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EPA plans to issue its first-ever greenhouse gas emissions standards for aircraft this fall, the agency confirmed last week. It’s a rare step from the Trump EPA to curtail planet-warming pollution. Plane emissions are rapidly increasing as air travel becomes more accessible around the globe. The agency said in its latest regulatory plan, known formally as the Unified Agenda, that it expects to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking in September....

Sailing in the Arctic and the Antarctic is no easy feat. To help scientific and other craft navigate these frozen waters, the U.S. Coast Guard employs a small fleet of icebreakers—powerful ships with reinforced hulls that clear the way for other vessels. This past spring the Coast Guard, which has not built a heavy polar vessel in four decades, took a preliminary but crucial step toward expanding its fleet by testing ship models at one of the world’s largest ice-tank facilities, located in Canada....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. It is a well-known fact that Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean sea, went through a quite complex prehistoric period. So much so that it is difficult to navigate through the muddle of people that have followed each other over the centuries. The impact of two influences, however, remains clear: one from Europe which came from the North-West, and one from the Mediterranean which had a clear Middle Eastern matrix....

TORONTO — Archaeologists working near the ancient settlement of Edfu, in southern Egypt, have uncovered a step pyramid that dates back about 4,600 years, predating the Great Pyramid of Giza by at least a few decades. The step pyramid, which once stood as high as 43 feet (13 meters), is one of seven so-called “provincial” pyramids built by either the pharaoh Huni (reign ca. 2635-2610 B.C.) or Snefru (reign ca. 2610-2590 B....

Imagine stepping into a time machine, one that could traverse not only billions of years but also countless light-years of space, all in search of life in the universe. Where would you find most of it, and what would it look like? The answer—or at least scientists’ best guess—might surprise you. You might think most life out there would be like what we see on Earth today: grasses, trees and frolicking animals all orbiting yellow stars on watery worlds under blue, oxygen-rich skies....

Drug cravings can be brought on by many factors, such as the sight of drugs, drug availability and lack of self-control. Now, researchers have uncovered some of the neural mechanisms involved in cigarette craving. Two brain areas, the orbitofrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex, interact to turn cravings on or off depending on whether drugs are available, the study reports today (Jan. 28) in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

China will stop building coal-fired power projects in other countries, President Xi Jinping said yesterday in an announcement that’s expected to accelerate the global shift away from fossil fuels. The pledge, made at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, comes as other industrialized nations are reversing economic policies that fueled the construction of coal plants outside of their borders, often in energy-deprived nations that are vulnerable to the effects of poverty and climate change....

Natural gas produced in the Marcellus Shale gas basin in Pennsylvania and New York is not as big a contributor to climate change as coal, according to a study of the “life cycle” greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas by researchers in Pittsburgh. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University weighed into a growing body of analyses about the environmental impact of a natural gas boom stretching across the Northeast. The report refutes a recent study out of Cornell University that found that extracting gas from deep shale basins results in at least as big a greenhouse gas emissions footprint as that of coal....

The social news website Reddit was left red-faced last week after misidentifying suspects in the bombings at the Boston Marathon in Massachusetts, raising questions about whether crowdsourcing might do more harm than good in during a manhunt. But work by an international team of scientists suggests that crowdsourcing is a powerful tool in such situations, if used carefully. Some social-networking enthusiasts contend that online tools such as Facebook or Reddit can harness the help of huge numbers of volunteers to assist in investigations....

So you bought a compact fluorescent lightbulb in a bid to be green. Such bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents and screw into standard sockets. Should you treat them like their older cousins? After all, four- and eight-foot- (1.2- and 2.4-meter-) long tubular bulbs common in more institutional settings are sometimes left on permanently, perhaps due to their slow, flickering start-ups. The thinking is that the boost of energy such bulbs require to power up means that it might be best to keep them on when leaving a room, rather than subjecting them to the stress of a restart on your return....

U.S. EPA today proposed significantly tougher smog standards after reconsidering the George W. Bush administration’s controversial 2008 regulations. The draft rule released by EPA proposes to revise the two standards aimed at protecting public health and welfare to comply with recommendations made by the agency’s science advisers. The Bush administration had rejected those suggestions when issuing the 2008 national air quality standards for ground-level ozone, or smog, drawing criticism and legal challenges from environmental and public health groups....

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve been following reports about President Obama’s stimulus package and what it may mean for creating green jobs. Beyond that, are there programs in place to help businesses switch to greener raw materials and/or to green up operations overall? —Diane, via e-mail Even though the push to create green jobs is getting the lion’s share of business news headlines right now, almost $7 billion of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill President Obama signed into law earlier this year, has been allocated to help businesses reduce their environmental footprints in any number of ways....

Only 30 vaquitas—small porpoises that live exclusively in the Gulf of California—remain in the wild, according to a recent report. The marine mammals get trapped in illegal gill nets set to catch totoaba fish, another endangered species. SOUTH AMERICA U.S. A ballet about space travel will premiere this month at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Classical dance superstar Ethan Stiefel visited NASA headquarters to research the piece....

His finalist year: 1977 His finalist project: Figuring out how many steps it takes to condense sequences of numbers based on their properties What led to the project: When Long Island, New York, native Jim Propp was a kid, his parents took the family on a car trip through Israel. Bored in the backseat, Propp started amusing himself by taking a census of the letters that appeared on the (English) road signs....

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazineWhen colleagues called the work of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel too good to be true, they meant it as a compliment. But a preliminary investigative report (go.nature.com/tqmp5c) released on October 31 gives literal meaning to the phrase, detailing years of data manipulation and blatant fabrication by the prominent Tilburg University researcher.“We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come,” says Pim Levelt, chair of the committee that investigated Stapel’s work at the university....

Novice shooter Dara Kerr sights in with of one of Tracking Point’s precision-guided rifles. (Credit: August Crocker) AUSTIN, Texas – As Hillman Bailey studied the flat, white target through his rifle’s magnified scope, he spotted a brown, six-legged stinkbug, about the size of a dime, crawling across the target. He leaned into the rifle, hot from the sweltering Texas sun, and said to himself, “Let’s see what happens.” The target was 98 yards away....

Dr. Rebecca Carey admits to being a little embarrassed about what her son, Mark, eats every day. Hamburger patties for breakfast, or bacon. A pack of raisins and a cookie for lunch; a turkey and cheese sandwich “if I’m lucky,” says Carey, but it usually comes back home. His favorite dinner is fish cakes and pasta, but all vegetables remain firmly untouched. It’s the kind of diet—low in fruits and vegetables, high in carbs—that a doctor like herself might caution against....

One of Australia’s more provocative art museums, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, hosted in 2016 and 2017 an exhibition on the evolution of art. Three evolutionary scientists who guest-curated the show offered their perspectives on how evolution explains not just the characteristics of amoebas, ants and antelopes but also the uniquely human endeavor of art. One of these explanations sees art as an evolved trait akin to the peacock’s effervescently colored tail, which increases its bearer’s reproductive success by signaling superiority as a mate....

Is it possible to automate scientific discovery? I don’t mean automating experiments. I mean: Is it possible to build a machine—a robot scientist—that can discover new scientific knowledge? My colleagues and I have spent a decade trying to develop one. We have two main motives. The first is to better understand science. As famed physicist Richard Feynman noted: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” In this philosophy, trying to build a robot scientist forces us to make concrete engineering decisions involving the relation between abstract and physical objects and between observed and theoretical phenomena, as well as the ways hypotheses are created....

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of six features on the science of food, running daily from March 30 through April 6, 2009. UTRECHT, the Netherlands—Just down the hall from a frozen vat of pig semen on the über-modern campus of Utrecht University here, Bernard Roelen pulls out a clear, rectangular flask from his precision incubator. The molecular biologist is careful not to leave the door open too long, as slight fluctuations in air temperature, humidity or carbon dioxide are enough to upset the precious piece of pork growing inside....