COVID-19 Is Now the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.

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October 08, 2020

Dear Reader, Here are highlights from today's top stories: In the week of March 30 to April 4, COVID-19 became the third leading cause of deaths in the U.S., trailing heart disease and cancer. In that week, close to 10,000 people died of the illness. It killed more people than stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes or influenza. Human minds seem to be designed for efficiently locating high-calorie, energy-rich foods in our environment, new findings suggest. The study's authors believe human spatial memory ensured that our hunter-gatherer ancestors could prioritize the location of reliable nutrition, giving them an evolutionary leg up. The U.S. is on pace to install record amounts of wind and solar this year, underscoring the country's capacity to build renewables at a level once considered impossible. But whether 2020 is an aberration or the beginning of a mass greening of the U.S. power sector depends in large part on what policymakers do next. Also featured in today's roundup is a story from our archive on the Green New Deal. At the vice presidential debate last night, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence tussled over the proposal. How many jobs would one of them create? What kinds of jobs? Scientific American has detailed data on these questions.

Sunya Bhutta, Senior Editor, Audience Engagement @sunyaaa

Public Health COVID-19 Is Now the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.  It kills more people than the flu, contrary to Trump's claims, and also surpasses stroke, Alzheimer's and diabetes By Youyou Zhou,Gary Stix

Neuroscience Our Brain Is Better at Remembering Where to Find Brownies Than Cherry Tomatoes Humans' spatial recall makes mental notes about the location of high-calorie foods By Bret Stetka

Physics Nobel Prize Work Took Black Holes from Fantasy to Fact Over the past century, the existence of these invisible cosmic bodies has become unmistakable By Daniel Garisto

Public Health Inequality before Birth Contributes to Health Inequality in Adults Improving newborn health is more essential now than ever By Janet Currie

Energy U.S. Wind and Solar Installation Are Smashing Records, But the Trend May Not Last The renewable boom needs to continue in order to decarbonize the energy grid, but key tax incentives are ending By Benjamin Storrow,E&E News

Physics Last Chance for WIMPs: Physicists Launch All-Out Hunt for Dark-Matter Candidate Researchers have spent decades searching for the elusive particles; a final generation of detectors should leave them no place to hide By Elizabeth Gibney,Nature magazine

Physics How Andrea Ghez Won the Nobel for an Experiment Nobody Thought Would Work She insisted on doing it anyway—and ultimately provided conclusive evidence for a supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Way By Hilton Lewis

Behavior & Society Yes, Science Is Political Scientists need to acknowledge that, and to act on it in these most dire of times By Alyssa Shearer,Ingrid Joylyn Paredes,Tiara Ahmad,Christopher Jackson

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Would a Green New Deal Add or Kill Jobs? A shift to renewable energy powered by a carbon tax would create millions of new jobs, but the amount of money it would return to U.S. residents in rebates could vary considerably By Marilyn A. Brown,Majid Ahmadi | December 2019

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