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More evidence has emerged to place European eels among other animals that use the Earth’s magnetic field to guide their migration, but the research methods used are causing controversy. A study published last week in Current Biology suggests eels generate a “magnetic map” of their surroundings that lets them read their location based on the field intensity, and use this map to find the Gulf Stream and catch a free ride to Europe....

It was some 22 minutes into the first U.S. match of the 2014 World Cup when U.S. forward Jozy Altidore suddenly grimaced, clutched the back of his left leg and dropped to the ground in agony. He had pulled his left hamstring. Later that game U.S. team central defender Matt Besler was also replaced due to a hamstring injury. The U.S. still beat Ghana 2–1, but those players were placed at least temporarily out of commission....

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazineThe team that last year reported measurements showing neutrinos traveling faster than light has confirmed that two sources of error flagged in February explain the findings.Analyses presented internally on 28 March and posted publicly on 30 March show that the measurements were skewed by a combination of a faulty cable and flawed timing in the experiment’s master clock. The group plans to repeat its measurements before definitively scotching the possibility of superluminal travel, first announced in September 2011....

Agricultural innovation has long sustained the world’s masses with an abundance of low-cost food, thanks to the success of the mid-20th century’s Green Revolution, which brought industrialization and high-yield grains to India, Mexico and many other developing countries. A prosperous global population however, has blazed the way for burgeoning new mouths to feed that, by 2050, will nearly double food demand. At the same time, farmers face unprecedented challenges of climate change, high oil prices driving demand for biofuels, and rising costs of land and water....

An estimated one billion people currently do not have access to safe drinking water, and nearly half of the world’s population will live in places with water shortages, according to a new United Nations report. In an effort to protect current water supplies and find new ones, scientists, politicians and environmentalists are huddling this week at the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey. Top on their agenda: new technology that holds the promise of protecting natural water habitats from pollution as well as tech that purifies current water systems better and helps tap into new potential sources of drinking water....

Regular exercise boosts brain health, and a fit brain is generally able to learn, think and remember better. But a few recent studies offer an additional exercise-related tip: time your workouts for just after a study session, and you might better retain the information you just learned. In a variety of experiments, people who biked, did leg presses or even simply squeezed a handgrip shortly after or before learning did better on tests of recall in the hours, days or weeks that followed....

The fifth in a series of stories on Bangladesh and climate migration. DHAKA, Bangladesh – Bangladesh may be Mother Nature’s punching bag, but in the battle for survival against climate change, this tiny, riverine nation isn’t going down without a fight. Already, Bangladesh has invested 10 million taka, the equivalent of about $150,000, to build cyclone shelters and create a storm early-warning system. Earlier this year, it allocated another $50 million to the country’s agriculture and health budgets to help “climate-proof” certain development sectors....

Himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035. Nuclear power plants cheaper than fossil fuel–fired ones. A chairman who might have financial conflicts of interest (and an interest in penning a racy, loosely autobiographical romance novel). These are some of the mistakes currently argued to have been made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—a panel of more than 2,500 volunteer scientists and other experts from 154 countries tasked with assessing climate change....

Forty years ago this month I walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The odds are good that you did, too, if you were within the reach of a television or radio on that July 20. My family and 10-year-old self were vacationing on Cape Cod at the time, but my attention was mostly 230,000 miles overhead. With whelk shells in the silky white dunes, I rehearsed the lunar module’s landing dozens of times along audacious flight plans that NASA would no doubt have discouraged....

COVID appears to be in retreat in the U.S. and other nations that have widespread access to vaccines. But some developing countries with high infection rates have become hotspots for viral variants that may be more transmissible or resistant to vaccines—and these variants can quickly cross national borders. For example, the B.1.167.2 variant (now dubbed Delta) that was first detected in India has spread to more than 70 countries and regions, including the U....

Not So Rapid Eye Movement The bizarre metamorphosis that occurs in halibut and other flatfish had even Charles Darwin floundering for an explanation. At birth, these fish have one eye on each side of the skull, but as adults, both eyes reside on the same side. Certainly, for fish that spend their lives along the sea bottom, having both eyes topside confers a survival advantage. But there seemed to be no evolutionary reason to start down the gradual path toward such lopsidedness—any intermediate steps would not seem to be especially helpful....

By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazineThe world’s largest particle accelerator is roaring along at an unprecedented pace, delivering torrents of data to its physicist handlers. But the hundreds of millions of collisions happening inside the machine every second are now growing into a thick fog that, paradoxically, threatens to obscure a fabled quarry: the Higgs boson.The problem is known as pile-up, and it promises to be one of the greatest challenges this year for scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s main high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland....

By Quirin SchiermeierThe half-minute of tremors that shook Haiti in January left death and destruction–and lingering questions about when and where another such quake might strike. Some 230,000 people died in the magnitude-7.0 quake, more than twice as many as in any recorded earthquake of similar strength. As the disaster drew aid workers from around the globe, scientists also flocked to the impoverished country to try to understand the quake.What they found was unexpected....

NONFICTION Rachel Carson: The Sea Trilogy Sandra Steingraber Library of America, 2021 ($40) Before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962—a literary masterpiece and foundation of the modern environmental movement—she was a marine biologist and a prolific writer on the subject of the ocean. Carson first made her name with a trilogy of best-selling books about the sea, published between 1941 and 1955, books in which she exhibited her distinctive synthesis of complex science and lyrical landscape writing so rich and descriptive that it verges, at times, on the spiritual....

Clinical trials are underway for stem cell injections to quicken healing of the cardiac muscle after a heart attack. Although promising results trickle in, other researchers are looking for a speedier way to renew a damaged area of the organ: patches of cardiac cells. One patch is getting a leg up from a temporary stay in stomach tissue, and another is using a biodegradable mesh to help the heart rebuild itself....

Key concepts Geology Porosity Rocks Particles Introduction Have you ever heard the expression, “solid as a rock”? As it turns out, rocks are not entirely solid. Rocks actually have tiny pockets of air inside them. This is obvious when you look at a piece of volcanic rock (often called basalt), which is full of visible holes. But dense rocks, such as granite, have tiny air pockets inside them, too. These pockets of air are just much smaller....

The potentially Earth-like planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system may not be so conducive to life after all, two new studies report. Intense radiation and particles streaming from their host star have likely taken a huge toll on all seven of these worlds, even the three that apparently lie within the “habitable zone,” where liquid water could theoretically exist on a planet’s surface, according to the new research. “Because of the onslaught by the star’s radiation, our results suggest the atmosphere on planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system would largely be destroyed,” Avi Loeb, co-author of one of the studies, said in a statement....

Environmental controls designed to prevent leaks of methane from newly drilled natural gas wells are effective, a study has found — but emissions from existing wells in production are much higher than previously believed. The findings, reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to a burgeoning debate over the climate impact of replacing oil- and coal-fired power plants with those fuelled by natural gas. Significant leaks of heat-trapping methane from natural gas production sites would erase any climate advantage the fuel offers....

Amateur saxophonists of the world have long been in awe of the piercing high notes jazz legend John Coltrane used to hit, wondering why they can’t scale the same auditory heights. Now researchers say they have the answer: Unlike amateurs, pro sax players have learned to flex their vocal tracts in a special way to amplify the high notes. A sax’s sound comes from a flexible reed in the mouthpiece that controls the airflow and pressure through the instrument, setting up strong air vibrations or resonances if a player blows the right way....

When bullets fired from a passing car sliced through the St. Louis night one Sunday in June, they hit two children, killing three-year-old Kenndei Powell and seriously wounding another little girl, age six. Police in the Missouri city were not immediately able to identify or find the shooter, and Powell joined the grim ranks of the 36,000 people killed by guns every year in the U.S., on average. An additional 100,000 are injured....