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The global economic recovery has produced mixed results for businesses trying to reduce their carbon footprints, according to the latest annual survey of some of the world’s largest companies by the British nonprofit CDP. While overall emissions of greenhouse gases from CDP’s “Global 500” have shrunk from 4.2 billion to 3.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent since 2009, the index’s 50 largest-emitting firms have actually seen greenhouse gas emissions rise by 1....

Apparently, keeping an eye on a real impala is easier than focusing on a Chevy Impala. Because monitoring predators, prey and people was a life-or-death matter for humans during evolution, researchers investigated whether people were more likely to pay greater attention to animals than to anything else. The scientists rapidly flashed photographs of natural scenes at volunteers. These pictures were shown in pairs that were identical, save for a change to a single object....

Recent progress in medical care has greatly increased the number of people who survive acute brain damage. Doctors can save the lives of many patients who suffer trauma to the brain (often after a road accident) or a lack of oxygen (for example, after a cardiac arrest or drowning), but if the damage is severe, the victim will slip into a coma. Individuals in this condition do not open their eyes; at best, they will show some reflex movements of the limbs....

Smokers who fail to kick the habit are not only hurting their bodies but may also be missing a chance to make new friends or, in some cases, keep old ones, according to new research. Researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that an analysis of more than 12,000 smokers (and their friends, families and colleagues) over a 30-year period shows that attempting to quit smoking can serve as a people magnet by becoming a phenomenon among social groups, like a gaggle of college students or co-workers at a small firm....

On one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, the northeastern U.S. was socked with a powerful low-pressure system that brought blizzard and whiteout conditions to a huge region extending from northern New Jersey to Maine. Although a winter storm had been forecast, few were prepared for the intensity of the post-Christmas storm, which included a phenomenon known as thundersnow in some areas, shut down railways and left thousands stranded at airports across the region....

WASHINGTON — Case 7682299: Aug. 1, 2010. A mother gives her toddler three homeopathic pills to relieve her teething pain. Within minutes, the baby stops breathing. “My daughter had a seizure, lost consciousness, and stopped breathing about 30 minutes after I gave her three Hyland’s Teething Tablets,” the mother later told the Food and Drug Administration. “She had to receive mouth-to-mouth CPR to resume breathing and was brought to the hospital....

In a dramatic call to action in April, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon—backed by the African Union, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, ExxonMobil, the World Bank, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, among other key international organizations and businesses—set a timetable for comprehensive malaria control in Africa by the end of 2010. Secretary-General Ban has thrown down the gauntlet: there is no reason why a million or more children should die every year of a largely preventable and wholly treatable disease....

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—In preparation for a keynote about the future of mobile technology at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies (EmTech) conference here Wednesday, four panelists had been asked to bring their favorite gadget with them onstage. One might have expected the keynote to become a show-and-tell about Apple’s iPad or iPhone 4, or even the latest e-reader. Instead, each of the panelists revealed devices that were slight variations on the same idea—a portable base station used to boost wireless signals....

An expert panel on Thursday unanimously recommended that the Food and Drug Administration approve a new medicine for two rare and devastating forms of epilepsy, paving the way for the authorization of what would be the country’s first medication made from marijuana. The 13-0 vote from the FDA advisory committee is not binding, and the agency is expected to announce its decision by the end of June. But in documents this week, FDA officials wrote they supported the approval of the drug, Epidiolex, after concluding that it cut the number of seizures in patients in clinical trials....

Biometric security systems that can identify individuals à la Minority Report based on the unique patterns in their irises have been touted as a fast, accurate and efficient way to control access to sensitive information and facilities. But until now, their reach has literally been limited. The iris’s fine texture tends to remain stable throughout one’s life. But one of the biggest factors working against iris-scanning biometrics, particularly at law-enforcement facilities and military bases in hot zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, is the difficulty in obtaining a clear iris scan from a distance of more than a few dozen centimeters....

When the first positive results of a research trial for an antiretroviral-based vaginal microbicide gel were announced at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna this July, it marked a significant thinning of the line between HIV treatment and prevention. The same agents that had been designed and developed to slow the virus’s proliferation within the human body now had the potential to be used to help bar it from successfully setting up shop in the first place....

No single diet works for everyone. Some people can slurp cabbage soup for a week and lose only a few ounces, while others on the same spartan regimen lose 10 pounds. But what if you could measure your metabolism and get a prescription for a customized diet? Metabonomics may do just that. It is one of the latest offshoots of the “-omics” revolution–after genomics (genes) and proteomics (proteins). With the understanding that some diseases such as obesity are metabolic syndromes in which multiple biochemical pathways interact to cause complex symptoms, metabolic testing offers a way to gauge health over a lifetime....

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology. In many ways the federal government shutdown was a huge, unplanned experiment in what happens when we give up on science for two weeks. The experiment is now over and the results are still incomplete. But so far, they are ugly. In research labs across the country the shutdown had an immediate impact. As soon as it began, the National Institutes of Health suspended new clinical trials....

If you were overwhelmed by the news in 2017, you aren’t alone. Every day seemed to bring monumental developments in all spheres of current events, from international relations and gender inequality to health care and domestic energy policy. Science was at the forefront often, so we’ve catalogued the two most important developments in each of five topic areas based on our editor’s top picks and our most popular articles. If getting the daily news feels like drinking from a fire hose, this list can help you stay focused on the science developments that matter....

By Andrew Callus PARIS (Reuters) - Paris enforced the most drastic traffic curbs in 20 years on Monday, fining almost 4,000 drivers who tried the dodge them, but stopping at a single day of restrictions as cooler weather brought relief from pollution. Transport chiefs made public transport free in the French capital, while drivers with even-numbered license plates were told to leave their cars at home. Last week’s unseasonably hot and windless weather across western Europe left cooler air containing tiny particles from car emissions and other sources trapped under a warmer layer....

One of the strangest findings to emerge from the world of obesity science lately is that people who sleep less tend to weigh more. But until recently, we have been stifling our yawns and scratching our heads about why: Does lack of sleep alter our biology? Or does it affect our eating behavior? Now two brain-imaging reports suggest the answer is both. The first study, published in March in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, looked at the effects of one night of no sleep....

Adapted from War Dogs: Tales of Canine Heroism, History and Love, by Rebecca Frankel. Published by Palgrave Macmillan Trade © 2014. Excerpted with permission from the publisher. All Rights Reserved. It’s not known, not really, when the first dog took the battlefield to wage war alongside his human companions. Historians believe that millennia ago, the ancient Egyptians used canines to carry messages. The Corinthians surrounded their seashore citadel with guard dogs in 400 BC, and the Romans employed them to raise alarms for their garrisons....

It has lasted longer than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. It’s dropped water levels perilously low at two of the nation’s largest reservoirs, forced ranchers to sell off herds and helped propel scorching wildfires. And worst of all, the drought blanketing the western United States is not going away. A group of experts featuring federal and state officials and farmers and ranchers spent nearly three hours yesterday chronicling the devastation caused by drought conditions that now cover almost every inch of seven Western states....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Enuma Elish (also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation) is the Babylonian creation myth whose title is derived from the opening lines of the piece, “When on High”. The myth tells the story of the great god Marduk’s victory over the forces of chaos and his establishment of order at the creation of the world....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Craftsmen of the Minoan civilization centred on the island of Crete produced stone vessels from the early Bronze Age (c. 2500 BCE) using a wide variety of stone types which were laboriously carved out to create vessels of all shapes, sizes and function. The craft continued for a millennium and vessels were of such quality that they found their way to the Greek mainland and islands across the Aegean....