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The Twittersphere lit up as scientists and environmentalists praised the corporate giant for offering the private-sector leadership that has for the most part been missing on this issue. The Web site A Greener Google, where the announcement was published, received more than 100,000 hits, and at least one major news outlet—MarketWatch—reported the story. Like all good satire, it addressed a real problem. In the past decade Google has contributed to more than a dozen groups that have worked to prevent action on climate change by promoting half-truths, misrepresentations and, sometimes, outright lies about climate research and scientists....

ALBUQUERQUE—After combing through layers of ancient lake sediments, paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsin–Madison says her team has found no evidence to support a controversial comet theory for an ice age extinction event. “There’s no physical trend to suggest that there was an impact event,” Gill said Tuesday at the Ecological Society of America meeting held here this week. “If there was an impact event…it’s not having the ecological effects [previously] suggested....

TAMPA Fla. (Reuters) - The manatee could be downgraded from an endangered species to merely threatened as federal wildlife officials, under pressure from boating activists and libertarians, reconsider the status of Florida’s popular “sea cow.” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on Tuesday it would review the latest science and seek public input on the West Indian manatee, even as conservationists note the animals suffered a record number of deaths in Florida last year....

Predicting the future of technology often seems a fool’s game. In 1946 for example, Thomas J. Watson, founder of International Business Machines — now known simply as IBM — is said to have made the prediction that the world would need just five computers. But US researchers now say that technological progress really is predictable — and back up the claim with evidence regarding 62 different technologies. The claim is nothing new....

NASA’s Perseverance rover just notched another first on Mars, one that may help pave the way for astronauts to explore the Red Planet someday. The rover successfully used its MOXIE instrument to generate oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere for the first time, demonstrating technology that could both help astronauts breathe and help propel the rockets that get them back home to Earth. The MOXIE milestone occurred on Tuesday (April 20), just one day after Perseverance watched over another epic Martian first—the first Mars flight of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, which rode to the Red Planeton the rover’s belly....

Temperatures on a nearby “super Earth” exoplanet varied dramatically recently, suggesting that large and very active volcanoes may exist on the alien world’s surface, a new study reports. Researchers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope found that temperatures on 55 Cancri e—a planet eight times more massive than Earth that lies 40 light-years away—swung between about 1,832 to 4,892 degees Fahrenheit (1,000 to 2,700 degrees Celsius) from 2011 to 2013. “This is the first time we’ve seen such drastic changes in light emitted from an exoplanet, which is particularly remarkable for a super Earth,” study co-author Nikku Madhusudhan, of the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy in England, said in a statement....

Lead poisoning is not just a childhood hazard. Even tiny amounts of the toxic metal can cause high blood pressure and heart disease in adults, according to a new analysis released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this past June. Yet the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has not updated its general workplace standards for lead exposure since establishing them 35 years ago. As a consequence, thousands of Americans working in industries such as lead-battery manufacturing, renovation and automobile repair inhale or ingest lead dust at levels that public health experts now consider unsafe....

In the beginning there was light—the brilliant light of the big bang shining through a sea of protons, neutrons and electrons. But as the universe expanded and cooled, the electrons joined the protons, making neutral hydrogen atoms, and as the universe cooled further, the light went dark. Eventually, however, something tore the electrons from the protons, thereby re-ionizing the universe. Space has remained ionized—a plasma of positive ions and electrons—ever since....

For many, the 2016 presidential election represented an existential threat to science and jolted large segments of the research workforce into street protest mode. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrust scientists into global prominence, while the Black Lives Matter uprising has forced a reckoning with science’s problematic past and present. In many ways, science itself was on the ballot this Election Day. Prominent scientific journals endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, scientific societies issued statements in the wake of the George Floyd killing, and thousands of scientists went on strike in solidarity with Black Lives Matter....

There may be yet another future use for SpaceX’s huge Mars-colonization rocket. That rocket, called the BFR, could launch a probe toward ‘Oumuamua, theinterstellar asteroidthat zoomed past Earth last month, a new study suggests. The 1,300-foot-long (400 meters) ‘Oumuamua is currently speeding away from us at about 58,160 mph (93,600 km/h, or 26 km/s). That’s far faster than any spacecraft has ever traveled upon escaping Earth (though some have gone faster as they approached big bodies, such as the sun)....

Kentucky governor Matt Bevin wants students majoring in electrical engineering to receive state subsidies for their education but doesn’t want to support those who study subjects such as French literature. Bevin is not alone in trying to nudge higher education toward course work that promotes better future job prospects. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a former presidential candidate, put it bluntly last year by calling for more welders and fewer philosophers....

Plans to build the nation’s first tsunami-resistant building are unfolding in Cannon Beach, Ore., in a region that is almost identical, seismically, to the subduction zone that triggered the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week. Elevated 4.5 meters off the ground, the building would provide an evacuation zone for coastal residents and tourists while also serving as a new city hall. “The goals are to save lives and provide continuity of government,” says Jay Raskin, an architect and former Cannon Beach mayor who is helping to spearhead the design process....

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have both tested positive for SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—and are isolating themselves, the president announced in a tweet early Friday morning. The news came in the midst of a pandemic that has killed more than 207,000 people in the U.S., and just weeks before the presidential election. “This evening I received confirmation that both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” wrote the president’s doctor Sean Conley in a recent statement....

THE EARTH’S OCEANS, TUGGED BY THE moon and sun, ebb and flow over more than 70 percent of the planet. After fits and starts, researchers have developed a number of technologies to effectively harness some of that kinetic energy. Now a handful of entrepreneurs are trying to create a commercial market. Underwater Windmills The most advanced demonstration operates at the bottom of New York City’s East River, which is actually a tidal channel....

By Tara Haelle of Nature magazine More than ten years after a study in The Lancet falsely linked autism to the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine, evidence of reduced immunization rates and rising incidence of disease are spurring politicians to try to make up lost ground. California has tightened the laws that allow parents in the state to opt out of immunization for their children. It now joins Washington and Vermont in requiring parents who want an exemption to demonstrate that they have received factual information about the risks and benefits of vaccination from a health-care practitioner or the state’s health department....

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday said it would be unable to meet a deadline to remove drums of nuclear waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico because of safety concerns tied to the radiological materials. New Mexico officials asked federal officials to remove 3,706 cubic meters of waste from a mesa on the Los Alamos complex, out of a concern that wildfires could reach the material....

Erin Krebs started medical school in 1996, just months after OxyContin was approved for sale in the U.S. Over the next seven years, as she earned her M.D. and trained in internal medicine, she watched in astonishment as “oxy” and other potent opioids became the reflexive prescription for all manner of pain while worries about addiction and prolonged use were brushed aside. “As a natural skeptic, I went looking for a good reason why we changed our practice,” she recalls, “and it wasn’t there....

Be kind to your bicycle, for you may need it more than it needs you. Once rolling, bicycles can cover ground just fine on their own—no rider required—thanks to a property known as self-stability. If a bicycle starts to tip over, its front wheel turns into the fall, bringing the bike back into balance, just as a rider would do if he or she were behind the handlebars. Of course, that stability is missing when the bicycle is stationary—bicycles have a limited range of self-stable velocities within which they are able to regain their balance even if knocked sideways [see first video below]....

The bombing near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon on Monday killed two and injured more than 100 people on site. Now comes the search for who planted and detonated the explosives, and the motive. The first bomb was detonated at about 2:45 P.M. local time near one of the many classic storefronts lining the marathon’s home stretch. The second explosive followed within minutes about 50 to 100 yards away....

As the climate shifts, many species will migrate to more favorable destinations, altering their natural range. However, researchers have found that the journey itself may be perilous and the path to a new habitat could fall apart, meaning some organisms may not make the transition to a new home. Scientists at Brown University studied 15 amphibian species in the Pacific Northwest, including the black-bellied slender salamander, the Santa Lucia Mountains slender salamander, the California red-legged frog and the California newt....