SustainabilityNovember 18, 2025
The Fossil-Fuel Industry Has a Plan to Drown Earth in Plastic
To keep profits rolling in, oil and gas companies want to turn fossil fuels into a mounting pile of packaging and other plastic products
Illustration by Tavis Coburn
Volume 333, Issue 5
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Features
MedicineNovember 18, 2025
Personalized mRNA vaccines will revolutionize cancer treatment—if funding cuts don’t doom them
Vaccines based on mRNA can be tailored to target a cancer patient’s unique tumor mutations. But crumbling support for cancer and mRNA vaccine research has endangered this promising therapy
Planetary ScienceNovember 18, 2025
Mars Sample That May Contain Evidence of Life Might Never Come Home
NASA spent years and billions of dollars collecting Martian samples to bring home. Now they might be stranded
HealthNovember 18, 2025
Postpartum Depression Gets a Fast-Acting Fix
Deep emotional distress after birth kills many mothers. A new kind of drug offers better, faster treatment
Artificial IntelligenceNovember 18, 2025
Can Digital Ghosts Help Us Heal?
What can AI “griefbots” do for those in mourning?
Departments
Advances
Is Life inside Enceladus? Cassini Uncovers Complex Organic Chemistry in Saturn’s Ocean Moon
Dogs with Large Vocabularies Can Understand Category Words, Not Just Names
Mathematicians’ Chalkboard Writing Shows When Inspiration Strikes
Mathematicians Make Surprising Breakthrough in 3D Geometry with ‘Noperthedron’
These are the World's Best Cities for Walking and Cycling
Early Experiments Show Fast-Acting Antidote Targets Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
How Bacteria Use CRISPR to Vaccinate against Viruses
Scientists Might Soon Predict the Ocean’s Rogue Waves
James Webb Space Telescope Finds Atmosphere on Lava Planet TOI-561 b
Bearded Vulture Nests Hold 600 Years of Human Artifacts in Spanish Caves
Marsh Will-o’-the-Wisps Sparked by Strange Chemistry
Math Puzzle: Falling Through
From the Editor
Science Bleeds When It’s Cut
Letters
Readers Respond to the July/August 2025 Issue
The Science Agenda
We Need Laws to Stop AI-Generated Deepfakes
Forum
Why Genetically Optimizing Embryos Is Misleading, Unethical—And Not Even Possible
Science Crossword
Science Crossword: A Destructive Fix
Mind Matters
How Small, Easy Acts of Joy Improve Happiness and Well-Being
The Universe
How Big Can a Black Hole Get?
The Science of Parenting
Teens Are Flocking to AI Chatbots. Is this Healthy?
Math
How the Mathematics of Honesty Underlies These Auctions
The Science of Health
Why a Little Heartbeat Irregularity Can Be Good for You
Meter
Poem: ‘The Covert Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany’
Q&A
Carbon Dioxide Isn’t What You Think It Is
Graphic Science
Can We Find Cleaner Ways to Extract Rare Earth Elements?
History