What researchers can expect from China’s top-level political meetings

As Chinese leaders gather for the government’s most significant meetings of the year, researchers are anticipating major policy announcements for science and innovation that could shape the country’s research agenda for years. The annual assembly of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative …

When Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan stepped off the Moon in December 1972, it marked the end of US researchers’ access to the lunar surface. Since then, no US mission has touched down there to collect scientific data. That could soon change. In December, President Donald Trump ordered NASA to …

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—A muggy quiet has settled over New Orleans, Louisiana’s Gentilly neighborhood as it soaks up a late-September rainstorm. Deep puddles hide dips in the street. And in a soggy patch of grass, a wooden kiosk tells a story of catastrophe. “This place is a memorial to the trauma …

Masters of Science was inspired partly by the way the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli explained complex concepts through a series of newspaper articles, which were published later as the best-selling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. So we are delighted that Rovelli has delved into the mystery and …

When you hear a B-flat music note, do you see the color blue? Do the words in this sentence look red or green? If so, you may have synesthesia, a mysterious condition in which one sense consistently mingles with another. Now, for the first time, scientists have identified a handful of genes that might …

Using sophisticated sensors, they can see past foliage and map the ground surface in high resolution. As satellites orbit quite regularly, small changes in the surface topography can be monitored. Scientists hope that by using this information, unstable regions that haven’t yet failed can be identified and …

Yet despite decades of solid science a number of anti-GMO articles have continued to appear that hope to cause concern, alleging that they are a monopolistic effort by businesses effort to control food supply (they are off patent) or are linked to suicides in India (long debunked) or that they cause cancer in …

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate is safe for humans when used in accordance with label directions. A draft report by the agency last year concluded the herbicide is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. The report noted science reviews by numerous other countries as well as a …