The U.S. academic community is gearing up for a new effort to convince national policymakers that the benefits of keeping government-funded basic research out in the open—and not stamping it classified—far outweigh any threat to national security from sharing scientific findings. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,...

Some 3000 years ago, people sailed toward the sunrise—and the last swatch of our planet uninhabited by humans: remote islands of the Pacific. By 1200 C.E. societies flourished from the Marianas to Rapa Nui, more than 12,000 kilometers apart. How the Pacific gradually became home to these groups—and just where they came from—has long been a mystery ....

CONSERVATION Native tribes and United States enter park management deal The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service signed a first-of-its-kind agreement last week to comanage Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah with five Native American tribes. The five tribes have long wanted to...

The viruses that cause Zika and dengue fever can’t get from person to person on their own—they need to hitchhike inside a mosquito. A new study suggests how they hail these rides: They make their victims smell more attractive to the blood-sucking bugs. It’s "a big advance," says mosquito neuroscientist Laura Duvall of Columbia University, who wasn't connected to the...

The World Health Organization (WHO) may have very high aspirations—“the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health”—but when a new human disease begins to spread, or a known one behaves in unusual, threatening ways, it has few levers to pull. One important decision it can make, however, is declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC),...