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After nearly two weeks of recent United Nations negotiations in New York City, countries from around the world failed to finalize an ambitious treaty that would create enormous marine protected areas and enforce stricter rules for industry on the high seas—the two thirds of the ocean beyond any country’s exclusive ocean territory. The deal faltered in the final hours, mainly over an issue that has long dogged international ocean talks: how to share profits from commercializing the high seas’ genetic resources....

1967 Cosmic Radiation and TV “Snow” “It now appears that radio astronomers have discovered another basic cosmological phenomenon that, like the recession of the galaxies, provides a view of the universe on a truly universal scale. It is low-energy cosmic radio radiation that apparently fills the universe and bathes the earth from all directions. Intense enough to be received by conventional radio telescopes, it has undoubtedly been detected, but not recognized, for years; indeed, it accounts for some of the ‘snow’ seen on a television screen....

Nuts are generally thought of as healthy food choices. They are somewhat high in calories, due to their relatively high fat content. But these aren’t just empty calories. Along with those healthy unsaturated fats, you’re also getting fiber and protein, which help keep you from getting hungry. Perhaps that’s why dieters who include nuts in their meal plans lose more weight and report feeling less hungry. And in general, people who eat nuts on a regular basis are more likely to maintain a healthy weight....

Messages from the climate talks this week have focused on ambition and equity more than commas and semicolons. That’s because most aspects of the Paris Agreement’s rulebook were settled three years ago in Katowice, Poland, bringing an important chapter in the negotiations to an end. Or almost. There are a few unfinished pieces related to the rulebook, and those fall to the delegates gathered at the Scottish Event Campus this week and next for the meeting known as COP 26....

Believing that we can change a trait for the better tends to be self-fulfilling, and vice versa. People who contend that intelligence or creativity cannot be improved, for example, tend to develop less in these areas than those who think these facets are malleable. This finding holds in a variety of settings [see box below], which has led many to conclude that having a growth mind-set is an unconditionally good thing....

The story is all too familiar: A middle school student is tripped while walking down the aisle of a school bus, and the entire busload of children erupts in laughter. In the ensuing days and weeks, the same young student is shoved in the stairwell, harassed in the lunch room, and ridiculed online. Classmates are vicious and unyielding in their attacks, often recruiting others to join in the torment, and targeting anyone who attempts to thwart their assault....

Are Chinese moms superior? That claim was suggested in a headline last week for a book excerpt in The Wall Street Journal by Yale University law professor and self-proclaimed “tiger mother” Amy Chua. It drew roars of anger from parenting experts and the Chinese-American community for its harsh parenting techniques, which included verbal denigrations and negative reinforcement, such as not permitting bathroom breaks or threats to destroy favorite toys until the child performed a musical composition flawlessly....

U.S. EPA is seeking to impose stricter emission regulations on marine vessels along U.S. coastlines, a move expected to dramatically slash air pollution in port cities, Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today. The move makes the United States the first country to ask the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, to create an emissions control area around the nation’s coastline. “This is an important – and long overdue – step in our efforts to protect the air and water along our shores, and the health of the people in our coastal communities,” Jackson said at a news conference at Port Newark in New Jersey....

Two middle-aged men who live thousands of miles apart in the U.S. and have never met each other may have a common trait: a propensity to absorb iron so well that this seeming benefit can actually become unhealthy, potentially causing multiple-organ damage and even death. Someone with this condition, called hereditary hemochromatosis, often has it because each of his parents passed on to him the same mutation in a specific gene, an error that originated long ago in a single individual in Europe....

Editor’s note: This slide show is part of a four-part series that Anne Casselman, a freelance writer and regular contributor to Scientific American, reported in early June during a rare opportunity to conduct field reporting on grizzly bears in Heiltsuk First Nation traditional territory in British Columbia. For a first-person reflection on her experience there, click here. HEILTSUK TRADITIONAL TERRITORY, British Columbia—Diminishing wild salmon runs along British Columbia’s central coast have raised concerns in the past several years about the fate of the region’s grizzly bears....

Dear EarthTalk: Are there still outspoken global warming deniers in Congress or the mainstream media? If so, what do they say when presented with scientific facts and anecdotal evidence pointing to an increasingly warming atmosphere? – Ben Charles, Cary, NC Given the preponderance of data showing rising temperatures around the globe in recent decades—along with the increasing frequency of extreme weather events—it’s hard to believe there are still any climate change deniers....

Hurricane Ernesto dumped flooding rains along the east coast of the U.S., Hurricane John lashed the Pacific coast of Mexico. Typhoon Saomai killed at least 436 people in China and injured thousands when it stormed ashore a few weeks back–the strongest tropical cyclone to hit that nation in half a century–and a new typhoon, dubbed Ioke, slammed Wake Island with 50-foot waves. Variously called hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones, depending on which ocean they form in, these storms rank among nature’s fiercest....

PORTLAND, Ore.—What’s the sound of one molecule clapping? Researchers have demonstrated a device that can pick up single quanta of mechanical vibration similar to those that shake molecules during chemical reactions, and have shown that the device itself, which is the width of a hair, acts as if it exists in two places at once—a “quantum weirdness” feat that so far had only been observed at the scale of molecules....

Crime fighters could soon have a new method to detect illegal drugs thanks to researchers in Italy. The team has succeeded in grafting an artificial receptor – capable of identifying a whole family of methamphetamine drugs rather than just one – onto a microscopic silicon springboard that flexes when the receptor hosts a relevant guest drug molecule. The new approach could be useful for tackling so-called designer drugs, in which minor modifications are made to an existing drug....

The fast-spreading Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant is highly likely to compromise some of the protection from vaccines, suggest the first laboratory studies of Omicron’s ability to evade immunity. But the preliminary results—released overnight by teams in South Africa, Germany, and Sweden, as well as the Pfizer-BioNtech collaboration—hint that protection conferred by existing COVID-19 vaccines won’t be totally wiped out, and that boosters should improve immunity to Omicron. “We’re likely to see reduced effectiveness of vaccines against preventing infection,” says Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who co-authored one of the studies....

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality. —Lucius Annaeus Seneca Dennis Rogers is an unassuming guy. He’s on the short side. And though muscular, he doesn’t come across as the kind of towering Venice Beach, muscle-bound Arnold that you might expect from someone billed as the world’s strongest man. Rather he has the kind of avuncular intensity you find in a great automobile mechanic—a mechanic who happens to be able to lift an engine with one hand while using the fingertips of the other hand to wrench the spark plugs out....

Immune RNA drives heart disease Small fragments of RNA that break away from immune cells might set people on the path to cardiovascular disease. Mast cells—immune cells produced in the bone marrow — are known to encourage the blood-vessel irritation and swelling that signal the onset of cardiovascular disease, but precisely how these cells initiate this inflammation has not been well understood. Now, a study led by researchers at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, has shown that fragments of RNA released by mast cells cause cellular changes that trigger inflammation....

Eleventh-hour negotiations aren’t uncommon in Washington, D.C., but the most recent duel over the debt limit seems especially tense. Unless its debt ceiling is raised from its current $14.3 trillion, or its budget is miraculously balanced, the U.S. will default on its financial obligations on August 2, leading to a credit downgrade, delayed government payments and other serious economic troubles. Debt default is an outcome that’s almost unanimously opposed, so the failure of decision-making feels especially frustrating....

If a professor at the University of Florida (U.F.) has his way, the first flying saucer to grace Planet Earth’s skies isn’t likely to come from outer space but rather from Gainesville, where the faculty member is drawing up plans to build a circular aircraft that can hover in the air like a helicopter without any moving parts or fuel. In other words, it will look like a UFO, but will actually be more of an IFO—an identified flying object....

As the philosopher and psychologist William James described it, to a baby the world is “one great blooming, buzzing confusion.” Even for adults, this statement captures the essence of our sensory experiences, and highlights the complex and multisensory character of the world around us. At any moment, a mélange of information bombards our senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and balance. One of the most important tasks for us — or, more accurately, for our brains — is to make sense of the incoming signals....