Science: What Geeks are talking about from The New York Times

Oliver Sacks to Be Honored at World Science Festival
A tribute to Mr. Sacks, who died last year, will be among several festival talks and other events.

Trilobites: Now Is the Time to See Squid That Glow Like Fireflies
Each year, between March and June, millions of firefly squid transform a Japanese bay’s waters into a galactic landscape.

Trilobites: 30 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, Shelter Nears Completion
The arch has been built to last 100 years without the sort of maintenance that most structures require.

China Curbs Plans for More Coal-Fired Power Plants
The country, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, halted plans for new coal-fired plants and postponed building of some already approved.

Sanford Weill and His Wife Donate $185 Million to U.C. San Francisco
The gift from the former Citigroup chairman and his wife, Joan, will finance a new neuroscience research center.

Walter Kohn, Nobel-Winning Scientist, Dies at 93
A chemist and physicist who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna as a child and built a distinguished academic career in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1957.

Gorillas in Danger of Extinction
The population of the world’s largest primate, the Grauer’s gorilla, has plummeted 77 percent over the last 20 years, with fewer than 3,800 remaining.

A Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Drug Gains Patient Support
The staff of the Food and Drug Administration said a clinical trial for the drug, eteplirsen, was too small, but advocates said the drug prolonged patients’ ability to walk.

Trilobites: An Artist Who Plays With Food, and a Microscope
Dr. Robert Rock Belliveau has made about 11,000 photographs, but doesn’t quite understand why pattern variations are so extreme in some foods.

Books: Book Review: ‘Hoping to Help’ Questions Value of Volunteers
The sociologist Judith Lasker expresses wonder that such global health programs seem uninclined to seriously evaluate the effects of their work.

Reactions: Letters to the Editor
Readers react to articles in Science Times.

Police Try New Approach to Mental Illness: Nonviolence
In response to high-profile shootings of people with mental illness, police departments around the country are turning to crisis intervention training.

Q&A: Food for Retaining Thought
Could a low-fat diet contribute to memory problems?

Trilobites: A Hubble Birthday Bubble in Clear View
NASA released a stunning image of the Bubble Nebula in advance of the space telescope’s 26th anniversary.

Victims of a New African Massacre: Gorillas
Over the last two decades, the population of the world’s largest primate, known as Grauer’s gorillas, has fallen 77 percent.

Opinion: Lessons From Underwater Miami
Clues to the future from an era when hippos splashed in the Rhine.

Misconceptions: A Second Look at a ‘Misconception’ on Exercise and Bones
A recent article received a lot of responses from readers. Here’s a follow-up.

Trilobites: Celebrate Earth Day With a 4,800-Year-Old Tree (If You Can Find It)
The exact location of Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine commonly known as the world’s oldest tree, is kept a secret.

Tip: How to Interrogate Someone
Offer food. Tax their mental processing power.

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High
Rates increased among almost all groups, a federal data analysis found, with women and middle-aged Americans hit particularly hard.

Matter: Foxes That Endure Despite a Lack of Genetic Diversity
The island fox has lived on the Channel Islands off California for several thousand years, surviving even though many of the animals are nearly identical.

Letter of Recommendation: Letter of Recommendation: AstroTurf
It remains an object strangely out of time, like a souvenir from an era when the domestic aesthetic was all ersatz nostalgia.

On Technology : What Chatbots Reveal About Our Own Shortcomings
Silicon Valley has fallen in love with A.I. assistants, but so far they’re hardly impressive. Is it the industry’s fault, or is it ours?

Trilobites: Some Meteorites Are Million-Dollar Finds, Others Are ‘Meteorwrongs’
A meteorite found in Russia fetched a big price at auction, but most “space rocks” turn out to be just rocks.

Leaders Roll Up Sleeves on Climate, but Experts Say Plans Don’t Pack a Wallop
Unless countries develop more ambitious plans, they say, the world could suffer profound consequences, including debilitating heat waves, food shortages and fast-rising seas.

Vancouver Prescriptions for Addicts Gain Attention as Heroin and Opioid Use Rises
Treatment known as heroin maintenance has helped keep users out of jail and away from emergency rooms, but concerns about drug abuse stymie such programs in the United States.

Misconceptions: Fancy Juice Doesn’t Cleanse the Body of Toxins
There is no scientific basis to support undergoing juice detoxification or colon cleanses, as trendy as they may be.

Wash Your Hands. No, Like This.
Scientists say that a common technique for applying hand sanitizer, one recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is inferior to an alternative method with twice as many steps.

Start-Up Plans 3-D Visualizations of Pot Strains, Using Genetic Data
Phylos Bioscience is unveiling a marijuana guide called Galaxy, offering people a way to see how Sweet Island Skunk might be related to Humboldt OG.

Life Expectancy for White Americans Drops Slightly; Analysts Cite Drug Overdoses
In contrast, life expectancy for blacks rose to 75.6 years in 2014, continuing a trend, and the average life span for Hispanics jumped to 81.8.

2016 Already Shows Record Global Temperatures
A report shows that it has been the hottest year to date, thanks to both climate change and El Niño.

Economic Scene: Liberal Biases, Too, May Block Progress on Climate Change
Conservative arguments that climate change is a hoax are absurd. But liberal resistance to nuclear power plants might be equally damaging.

In IVF, a Move Toward Using More ‘Mosaic’ Embryos
New technology more accurately reveals mosaic embryos, those with normal and abnormal cells. That raises issues of whether they should be implanted.

A Conversation With: Alexis Rockman Bridges the Gulf Between Art and Science
The New York artist who has made a career of portraying scientific themes discusses his work.

In Towering Redwoods, an Abundance of Tiny, Unseen Life
Conducting a top-to-bottom inventory, researchers have found hundreds of species coexisting with their massive hosts.

Do Honeybees Feel? Scientists Are Entertaining the Idea
An Australian scientist and a philosopher propose that the structure of insect brains suggests they have the capacity for basic awareness.

Q&A: How Many Eggs Does a Chicken Lay in Its Lifetime?
Rough estimates for the first two or three years of laying, when a hen is most highly productive, suggest figures in the high hundreds.

Reactions: Letters to the Editor
Readers react to articles in Science Times.

Trilobites: Lyrid Meteor Shower Is Spectacular, Albeit Obscured
The annual celestial light show, a display of comet debris from several centuries ago, is not as clear as usual because of the waxing of the moon.

Debunking the Viper’s Strike
Rattlesnakes are part of the venomous viper family, thought to have the fastest strikes of any snakes. That is, until researchers decided to run a few experiments.

ScienceTake: Vipers Aren’t the Only Kings of the Quick Strike
Vipers have been thought to strike faster than other snakes. But new research shows that the rat snake is just as fast.

The World is Full of Dogs Without Collars
Three-quarters of the billion dogs on the planet are not pets. A new book argues that they are more than strays and may tell us much about the nature of dogs.

Meet the Parrots
We asked readers to show us why parrots are more than just a pretty bird. Out of hundreds of submissions, these are some of our favorites.

Parrots: The Highlight Reel
Hundreds of readers submitted charming videos of their avian companions. The Times wasn’t always so beguiled by parrots as we are now.

Under English Garden, ‘Unparalleled’ Remains of Roman Villa
Laying electric lines to a family’s barn in Wiltshire led to the discovery of artifacts from a lavish site that had barely been disturbed for more than a millennium.

Sperm Donor’s Profile Hid Mental Illness and Crime, Lawsuits Say
Donor 9623 was said to have a high I.Q. and other appealing traits. But families who used his sperm discovered he had schizophrenia and a criminal record.

Do Earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador Signal an Epidemic? Scientists Say No
Although two powerful quakes struck on opposite sides of the planet over the weekend, there is no connection between them.