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Single-cell life-forms thrive throughout the world’s oceans—and have for hundreds of millions of years. Tiny varieties known as calcareous nanoplankton build exuberant, microscopic shells—resembling wagon wheels, fishlike scales, even overlapping oval shields decorated with craggy explosions at their centers—known as “coccoliths”. The ability to form these shells rests on the amount of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dissolved in the seawater—and that amount depends on the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)....

Do we live in a holographic universe? How green is your coffee? And could drinking too much water actually kill you? Before you click those links you might consider how your knowledge-hungry brain is preparing for the answers. A new study from the University of California, Davis, suggests that when our curiosity is piqued, changes in the brain ready us to learn not only about the subject at hand, but incidental information, too....

Research has found that the onset of dementia is delayed in people who have more years of formal education. But a new study shows that this protection may come at a price: once dementia does hit, the well-educated lose their memory faster. Researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University studied people with three years to more than 16 years of formal education and found that for every additional year of schooling people had, their memory declined 4 percent more quickly after the onset of dementia....

It is a question that has hounded solar phys­icists since the 1940s: Why is the outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere, the region farthest from the heat-producing core, hotter than both the lower atmosphere and the sun’s surface? Experts have put forth various explanations, from sound waves or magnetic waves dissipating in the upper solar atmosphere, or corona, to short bursts of energy known as nanoflares that erupt as tangled magnetic field lines in the corona reconnect....

Widespread high-speed rail service, last seen in the U.S. during the Hoover administration (when passenger trains ran faster than they do today), stands ready for its comeback. Last November California voters approved a $10-billion bond toward a rail system that will move passengers the 432 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles in just over two and a half hours. The federal stimulus package sets aside $8 billion to jump-start rail projects around the country, and the Obama administration has pledged another $1 billion a year for the next five years for high-speed rail....

Those who have had a hard life may not be truly hardened to its most traumatic moments. A new study of more than 700 children born in the mid-1980s finds that those with higher IQs were less likely to have been exposed to traumatic events in their youth and therefore less likely to have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Meanwhile, children who exhibited anxiety or poor conduct at young ages and those who grew up in inner cities were both more likely to encounter trauma and suffer from PTSD....

By Janelle WeaverPractice makes perfect when it comes to remembering things, but exactly how that works has long been a mystery. A study published in the September 10 issue of Science indicates that reactivating neural patterns over and over again may etch items into the memory.People find it easier to recall things if material is presented repeatedly at well-spaced intervals rather than all at once. For example, you’re more likely to remember a face that you’ve seen on multiple occasions over a few days than one that you’ve seen once in one long period....

If and when a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is available, what is the fairest way to distribute it? In a policy report published on Thursday in Science, 19 public health experts laid out an ethical framework called the Fair Priority Model. It is geared toward three principles: benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing countries already disadvantaged by poverty or low life expectancy, and avoiding discrimination. The report is critical of previously suggested vaccine allocation plans, including two proposed by the World Health Organization: one of them would distribute vaccines to each country according to its population size, and the other would prioritize health care workers and adults who are above age 65 or have underlying health conditions....

What is the “final frontier”? Star Trek fans will tell you it’s space. IBM, however, is thinking much smaller. The company’s research division released a stop-motion movie in May whose main character is a stick figure only a few atoms in size. A Boy and His Atom is the story, not surprisingly, of a character named Atom who befriends a single atom and proceeds to play with his new friend by dancing, playing catch and bouncing on a trampoline....

U.K. A clinical trial investigating a treatment for blindness is under way this winter to evaluate the safety and efficacy of replacing diseased eye cells with stem cells. U.S. Following a federal court hearing, the U.S. Navy has agreed to limit its use of sonar in specified areas around the Hawaiian Islands and southern California. Sonar activity has been shown to harm marine animals. NETHERLANDS Delta Flume, a facility that produces the world’s largest man-made waves to study and improve coastal protection systems, opened in Delft....

Updated Thurs. Feb. 6 at 9:40 a.m. ET. For a sport judged partially on style, figure skating has not changed much with the times: The billowing, sequined costumes look the same as they have for decades, the classical music never goes in or out of style, and the jumps (which actually determine the score) have more or less stayed the same. While the unwavering costume and music choices may be the product of tradition, the consistency in jumps through the years has more to do with the physical limits of the human body....

Is it healthier to be fit and fat—Or lazy and thin? Are you a thin couch potato? Think that because you’re slim, you don’t have to work out? Wrong. A new study shows that you have a better shot of living longer if you’re plump but fit rather than if you’re normal weight (or a twig) but don’t exercise. Researcher Xuemei Sui of the University of South Carolina in Columbia and colleagues tracked 2,603 adults age 60 and over (average age 64....

Pygmies, the most well-known group of diminutive humans, whose men on average grow to a maximum of five feet tall and their women about a half foot shorter, were thought to be endowed with their characteristic small body sizes due to poor nutrition and environmental conditions. But the theories did not hold up, given that these populations—primarily hunter–gatherers—are found mostly in Africa but also in Southeast Asia and central South America, and thereby are exposed to varying climates and diets....

EXECUTION AND ETHICS In describing the use of an experimental cocktail to execute Dennis McGuire in January as having gone “badly” in “The Myth of the Compassionate Execution” [Science Agenda], the editors say, based on observations by the priest who gave McGuire his last rites, that “McGuire struggled and gasped for air for 11 minutes, his strained breaths fading into small puffs” before he died 26 minutes after the injection. As a practicing anesthesiologist, I conclude from this description that McGuire’s priest probably witnessed the effects of airway obstruction in an unconscious but not yet dead subject, which may have been upsetting to the priest but would have been of no consequence to McGuire....

For most of us, the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, and that is the extent of the change that we notice in its appearance. But our host star is no static, glowing orb, as solar physicists well know—it is a roiling, convecting, chaotic mess. With a fleet of sun-observing spacecraft, heliophysicists can track every eruption, flare and ripple on the sun’s surface. And now the public can glimpse the sun’s behavior in depth as well, thanks to a Web interface originally developed for exploring panoramic imagery....

By Marion Douet PARIS (Reuters) - France is building the world’s first wind farm with turbine blades designed to minimize interference with radar systems, using technology partially inspired by stealth warplanes. EDF Energies Nouvelles, the renewables unit of state-controlled utility EDF, aims to install the new Vestas-built turbines next spring in the “Ensemble Eolien Catalan” wind farm near Perpignan and start operating them over the course of 2015. “It is a world premiere for this new technology,” an EDF EN spokeswoman said....

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security revealed a rash of cyber attacks on natural gas pipeline companies. Just as with previous cyber attacks on infrastructure, there was no known physical damage. But security experts worry it may only be a matter of time. Efforts to protect pipelines and other critical systems have been halting despite broad agreement that they’re vulnerable to viruses like Stuxnet — the mysterious worm that caused havoc to Iran’s nuclear program two years ago....

The brain is an amazingly dynamic organ. Millions of neurons in all corners of our gray matter send out an endless stream of signals. Many of the neurons appear to fire spontaneously, without any recognizable triggers. With the help of techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and microelectrode recordings, brain researchers are listening in on the polyphonic concert in our heads. Any mental activity is accompanied by a ceaseless crescendo and diminuendo of background processing....

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). In November 1915, in a lecture before the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Albert Einstein described an idea that upended humanity’s view of the universe. Rather than accepting the geometry of space and time as fixed, Einstein explained that we actually inhabit a four-dimensional reality called space-time whose form fluctuates in response to matter and energy. Einstein elaborated this dramatic insight in several equations, referred to as his “field equations,” that form the core of his theory of general relativity....

Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential race stunned climate advocates and threatens to unravel President Obama’s policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expand renewable energy. The Republican outsider flummoxed pollsters and analysts who predicted an easy win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State, who pledged to slash the use of gasoline by a third and oversee an aggressive expansion of solar and wind energy. Trump, speaking to his supporters in New York City minutes before 3 a....