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Coastal wetlands are among the best marine ecosystems to fight climate change, new research confirms. A study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment compared the carbon sequestration potential of a handful of marine ecosystems and found that mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows have the greatest impact on climate change. Helping less are coral reefs and kelp beds. “We’re trying to emphasize that coastal ecosystems could be an important component of reducing emissions through conservation and restoration of these systems,” said Jennifer Howard, marine climate change director at Conservation International and co-lead author of the new study....

CLIMATEWIRE | As the smoke clears from the Supreme Court’s major climate ruling last week, legal experts and clean energy groups say the country still has many options for achieving a dramatic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Last week, the high court’s conservative majority rejected the Obama administration’s systemic approach to power plant regulation in the Clean Power Plan that it had blocked from going into effect in 2016. The 6-3 decision found that EPA did not have clear direction from Congress in the Clean Air Act to craft a rule based on power plants shifting their energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables (Energywire, July 1)....

Invisibility cloaks made of plastic can now be created at home using 3D printers, researchers show. The first clues that cloaking devices might one day become more than science fiction, a la “Star Trek” began emerging seven or so years ago. Since then researchers have made such cloaks a reality by smoothly guiding rays of electromagnetic radiation such as microwave beams completely around objects so they proceed along their original trajectory as if nothing were there....

“New and improved.” These words have been yoked together in so many marketing campaigns that we tend to accept them as inexorably linked. But when it comes to new medications, don’t swallow them without a healthy dose of skepticism. Many or most new drugs are not—or at least not provably—an improvement over the best existing drug for a given condition, and the fast-track drug-approval processes that have prevailed in recent years have added to the uncertainty about their advantages....

Some individuals are indeed more susceptible to developing a narcissistic personality. Narcissism is characterized by self-centeredness (“It’s all about me!”), grandiosity (“I’m better than you!”) and vanity (“Look at me!”). It involves multifaceted psychological traits, motives and needs that influence how a person thinks, feels and behaves. Given this complexity, developing this form of extreme self-love is not as simple as inheriting a particular gene or experiencing a specific event. Instead becoming a narcissist likely involves an intricate mix of genetic and psychological or environmental factors....

The cosmic dark ages lasted no more than 180 million years. Astronomers have picked up a long-sought signal from some of the universe’s first stars, determining that these pioneers were burning bright by just 180 million years after the Big Bang. Scientists had long suspected that dawn broke over the cosmos that long ago; theorists’ models predict as much. But researchers had never had the evidence to back it up until now....

COVID changed many people’s willingness to shrug off the excesses of the rich. The pandemic drew an impossible-to-ignore distinction between those who can literally escape our world and the rest of us stuck on the ground confronting the ills of Earth: racism, climate change, global diseases. Even several members of Congress expressed their disapproval of Bezos. “Space travel isn’t a tax-free holiday for the wealthy,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon....

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazineMany scientists using the eggs of wild birds to monitor pollution levels are failing to properly standardize their work, according to a study led by Roland Klein, a biogeographer at Trier University in Germany.Pollution-monitoring programs often use birds’ eggs because they are relatively easy to collect and the animals’ positions near the tops of their food chains means that if there are pollutants in the environment birds are likely to take them up....

Don’t stress too much about cutting calories if you want to shed pounds—focus on getting more exercise. That’s the controversial message beverage giant Coca-Cola is backing in its new campaign to curb obesity. Coke is pushing this idea via a new Coke-backed nonprofit called Global Energy Balance Network, The New York Times reported on August 9. Money from Coke, the Times reported, is also financing studies that support the notion that exercise trumps diet....

MIAMI—On the job just six months as the chief resilience officer in Florida’s largest county, Jim Murley has gotten pretty good at his climate change 101 speech. It’s out of necessity. As the Earth’s temperature rises, the oceans warm, he told a crowd at a Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce event this spring. When water gets warmer, it expands, and the seas rise. And if glacial melt accelerates as predicted in Greenland and Antarctica, Florida is in even more trouble, he warned....

Six-term Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette owns a dubious distinction: She is one of the two co-authors of the bill that garnered President George W. Bush’s first-ever veto. The subject of the legislation: embryonic stem cells. DeGette, who represents Colorado’s 1st District—which includes Denver and its environs—is for them. The president isn’t. On July 19, 2006, President Bush ceremoniously vetoed the bill, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, even though it had passed both the House and Senate by wide margins—though the gaps were not large enough to override a veto....

It is the elephant in the room for dark-matter research: a claimed detection that is hard to believe, impossible to confirm and surprisingly difficult to explain away. Now, four instruments that will use the same type of detector as the collaboration behind the claim are in the works or poised to go online. Within three years, the experiments will be able to either confirm the existence of dark matter—or rule the claim out once and for all, say the physicists who work on them....

Let’s start with the basics. The most common muscle-building supplement there is can be found right in your fridge. It’s called protein. When you eat protein, your body breaks the protein down into amino acids. Those amino acids are then used to repair and grow new muscle fibers. When you consume an adequate amount of protein, your body will experience something called a positive balance of nitrogen. Nitrogen balance is a measure of protein metabolism....

No one thinks, I am the kind of person who is susceptible to misinformation. It is those others (stupid anti-vaxxers! arrogant liberal elites!) who are swayed by propaganda masquerading as news and bot armies pushing partisan agendas on Twitter. But recent disinformation campaigns—especially ones that originate with coordinated agencies in Russia or China—have been far more sweeping and insidious. Using memes, manipulated videos and impersonations to spark outrage and confusion, these campaigns have targets that transcend any single election or community....

A note in the issue of November 30, 1867, states grandly: “The Age of Invention: It appears from the records of the Patent Office, that in 1864 the number of applications for patents was 6,000; in the following year the number increased a full fifty percent; in 1866, 15,000 applications were filed, and this year will probably increase the number to 25,000.” Fast forward to 2015: in that year alone the U....

Our genetic code is the foundation of who we are. The DNA and RNA molecules that carry our genetic information dictate our past (like our innate skills), our present (like the color of our eyes, hair, and skin), and our future (our predisposition toward genetic diseases). But what if we could edit those genes, picking and choosing which ones we want to keep and which ones we want to edit out?...

NEW YORK—There are any number of ways to make money trading, though some prefer the term gambling. That’s because the financial world is full of innovation these days—even in the wake of the Great Recession—which primarily means inventing new instruments to trade. One can still trade the mortgage-backed securities that helped derail the global economy or corporate debt repackaged as bonds. Enron helped pioneer the trade in “physical” electricity, actual power available for purchase on the grid and only physical in the sense that the infrastructure to transport it is more visible than an odorless, colorless greenhouse gas....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. According to the old adage, one never gets a second chance to make a first impression. Might that hold true for the presidential candidates? There would seem to be plenty of opportunities between now and Election Day—including nonstop coverage of the horse race, policy statements, debates and live campaign events—for the candidates to share their views and values and for voters to analyze them in order to make an informed choice....

Next stop, Mars! Two robotic spacecraft began a seven-month journey to the Red Planet today (March 14), blasting off together atop a Russian Proton-M rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:31 a.m. EDT (0931 GMT; 3:31 p.m. local Kazakhstan time). The spacecraft — the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a lander called Schiaparelli — constitute the first part of the two-phase ExoMars program, a European-Russian project to hunt for signs of life on the Red Planet....

President Trump’s long-awaited budget request for the 2018 fiscal year is expected to be released Tuesday and it is likely to include steep cuts to agencies and programs that deal with climate science. The cuts, sketched out in the administration’s budget outline in March, are part of an effort to reduce non-defense spending in order to beef up the military and finance a wall along the border with Mexico. But Tuesday’s budget will just be one more point along a long and winding road....