In science news around the world, Angela Merkel and her party, the Christian Democrats, were the big winners in Germany's elections; NIH will give $33 million to a clinical trial of a drug targeting amyloid plaques—hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease; and Russia's lower house of parliament approves a merger of the Russian Academy of Sciences with two other academies.

Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough announced he will step down as head of the institution in October 2014.

String theory goes viral in a video by musician and physics master's degree student Tim Blais that parodies Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." And, thanks to newly discovered fossils, anthropologists reconstruct Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old hominin, giving her a new, svelter look.

As the 2013 fiscal year comes to a close in the United States, the impact on science of the 5% federal budget cut known as the sequester is becoming clearer—sort of.

The Obama administration last week unveiled a landmark proposal that would require new coal-fired power plants to capture at least some of the carbon pollution they emit, but the needed technology remains uncertain.

Australia's new government eliminated the science minister post and has begun dismantling climate change programs—and more tremors could follow.

C. difficile, a nasty hospital-acquired infection, is on the rise. Genetic sleuths are looking for where it is coming from and what can be done.

Suggesting a new ecological threat, hormonal metabolites thought to degrade in sunlight can revert at night, zombielike, back into the endocrine-disrupting substances.

Can a landmark global agreement to curb mercury pollution make a difference?

The Minamata Convention on Mercury seeks to curb or end most uses of mercury. It also calls for plenty of research.

Nearly 60 years after a chemical plant caused one of the world's worst episodes of mercury poisoning, the Japanese town that came to symbolize the metal's threat is still struggling with the aftermath.

Small-scale artisanal gold mining has become the world's leading source of mercury pollution, poisoning air, rivers, and people.

Using artworks from many periods and traditions, Shimamura explores what science can tell us about our reactions to art.

Perry draws on interviews and archival research to examine the methodology and conclusions of Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments.

A listing of books received at Science during the week ending 20 September 2013.

The Genetic Engineering Proposal Project, an IBI prize-winning module, teaches biology students to devise innovative bioproducts or solutions to environmental or health problems.

An evidence-based framework offers a guide for efforts to increase student persistence in STEM majors.

Mercury concentrations in the atmosphere and oceans are affected not only by anthropogenic emissions but also by climate and ecosystem change.

Smart coatings are designed to be sensitive to various external and internal stimuli, thereby enhancing the surface functionality of materials.

Genomic data help to elucidate the role of food animals in the spread of antimicrobial resistance in humans. [Also see Report by Mather et al.]

Controlled thermal processing can create alloys with large crystalline grains that can lead to improvements in materials performance. [Also see Report by Omori et al.]

Oscillation in the numbers of inflammatory monocytes in different organs depends on a circadian clock gene expressed by myeloid cells. [Also see Report by Nguyen et al.]

Superelastic and shape-memory ceramics may find application in high-temperature actuators and energy-harvesting devices. [Also see Report by Lai et al.]

A similar approach to analyze protein trafficking arrives at two opposing models of movement through the cell's secretory pathway.

Data from various satellites in Earth’s magnetotail clarify where and how electromagnetic energy conversion occurs.

The clock protein Bmal1 regulates daily changes in white blood cell trafficking and susceptibility to inflammation in mice. [Also see Perspective by Druzd and Scheiermann]

Electron densities detected by Voyager 1 show that the spacecraft is in the interstellar plasma.

Observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope strengthen the link between the coolest brown dwarfs and gas-giant exoplanets.

Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of Pb_1–xSn_xSe in a magnetic field reveals two types of Dirac fermions.

Listen to stories on taming mercury in the environment, news from the Curiosity rover, codon bias in bacterial genes, and more.

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