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Another American carbon pricing plan has died. The Transportation and Climate Initiative—a cap-and-trade program covering cars in three Northeastern states and the District of Columbia—was abandoned last week after Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) pulled the plug on the program. The announcement represents the latest setback for carbon pricing plans in the United States, and it raises questions about how policymakers in the Northeast plan to tackle emissions from transportation, by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the region....

Join us below at noon Eastern on Thursday (July 26) for a live 30-minute online chat with psychology graduate student Maria Konnikova of Columbia University in New York, who will discuss the social and literary roots of anxiety. Her “Literally Psyched” blog with the Scientific American network investigates tests of psychology as conceived in literature. Her July 23 post “Warning: This Story Might Make You Anxious,” was one of the most popular on ScientificAmerican....

A conventional historical narrative holds that the rise and expansion of the Mongol Empire – first under Genghis Khan and, later, his progeny and successors – were propelled by a deteriorating climate in the Mongolian steppe. Fleeing drought, the narrative runs, Ghengis Khan’s Golden Horde pushed west, south and east in a bid for expansion that would someday form the world’s largest contiguous empire. Indeed, climate records indicate that the arid, landlocked steppe was seized by decades of drought in the late years of the 12th century, possibly exacerbating the violent conflicts that racked the region at the time....

Katie Corker wondered what temperature the coffee was supposed to be. She was doing a psychology experiment—well, redoing an experiment. The original findings, suggesting that holding something warm can make a person behave warmly, had been published in 2008 in the prestigious journal Science to a flurry of media coverage. Yet as Corker tried to retrace each step in the study, there were so many unknowns: the temperature of the hot coffee distributed to subjects, how quickly the mug cooled in their hands....

Roughly two million to three million years ago, a primate moved from the forest to the savanna. It grew longer legs, larger muscles and wider feet. It developed sweat glands that allowed it to remain cool under the blazing African sun. It was also around this time, according to recent research, that a mutation in a single gene called CMAH spread throughout the species. Now a study in mice supports the idea that this genetic tweak enabled humans to run long distances and hunt their prey to exhaustion....

Picture two female chimpanzees hanging out under a tree. One grooms the other, systematically working long fingers through fur, picking out bugs and bits of leaves. The recipient sprawls sleepily on the ground, looking as relaxed as someone enjoying a spa day. A subsequent surreptitious measurement of her levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and pleasure, would confirm that she is pretty happy. And why not? Grooming appears to be a pleasurable way to spend time....

Just a cosmic hop, skip and jump away, an Earth-size planet orbits the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri. Ever since the discovery of the exoplanet—known as Proxima Centauri b—in 2016, people have wondered whether it could be capable of sustaining life. Now, using computer models similar to those used to study climate change on Earth, researchers have found that, under a wide range of conditions, Proxima Centauri b can sustain enormous areas of liquid water on its surface, potentially raising its prospects for harboring living organisms....

When US voters head to the polls on November 4, they are poised to set in motion a major political shift that promises to intensify partisan strife over issues such as climate change, immigration and research funding. For the first time since 2006, Republicans are likely to win full control of the US Congress — having seized the House of Representatives in 2010, they are now predicted to take control of the Senate....

“Biodegradable” plastic doesn’t do what you think it does. Your paper or metal straw takes only a tiny sip at the problem of plastic pollution. And your supposedly eco-conscious cloth grocery bag is more damaging to the environment than conventional plastic bags—unless you reuse it literally thousands of times. In other words, many of our ideas about plastic and the environment are confused. And that may be getting in the way of the fight against global warming....

In perhaps the slowest invasion in history, mountain meadows in the Pacific Northwest—where hikers and backpackers revel in breath-taking scenery—are gradually giving way to hemlocks, Pacific silver firs and other conifers. In these high-elevation, subalpine meadows of Jefferson Park in the central Cascade Range in Oregon, snow typically covers the meadows until July or August and returns again in November or December—too short a growing season for most trees to take root....

China not only has the world’s largest population and looks set to become the largest economy — it also wants to lead the world when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). In 2017, the Communist Party of China set 2030 as the deadline for this ambitious AI goal, and, to get there, it laid out a bevy of milestones to reach by 2020. These include making significant contributions to fundamental research, being a favoured destination for the world’s brightest talents and having an AI industry that rivals global leaders in the field....

Some years ago I made up a list of things I was tired of reading in profiles of women scientists: how she was the first woman to be hired, say, or to lead a group, or to win some important prize. I had just been assigned a profile of a splendid woman astronomer, and her “firsts” said nothing about the woman and everything about the culture of astronomy: a hierarchy in which the highest ranks have historically included only scientists who are male, white and protective of their prerogatives....

Twitter’s hundreds of millions of users form communities that grow through the exchange of information, like-minded banter or biting criticism—sometimes all three. At its best, Twitter helped enable the Arab Spring revolutions that swept through North Africa and the Middle East beginning in 2010 to be broadcast to a global audience. Could a closer study of interactions among Twitter users likewise help put an end to antibacterial-resistant superbugs? A team of Carnegie Mellon University (C....

If you had been blind all your life and could suddenly see, could you distinguish by sight what you knew already by touch—say, a cube from a sphere? Would flowers look like flowers you’d felt and faces like faces, or would they all be confusing patterns? How would you start to make sense of the many objects in your immediate view? If we are born knowing nothing, how do we come to know anything?...

Giant lasers may indeed launch fleets of spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, given breakthroughs in the science behind extraordinarily thin, incredibly reflective sails that can catch this laser light, a new study finds. The $100 million Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which was announced in 2016, plans to use powerful lasers to launch swarms of tiny spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own. While using laser cannons for spacecraft propulsion might sound like science fiction, previous research has suggested that “light sailing” might be one of the only technically feasible ways to get a probe to another star within a human lifetime....

In August 2005 the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corp. hired global engineering firm Arup to design a city for the booming commercial capital of China. Dubbed Dongtan—or “East Beach”—the new satellite city would sit on the edge of the alluvial island of Chongming in the mouth of the Yangtze River. The government finished a tunnel and bridge to the island in 2009, paving the way for a development that would produce little waste, rely largely on sea breezes to generate its electricity, and permit only cars that emit no carbon dioxide, such as those powered by hydrogen fuel or electricity....

The psychologist Rollo May once described depression as “the inability to construct a future”. According to the National Institute for Mental Health this “inability” can affect up to 14.8 million Americans – 7% of the population – in a given year, at an annual cost of $100 billion. That’s about five times the renewable energy budget of the United States. We hear many things about how great we’re getting at saving the planet with our hybrids and off-shore wind farms; we hear far less about how we’re doing in combating or preventing depression....

Calls to investigate Chinese laboratories have reached a fever pitch in the United States, as Republican leaders allege that the coronavirus causing the pandemic was leaked from one, and as some scientists argue that this ‘lab leak’ hypothesis requires a thorough, independent inquiry. But for many researchers, the tone of the growing demands is unsettling. They say the volatility of the debate could thwart efforts to study the virus’s origins. Global-health researchers also warn that the growing demands are exacerbating tensions between the United States and China ahead of crucial meetings at which world leaders will make high-level decisions about how to curb the pandemic and prepare for future health emergencies....

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. jury verdict linking regular use of Johnson & Johnson talcum powder to a woman’s death from ovarian cancer has spurred new concern from consumers, but scientists say the evidence of real danger is inconclusive at best. Jurors in St. Louis on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 million in damages to the family of a woman who had used the company’s talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower for several decades....

I expected “gesture control” to be immediately intuitive. But as I slip on the MYO—a flexible band that fits around my forearm—a cursor on a laptop in front of me begins somersaulting wildly across the screen, tracking my erratic arm movements. I focus, slow down and try to get a feel for this new tool. “Move your wrist right—and now left,” instructs Stephen Lake, co-founder of Thalmic Labs of Waterloo, Ontario, the start-up behind the MYO (named after a biological prefix denoting muscle)....