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A Florida developer unveiled plans today to build the nation’s first solar-powered city – a cluster of homes, offices and factories less than 20 miles from Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast. “Babcock Ranch” would be built on 17,000 acres in Charlotte and Lee counties, with more than half of the land set aside for nature preserves, agriculture and other open space. Florida Power & Light Co. would build a 75-megawatt solar photovoltaic array to supply electricity to the development’s 6 million square feet of residential, industrial and retail buildings....

Metastasis is behind the vast majority of cancer deaths: when cancer cells break away from a tumor and lodge in new places, the disease becomes harder to treat. A new study shows that, contrary to expectations, most metastatic tumors are seeded not by single cells from the primary tumor but by clusters of diverse cancer cells that leave in a group and travel through the bloodstream together. The cells in these circulating clusters communicate with one another and produce specific proteins that could be used as drug targets or biomarkers for risk of metastasis....

You probably know the GIF as the perfect vehicle for sharing memes and reactions. We believe the format can go further, that it has real power to capture science and explain research in short, digestible loops. So kick off your week right with this GIF-able science. Enjoy and loop on. Fantast-Egg Voyage Credit: Fabian Voigt / University of Zurich You’ve always wanted to fly through the nervous system of a chicken embryo, right?...

By Alister Doyle OSLO, April 30 (Reuters) - Climate change could drive up to a sixth of animals and plants on Earth to extinction unless governments cut rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to a U.S. study published on Thursday. Species in South America, Australia and New Zealand are most at risk, since many live in small areas or cannot easily move away to adapt to heatwaves, droughts, floods or rising seas, said the report in the journal Science....

Walk into any middle school classroom and it’s obvious that puberty hits some kids earlier than others. Some students daydream about kissing while others are still planning their latest LEGO creation. Now a new study suggests that the genes that drive puberty also influence some of the next stages of sexuality: age at first intercourse and—for women—age at first birth. Of course, genes are not the only factor. Parenting, religion, social mores, peers and many other factors come into play....

The chance of an El Niño developing this summer has increased to 65 percent from 50 percent last month, and forecasters are now favoring an onset during the May-June-July time period, vs. the June-July-August favored in April’s outlook. “The forecasters are much more optimistic that this is going to develop,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. El Niño’s are part of a climate pattern known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and are characterized by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific....

The people of East Africa once again face a devastating drought this year: Crops wither and fail from Kenya to Ethiopia, livestock drop dead and famine spreads. Although, historically, such droughts are not uncommon in this region, their frequency seems to have increased in recent years, raising prices for staple foods, such as maize. This scenario may simply be a taste of a world undergoing climate change in the mid–21st century, according to a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Washington, D....

For decades, government officials have too often ignored front-line communities when it comes to pollution protection and public amenities. President Biden has given three top White House officials until May 27 to figure out how to fix that. In a climate-focused executive order issued Jan. 27, Biden set a high bar for Cecilia Martinez, incoming White House Council on Environmental Quality senior director for environmental justice; Neera Tanden, Office of Management and Budget director nominee; and Gina McCarthy, White House domestic climate adviser....

Dear EarthTalk: I know that large fish contain a lot of mercury, but where does it come from? And what are we doing to prevent this contamination? – Alison Bronner, Atlanta, GA Mercury in the fish we like to eat is a big problem in the United States and increasingly around the world. Mercury itself is a naturally occurring element that is present throughout the environment and in plants and animals....

On Tuesday, the BBC decried the end of the 10-year reign of the eight-pound Manx Potato as the world’s heaviest. Its record had apparently been uprooted by a 25-pound spud from Lebanon. In photos, circulated across the Internet, farmer Khalil Semhat hoists his misshapen tuber up like a proud father. “I didn’t use any chemicals at all,” Semhat proclaimed to Agence France-Presse. “I’ve been working the land since I was a boy, and it’s the first time I’ve seen anything like it....

In 1519, when Hernn Corts led his army into Tenochtitlán in the Valley of Mexico, that Aztec city was the capital of a far-flung tributary empire. The emperor Motecuhzoma sat atop a complex social and political hierarchy, and the Aztec populace owed allegiance and tribute to nobles at several levels. Below the emperor were the kings of subject city-states. The Aztec dominion employed a policy of indirect rule, and imperial authorities supported local dynasties so long as they delivered their quarterly tribute payments on time....

Nearly half the methane released into the atmosphere from the U.S. oil and gas industry could be eliminated using existing technologies at an affordable cost, according to a study released today. The report, by the analyst group ICF International, was commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an environmental group spearheading an effort to measure and decrease emissions of methane from natural gas. “We can achieve a 40 percent reduction in methane emissions for less than a penny per mcf [thousand cubic feet] of gas produced....

Now hum the first few notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or, if you prefer something with a little more street cred, the “I’m sorry” part in Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson.” This is the “perfect fifth.” It’s one of the most consonant intervals, used in myriad compositions as a vehicle of resolution and harmony. Is it possible that hearing such isolated musical components can change the way you think? An ambitious new paper recently published by Jochim Hansen and Johann Melzner in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology argues precisely that....

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is officially on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) after 2.5 years of delays. A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday (May 19) at 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT), carrying Starliner aloft on an uncrewed mission called Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2). If all goes according to plan, Starliner will dock with the ISS on Friday evening (May 20) and spend four to five days attached to the orbiting lab before coming back to Earth for a parachute-aided landing in the western U....

KATHMANDU – Environmental resource conflict – or the potential for it – is never far away in the Himalayas. In the west of the region, arguments between Pakistan and India over vital water resources in areas bordering the two countries continue. In the east tensions are rising as India expresses concerns about a spate of planned dam-building projects by China on rivers flowing into Indian territory, particularly on the mighty Brahmaputra....

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazineRabbits are the latest focus of work seeking to measure animal discomfort by assessing facial expressions.Researchers working with animals often find it difficult to scientifically assess when their study subjects are in pain. Traditional methods rely on after-the-fact measurements involving weight loss or food and water consumption, or on subjective judgments such as how an animal moves. In an attempt to make pain assessment more scientific, geneticist Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues developed the “mouse grimace scale,” which was published in Nature Methods in May 2010 (see “Mice pull pained expressions”)....

CANCER TREATMENT IN SENIORS As a bioethicist, a 67-year-old and a liberal, I find “Never Too Old for Chemo,” by Claudia Wallis [The Science of Health], a welcome and long overdue antidote to the conventional wisdom that it is best for sick old people to bow out quickly, gracefully and inexpensively. (You bet I’ll opt for aggressive treatment if I get cancer when I’m 100!) Yet I’m uneasy about considering such factors as “social support” in determining which elderly patients should be eligible for chemotherapy....

Storm surge and rising seas threaten homes across coastal communities. But a community’s response to those risks is influenced by multiple factors, including geography, property values, socioeconomic status and racial diversity. Those are the core findings of a new study from the University of Delaware and Harvard University examining how and where different adaptation strategies are deployed along the North Carolina coast, one of the nation’s most exposed shorelines to climate risks....

View a slideshow of the authors’ fossil-hunting expedition. Across thousands of square miles of central Chile, massive, tilted layers of sedimentary rock rise majestically above wide, alpine valleys. This breathtaking setting has made fossil hunting both a joy and a challenge ever since Darwin’s time. And as my colleagues and I have discovered, this region’s best fossils are often the hardest to reach–a concept that, for reasons I will explain, has become my namesake, “Andy’s Rule....

Key concepts Chemistry Dyes Fabric Introduction Have you ever wondered about the materials that make up your clothes and why some look and feel different from others? The clothes you wear are made of fibers that come from many different sources. Some fabrics are made from natural fibers and others are from manufactured, or totally synthetic, fibers. In this activity you’ll explore how well different fiber types can be dyed using fiber-reactive dye....