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It is now abundantly clear that the pandemic has had extremely negative consequences on the lives and careers of working mothers across the globe, and women in science are no exception. As the academic year approaches, many schools and universities in the U.S. have failed to put in place mask or vaccine mandates. This lack of protection places parents in an agonizing position of trying to keep their children safe while maintaining productive careers, and once again, women and historically excluded groups will bear the brunt of the losses that this situation imposes....

It is an obvious idea—in fact, it’s how nature disposes of trees after they die. Yet before researchers at the University of Michigan tried it, no one had paired bacterium with fungus to make cellulosic biofuel. The team took Trichoderma reesei, a fungi widely known for its ability to efficiently decompose the non-edible parts of plants, plus a specially engineered strain of the bacteria Escherichia coli, and applied them both to a vat of dried cornhusks....

Long before the novel coronavirus made its surprise appearance, the nation’s nursing homes were struggling to obey basic infection prevention protocols designed to halt the spread of viruses and bacteria they battle daily. Since the beginning of 2017, government health inspectors have cited more nursing homes for failing to ensure that all workers follow those prevention and control rules than for any other type of violation, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of federal records....

Editor’s note: This Q&A is a part of a survey conducted by Scientific American of executives at companies engaged in developing and implementing non–fossil fuel energy technologies. What technical obstacles currently most curtail the growth of geothermal energy? What are the prospects for overcoming them in the near future and the longer-term? Currently the biggest obstacle to geothermal development is the lack of sufficient direct economic incentives for the drilling of geothermal resources....

The AccuWeather.com Long-Range Forecasting Team is predicting another brutally cold and snowy winter for a large part of the country, thanks in large part to La Niña… yet again. La Niña, a phenomenon that occurs when sea surface temperatures across the equatorial central and eastern Pacific are below normal, is what made last year’s winter so awful for the Midwest and Northeast. Monster blizzards virtually shut down the cities of New York and Chicago....

During the last decade, a series of studies in The New England Journal of Medicine chronicled the potential benefits of rescuing patients from stroke, heart attack and other conditions by lowering body temperature to reduce demand for oxygen. Depressed body temperature may also have manifold effects beyond the ones described—anything from prolonging life span to inducing a lower metabolic state suitable for long-distance spaceflight. A hurdle to lowering body temperature to protect brain cells after stroke is the body’s own cold-defense mechanisms....

Water is a universal solvent, capable of dissolving most elements on Earth. But it fails when it comes to completely cleaning coal. That’s where 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, MCHM for short, comes in. MCHM is used in washing coal, helping separate the burnable fossil fuel from the unburnable rock and dirt and other impurities. In the taxonomy of chemistry, it’s an alcohol, which means a molecule with a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom bound to one of its carbon atoms....

Would we, as a species, be better off if we were more like other animals? I suspected I’d enjoy reading Justin Gregg’s tour of this question when he opened with a quote from Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett, a book in one of my favorite science-fiction series: “Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.” Gregg, an expert on animal cognition, explores what human foibles reveal about animal intelligence by invoking philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche....

I don’t think there is anything wrong with white space. I don’t think it’s a problem to have a blank wall. —Annie Leibovitz According to a legend that one of us (Martinez-Conde) heard growing up in Spain, anybody can see the Devil’s face. All you need to do is to stare at your own face in the mirror at the stroke of midnight, call the Devil’s name and the Prince of Darkness will look back at you....

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC A sunken museum at La Caleta Underwater National Park will preserve in place a ship that sank in 1725, complete with real (and replica) artifacts kept underwater for people to explore. Submerged artifacts often degrade faster when removed from the sea. GREENLAND New simulations indicate that a rocky valley detected under the island’s ice sheet may contain a 1,600-kilometer-long subterranean river, flowing from central Greenland to its northern coast....

It was a long time ago, and it was a galaxy far, far away, but it’s doubtful that any Ewoks, Hutts or Wookies would have had time to evolve there. In fact, the galaxy in question is so far away, and the distance its light must travel to reach Earth so vast, that astronomers see the galaxy as it appeared more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was just 3 or 4 percent its present age....

Space is hard on equipment. Very hard. Take temperatures: On the surface of Mars, they can range from a summer’s balmy 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) to –225 degrees F (–143 degrees C). For a point of comparison, the coldest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded on Earth was –128 degrees F (–89 degrees C). Add to this the harmful radiation from space (which the Martian atmosphere does not screen out) and you will understand why the survival of the two Mars rovers for five years is so remarkable....

ROOFTOP SOLAR In “Solar Wars,” David Biello discusses the impact of the rooftop solar energy “boom” in the U.S., including electric utilities’ worries about lost revenue. He omits the question of the future stability of large-scale power systems, which will be radically affected by increasing local energy generation. New types of load imply a greater risk of feedback-induced oscillatory behavior. Ensuring the stability of the grid while creating a system that can deal with two-way local power flows and less predictable generation requires effective technical coordination across multiple parties....

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is in the process of transforming its Very Large Array radio telescope into the—wait for it—Expanded Very Large Array, thanks to digital technology that will boost the Socorro, N.M., facility’s already impressive ability to tune in on black holes, supernovae and the rest of the deep space menagerie. Half of the Very Large Array’s (VLA) 28 dish antennas—each weighing 230 tons—have already been upgraded so it can collect eight simultaneous data streams at about two giga- (billion) hertz, up from the previous capability of four data streams at about 50 mega- (million) hertz....

People have been clawing valuable minerals like iron and gold out of the ground for millennia. And for much of the stuff that touches our lives today—from the europium, terbium and yttrium that help illuminate the screen you are reading to the copper in the wires that power it—we increasingly depend on elements from the depths of the Earth. But finding new deposits gets harder every year and mines are steadily growing larger, more expensive and more environmentally destructive....

Duke Energy Corp. today tapped Cisco Systems Inc. to test “smart grid” software and hardware that the utility hopes will enable its customers to track and reduce their electricity consumption more efficiently. The Charlotte, N.C.-based utility (NYSE: DUK) will deploy communications architecture based on Internet protocol-based open standards – an approach Cisco says will permit easier accommodation of new technologies into the grid. The companies plan to start by installing nearly 2 million residential “smart meters,” as well as routers, switches and other “distributed automation” infrastructure, throughout Duke’s service territory in Indiana and Ohio during the next five years....

As the novel coronavirus swept through Boston last March, Toni Choueiri was worried. He was concerned not only about the rapid rise in COVID infections but about the swift shutdown in cancer screenings. In Boston—and around the nation—colonoscopy suites stood empty as patients refused to come in, terrified of setting foot in any hospital or clinic. Screening center schedules, once full of mammography appointments, cleared dramatically. Hospital corridors quieted; screening center workers were sent home....

Manufacturers make more than 240 million tennis balls a year worldwide. And they are surprisingly uniform, given that they begin as natural rubber and wool, which vary with every barge and bale. To be stamped “official” in accordance with the International Tennis Federation, a ball must meet rigid specifications for deformation and bounciness. Rubber, which “varies as much as lettuce,” according to Lou Gagnon, technology manager at Head/Penn Racquet Sports in Phoenix, Ariz....

Global warming is bad for your health, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency last week warned in a report that more people will die during heat waves, freshwater supplies will shrink, and diseases will spread in coming years, among other impacts of increasing global temperatures. Just weeks ago, it cautioned that a warming climate will also spawn more smog, which is linked to heart disease and respiratory ills....

The third in a series. To see the first two parts, click here and here. Many of the projected effects of climate change on the world’s oceans are already visible, such as melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels. But invisible changes may be the most threatening to human food sources, beginning with the tiny species like plankton that inhabit the bottom of the oceans’ food chain. As emissions from human activities increase atmospheric carbon dioxide, they, in turn, are modifying the chemical structure of global waters, making them more acidic....