

CALAMA, Chile—About 765 miles north of Santiago in the Atacama Desert, the Gabriela Mistral recreational center emerges as an unexpected touch of modernity among the sandy-colored mountains. Down a path of crushed stone leading to the cafeteria, the site is peppered with circle-shaped patterns made up of bluish-green rocks—a telltale sign of the presence of copper oxide. Since opening in 2009, the striking installations at the Gabriela Mistral mine—or Minera Gaby—have been a source of praise for their innovative approach to mining and community development....

On the eve of our national election, we realize that one challenging issue facing the next president is how to address terrorism and the options for counterterrorism. As psychological research has made clear, what he and his administration say about these issues will influence how the public thinks about them—and will affect our national and international policy. [For more on the power of words, see “When Words Decide,” by Barry Schwartz; Scientific American Mind, August/September 2007....

View slideshow In the late 1940s the rocket pack—over the years also called the “rocket belt,” “jump belt” and “jet vest”—became more than a comic book concept when engineers at the U.S. military’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., began experimenting with rockets that could be used to carry a person into the air and allow him or her to land safely again using their feet as landing gear. In 1952 inventor Thomas Moore, strapped tightly to his cylindrical backpack, hovered in the air for just a few seconds at Redstone, but it was enough to launch a series of campaigns to develop the technology that would bring personal flight to life....

One day in 2005, Marc Cornelissen found himself face to face with a polar bear while his pants were down and he was sitting on an outdoor toilet in the Arctic. His heart pounded, and he resolved to surrender, he said in an interview with a Dutch magazine. Then he remembered his daughter back home in the Netherlands. He grabbed a shovel and shook it toward the bear’s face, as the bear was, by then, standing on its hind legs and sizing up its prey....

The US Treasury has sanctioned 271 employees at the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in response to the sarin gas attack launched by the Syrian regime earlier this month that killed nearly 100 civilians. The move represents one of the largest sanctions actions ever taken by the Treasury. The SSRC is Syria’s government agency believe to be responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons, as well as the means to deliver them....

Snow cover across the entire Rocky Mountain range has been shrinking due to warmer spring temperatures over the past 30 years, a new study finds. Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) studied historic snowpack variations in the Rocky Mountains and found that warmer spring temperatures since 1980 are triggering an estimated 20 percent decline in snow cover throughout the range, which runs for more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) in western North America....