How COVID Changed the World

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February 18, 2022

Public Health How COVID Changed the World Lessons from two years of emergency science, upheaval and loss

Climate Change Earth Could Surpass Ability of Ecosystems to Recover from Warming Scientists outlined the risks of climate inaction ahead of a major IPCC report later this month By Sara Schonhardt,E&E News

Public Health Discovery of New HIV Variant Sends Warning for COVID Pandemic Infectious disease expert William A. Haseltine cautions that a coronavirus variant could emerge with the transmissibility of Omicron and the deadliness of the original SARS By Marla Broadfoot

Defense Russia-Ukraine Conflict Prompted U.S. to Develop Autonomous Drone Swarms, 1,000-Mile Cannon The U.S. military has new technology on the drawing board in response to warfare trends previously demonstrated in the region By Jason Sherman

Microbiology Omicron's Surprising Anatomy Explains Why It Is Wildly Contagious Specific mutations hide the COVID variant from the immune system and give it a new route into more cells By Megan Scudellari

Psychology Why Kids Are Afraid to Ask for Help Children as young as seven years old may hesitate to ask questions in school because they worry classmates will think they are "stupid" By Kayla Good,Alex Shaw

Policy The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth Virus origin stories have always been prone to conspiracy theories. COVID disinformation has threatened research—and lives By Stephan Lewandowsky,Peter Jacobs,Stuart Neil

Genetics First Gene Therapy for Tay-Sachs Disease Successfully Given to Two Children About one in 300 people in the general population carry the Tay-Sachs disease gene By Miguel Sena-Esteves,The Conversation US

Physiology How Olympic Figure Skaters Break Records with Physics An exercise scientist explains the biomechanics behind jumps such as the quadruple Axel, and what the body's limits are By Tanya Lewis

Artificial Intelligence Humans Find AI-Generated Faces More Trustworthy Than the Real Thing Viewers struggle to distinguish images of sophisticated machine-generated faces from actual humans By Emily Willingham

Planetary Science What We Learned from the Perseverance Rover's First Year on Mars Despite some unexpected challenges, team members are setting lofty goals for the rover in 2022 By Nadia Drake

Climate Change Western 'Megadrought' Is the Worst in 1,200 Years An exceptionally dry year in 2021 pushed the 22-year-long drought to the top of the record books By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 326, Issue 3

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BRING SCIENCE HOME Half-Life Coins Did you know that radioactive material decays randomly? Learn how flipping coins can help you figure out how long radioactive material stays dangerous--in this fun (and perfectly safe) activity! Credit: George Retseck One way of creating energy is with nuclear reactors. These plants are generally safe, but occasionally there are accidents in which dangerous radioactive material escapes. You might have read about nuclear disasters, such as those at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima, in the news or in a history lesson. Disasters like these can take years or even decades to clean up, and make it unsafe for humans to live nearby for even longer. Why does the contamination last so long? In this (perfectly safe!) activity, you will learn about radioactive decay using coins.

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