The Deepwater Horizon blowout released more oil and gas into the deep sea than any previous spill. Soon after the well was capped, a deep-sea community 13 km southwest of the wellhead was discovered with corals that had been damaged by the spill. Here we show this was not an isolated incident; at least two other coral communities were also impacted by the spill. One was almost twice as far from the wellhead and in 50% deeper water, considerably expanding the known area of impact.

Air pollution is a leading health risk factor and important contributor to regional climate change in China and other parts of Asia. China’s particulate matter (PM) air pollution dramatically exceeds health guidelines and is impacted by industrial emissions, motor vehicles, and household use of biomass and coal fuels. Black carbon (BC) from biomass and fossil fuel burning is a major climate-forcing component of PM.

The fact that water vapor is the most dominant greenhouse gas underscores the need for an accurate understanding of the changes in its distribution over space and time. Although satellite observations have revealed a moistening trend in the upper troposphere, it has been unclear whether the observed moistening is a facet of natural variability or a direct result of human activities. Here, we use a set of coordinated model experiments to confirm that the satellite-observed increase in upper-tropospheric water vapor over the last three decades is primarily attributable to human activities.

The incidence of poliomyelitis has dropped precipitously over the last decade. However, persistent transmission in three countries and outbreaks elsewhere challenge the end-2014 eradication target. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is considering expanding the age range of vaccination campaigns even in the absence of adult cases, because of concerns about imperfect, waning intestinal immunity. The success of this approach will depend on the contribution to transmission by older ages, which we estimated during two large outbreaks affecting adults.

Microorganisms and their viruses are increasingly recognized as drivers of myriad ecosystem processes. However, our knowledge of their roles is limited by the inability of culture-dependent and culture-independent (e.g., metagenomics) methods to be fully implemented at scales relevant to the diversity found in nature.

The emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses has received much attention due to the severe consequences of their occasional spread to humans, as well as the large toll they take on the poultry industry. Here we argue that the main barriers to the emergence of these viruses are imposed by immunity to related strains rather than the ability of the virus to acquire the necessary mutations.

The recent decade has seen an exceptional number of boreal summer weather extremes, some causing massive damage to society. There is a strong scientific debate about the underlying causes of these events. We show that high-amplitude quasi-stationary Rossby waves, associated with resonance circulation regimes, lead to persistent surface weather conditions and therefore to midlatitude synchronization of extreme heat and rainfall events. Since the onset of rapid Arctic amplification around 2000, a cluster of resonance circulation regimes is observed involving wave numbers 7 and 8.

Vibrio cholerae classical (CL) biotype was isolated, along with biotype El Tor (ET) and altered ET carrying the cholera toxin (CTX) gene of CL biotype, during the 1991 cholera epidemic in Mexico, subsequently becoming endemic until 1997. Microbiological, molecular, and phylogenetic analyses of V. cholerae isolated from both clinical and environmental samples during 1998–2008 confirm important genetic events, namely predominance of ET over CL and altered ET in Mexico. Although altered ET is predominantly associated with cholera globally, progression of CTX+ V.

Brain, oxytocin, and parenting behavior were measured in primary-caregiving mothers, secondary-caregiving fathers, and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers raising infants without maternal involvement. Parenting integrated functioning of two neural networks: subcortical-paralimbic structures implicated in emotional processing and cortical circuits involved in social understanding. Mothers showed greater activation in the emotional processing network and fathers in the socio-cognitive circuits, which were differentially linked with oxytocin and behavior.

In the context of global climate change and increasing impact of some types of natural disasters, there has been significant interest in investigating the influence of climatic factors on human migration. We explore a more comprehensive set of climatic factors than used in most previous work to predict the effects of sudden natural disasters and climatic variations on migration.