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Environmentalists and renewable energy enthusiasts have been extolling electric cars for years, and now consumers are actually buying them. Electric utilities favor them as well, because plugging in the cars to recharge batteries adds to electricity sales. The utilities are worried, however, that if too many people in a community charge their vehicles at the same time of day, that synchrony would create spikes in power demand that could force the power suppliers to turn on expensive “peak generators” such as gas turbines—costs the utilities would rather avoid, and would ultimately pass on to consumers....

As kids all across the U.S. head back to school, they’re being forced to spend less time in front of their favorite digital distractions. Or are they? Video games are playing an increasing role in school curricula as teachers seek to deliver core lessons such as math and reading—not to mention new skills such as computer programming—in a format that holds their students’ interests. Some herald this gamification of education as the way of the future and a tool that allows students to take a more active role in learning as they develop the technology skills they need to succeed throughout their academic and professional careers....

In the middle of the evening rush hour last November 29 more than 1,000 London cyclists staged a “die-in” to protest the traffic deaths of fellow riders and to demand more investment in bike-friendly roads. London’s streets may have grown friendlier to cyclists since the 2010 introduction of its Barclays Cycle Hire bike-sharing system but according to those at the protest, London is still too dangerous. The hundreds of cities that have launched bicycle-sharing systems in the last decade offer similar reasons for doing it: Bicycling reduces car traffic and pollution in city centers and is healthy exercise....

The widespread use of phosphorous-rich fertilizers by industrial agriculture could permanently alter the chemistry of nearby lakes, a new study suggests. Even if environmental inputs of the element are curbed considerably, the results indicate that the effects could be felt for decades to come. Stephen R. Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison modeled the levels of phosphorus in and around Lake Mendota, a body of fresh water located in Madison, Wisc....

In the periodic table, no element is more important than another one. But in the Standard Model—a theory that explains the smallest constituents of the universe and the forces that govern them, minus gravity—the Higgs boson is arguably central. Like other elementary bosons—such as photons, the particles of light—the Higgs is a “force carrier.” Instead of carrying the electromagnetic, strong or weak force, it carries mass to all the elementary particles via the so-called Higgs field, which pervades the universe....

Stuff, stuff and more stuff. Many of us love to buy and keep things, even when the items are not useful. About 70 percent of children amass collections of favored objects, such as coins, dolls or baseball cards; many adults do the same. People often regard possessions as extensions of themselves and become attached to them accordingly. Yet in rare cases, the habit of gathering and retaining things reaches unhealthy extremes, culminating in hoarding disorder, a condition that is poorly understood....

Editor’s Note (9/11/18): Scientific American is re-posting the following article, originally published September 6, 2011, in light of the 17th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. For most Americans, as the nation’s thoughts turn to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, memories of that day readily come flooding back. People can remember with great clarity what they were doing or to whom they were speaking when they learned of the crisis—whether via a sister’s phone call or a first-hand glimpse of the World Trade Center on fire....

Slivers of dust float in the upper atmosphere, scattering the sun’s rays back into space and cooling the planet in some places. In other places, the particles warm the planet. The equivocation has meant that the particles, known as aerosols, are a significant wild card in our planet’s climate, rivaled only by clouds. So it was arguably not surprising that a study on aerosols would receive public attention. But it was not the type of attention that the study author, Bjorn Stevens, a climatologist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, was seeking....

U.S. The American Medical Association called for a ban on drug ads that directly target the general population, such as those broadcast on television. The group argues that these promotions result in higher health care costs because they boost demand for expensive treatments. The U.S. is one of only two countries that allow direct-to-consumer ads from pharmaceutical companies. U.K. Officers at U.K. ports impounded thousands of hoverboards after safety tests by several retailers revealed the motorized boards were at risk of exploding or bursting into flames....

The meetings start, as gatherings at 7 A.M. so often do, with people wandering in clutching their coffees and searching for a seat. Fingers instinctively go to pagers affixed at the hip to check for messages, and then all eyes turn to the stacked folders strewn across the table in a generic conference room at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio—the kind of room with long tables, chairs and a projector at the front....

There had actually been some good news for a change, for a while. The ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, turned out not to be. As a bird-watcher who thrills to any fleeting glimpse of a plain old pileated woodpecker, not to mention the redbellies, hairies and downies that commonly slam their heads into trees in my own Bronx backyard, I imagined how great it would be to see an ivory bill....

During the height of the space race in the 1960s, legend has it, NASA scientists realized that pens could not function in zero gravity. They therefore spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars developing a ballpoint pen that could put ink to paper without needing gravitational force to pull on the fluid. But their crafty Soviet counterparts, so the story goes, simply handed cosmonauts grease pencils. Did NASA really waste that much money?...

Concrete is the most-used construction material in the world and a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. But by using a different chemical formula to make the material, new research suggests it’s possible to significantly reduce concrete’s carbon footprint. Concrete has a complex molecular structure made of a mixture of sand, gravel, water and cement. The cement is made by heating a calcium-rich material, typically limestone, with a silica-rich material, typically clay, at temperatures of around 1,500 degrees Celsius....

Biologist Steven Whitfield of Florida International University in Miami and his colleagues collected long-term data from the La Selva Biological Station in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. Surveys of amphibian and reptile populations stretch back to 1970 and, by compiling this data, Whitfield and his colleagues detected a calamitous decline that no one had noticed: a 75 percent drop in the total amount of amphibians over that 35-year period. “The slow changes that we detected—about 4 percent less frogs and lizards each year—would be difficult to notice,” Whitfield says....

Wider deployment of pyrolysis, where non-recycled plastics are heated in the absence of oxygen to convert them into valuable fuels and feedstocks, would not only reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills but also generate billions of dollars, according to a new analysis by the American Chemistry Council (ACC). The trade group concluded that rapid development of pyrolysis technology, more commonly known as plastics-to-oil, could contribute $9 billion (£5.6 billion) to the US economy and spawn more than 40,000 domestic jobs....

Immigration policy played a decisive role in the outcomes of three regional elections in Germany this past Sunday. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party in particular, the Christian Democratic Union, suffered losses attributed to its leader’s welcoming stance toward refugees fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and other war-torn regions. Germany took in more than a million migrants and refugees in 2015—more than any other country in Europe. But taking each nation’s population into consideration, Germany actually lags behind several other countries in the European Union, notably Hungary and Sweden, which have received proportionally larger numbers of asylum applications....

Liquid H2O is the sine qua non of life. Making up about 66 percent of the human body, water runs through the blood, inhabits the cells, and lurks in the spaces between. At every moment water escapes the body through sweat, urination, defecation or exhaled breath, among other routes. Replacing these lost stores is essential but rehydration can be overdone. There is such a thing as a fatal water overdose....

What motivates people to give to charity? Surprisingly, the most obvious answers to this question have been difficult to prove. For example, having a desire to give is often not enough: many people who express a strong intention to make charitable donations often fail to follow through on their intentions. The research is also mixed on whether people with more money are more likely to give it away. While some studies suggest that wealthier people are more likely to donate money, other studies do not....

In the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, which for many of us means dining with family and friends we have not seen in a while. Given the current tumultuous political climate, some people are likely to be passing more than just the potatoes. A source of major concern with the incoming administration is their lack of commitment toward addressing the very real threat to the future of our planet posed by climate change....

On schedule, on budget. It’s a tall order for any new technology, but for a commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) system, it might be the start of a revolution. The Petra Nova carbon capture system under construction at the W.A. Parish Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant southwest of Houston, is slated to go online before the end of the year. The billion-dollar facility will become the largest post-combustion carbon capture system installed on an existing power plant in the world....