U.S.

A team of American and German physicists measured the radiation emitted from a single, orbiting electron for the first time.

FRANCE

Parisian lawmakers are cracking down on noise pollution. One new mandate: an acoustic asphalt coating on the city's peripheral highway, which could reduce noise by 7.5 decibels (equivalent to a one-sixth reduction in traffic).

U.K.

An aerospace laboratory in Stevenage is in the midst of a three-month microbe-killing “bake-off” in preparation for the construction of the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover. The rover is scheduled to land on the Red Planet in 2019—without earthly contaminants, it is hoped.

BRAZIL

A letter written by Albert Einstein in 1951 was found in a safe at a Jesuit school in Porto Alegre. Addressing students, the Nobel laureate wrote, “Thinking is to man what flying is to birds. Don't follow the example of a chicken when you could be a lark.”

NORWAY

Electric cars 50,000 strong now navigate Norway's roads, a government-set goal met two years ahead of schedule. The zero-emissions vehicles make up nearly 25 percent of all cars sold in the country thanks to incentives such as free parking and zero sales tax.

KAZAKHSTAN

As of June, an unknown illness has killed more than 120,000 saigas, critically endangered antelopes that live throughout Central Asia—about half their global population.

ANTARCTICA

Climate scientists analyzed the chemical composition of million-year-old air—the most ancient air ever recovered from pockets deep within a glacier.