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A young, fit US soldier is marching in a Middle Eastern desert, under a blazing summer sun. He’s wearing insulated clothing and lugging more than 100 pounds of gear, and thus sweating profusely as his body attempts to regulate the heat. But it’s 108 degrees out and humid, too much for him bear. The brain is one of the first organs affected by heat, so his judgment becomes impaired; he does not recognize the severity of his situation. Just as his organs begin to fail, he passes out. His internal temperature is in excess of 106 degrees when he dies.

Turbulence, the violently unruly disturbance of plasma, can prevent plasma from growing hot enough to fuel fusion reactions. Long a puzzling concern of researchers has been the impact on turbulence of atoms recycled from the walls of tokamaks that confine the plasma. These atoms are neutral, meaning that they have no charge and are thus unaffected by the tokamak’s magnetic field or plasma turbulence, unlike the electrons and ions — or atomic nuclei — in the plasma.  Yet, experiments have suggested that the neutral atoms may be significantly enhancing the edge plasma turbulence, hence the theoretical interest in their effects.

The vulnerability of the European electricity sector to changes in water resources is set to worsen by 2030 as a consequence of climate change. This conclusion is reached by researchers at Leiden University in an article published in Nature Energy this month.

A new way of producing the seasonal flu vaccine could speed up the process and provide better protection against infection.

New research is challenging the age-old adage that money can’t buy happiness.

The study, led by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School, suggests that using money to buy free time— such as paying to delegate household chores like cleaning and cooking— is linked to greater life satisfaction.