The world is waiting for a clean revolution, a shift away from the greenhouse gas-emitting, mountain-leveling, air-polluting, fossil-fuel burning way of life. The world may have to wait a long time if past energy transitions are anything to go by, according to environmental scientist Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba—especially since fossil fuel energy is so cheap.

"Energy is dirt cheap. Oil is cheaper than any mineral you can buy," Smil noted. "The percent of disposable income devoted to energy is about 10 percent."

Smil spoke at the recent Equinox Summit at the Perimeter Insitute in Waterloo, Ontario, which was specifically charged with devising a new energy scenario for 2030, one that would cut greenhouse gas emissions while extending modern energy to the billions of people who lack it today. The summit called for a range of options, from power plants that harvest energy from hot rocks to solar-battery combos for rural electrification.

LINDAU, Germany—There's a magazine ad for an expensive skin care product marketed by Christian Dior that claims to trade on aquaporins, the discovery of which by Peter Agre won him the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2003 (he shared it with Roderick MacKinnon). These proteins allow water to move across cell membranes, and are involved in skin maintenance among many other critical biological processes. The prize is noted lower down in the ad copy, well below the visage of a striking young woman.

Agre recently showed the ad to his mother back in Minnesota. "And she smiles and says, 'Peter, you are finally doing something useful," he said.

It's no secret that health care in the U.S. is not as good as that in many other developed countries. And a new report finds that hospitals in U.S. territories—including Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands—are even further behind. "Virtually all of the territorial hospitals performed below the U.S. national averages," noted the authors of the study.

To assess the quality of hospital care in U.S. territories, a team of researchers tabulated patients' risk of dying or being readmitted a month after being hospitalized for cardiac arrest, heart failure or pneumonia between 2005 and 2008. All rates were "significantly higher" (except for readmission proceeding heart failure) in territories versus in states, according to the report.

The uncontrolled 60,000-acre Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico, which began June 26, is raging near Los Alamos National Laboratory, but the lab says that its nuclear materials are protected.

Los Alamos was the birthplace of the atomic bombs that the U.S. developed during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project and dropped on Japan. The lab remains a key nuclear-weaponry research site.

Los Alamos spokesperson Steve Sandoval would not comment on what would happen if the Las Conchas blaze were to reach stored nuclear materials at the lab. "Unfortunately, I cannot answer that question other than to say that the material is well protected," Sandoval said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "And the lab, knowing that it works with hazardous and nuclear materials, takes great pains to make sure it is protected and locked in concrete steel vaults. And the fire poses very little threat to them."

LINDAU, Germany—Drab details dominate most academic conferences, but here at the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates, the hundreds of young scientists in attendance want and get a lot more—including career tips and snappy anecdotes about the twists and turns of how science actually happens.

Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2009 with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak, kicked off the laureate presentations—the hallmark of this event—on June 27 with a deceptively breezy tour-de-force overview of her decades-long effort to understand the biology of chromosome endings, or telomeric DNA. Like many of the eminent speakers here, she urged students to pursue research questions even when no one else thinks the answers are attainable or important, and to seek out passionate colleagues throughout one's career.

Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) have been besieged by a highly contagious cancer that has been pushing the species ever-closer to extinction. In the past 15 years, Devil Facial Tumor Disease has spread throughout Australia's Tasmania island, killing most Tasmanian devils that catch it.

In an effort to help save the biggest living carnivorous marsupial, conservationists have been collecting individuals for captive populations until the disease has run out of wild individuals to infect. But such a last-ditch strategy could end up constricting the gene pool of a species with an already-limited genetic diversity.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling Monday (pdf) that California cannot regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to minors is the latest chapter in the long-simmering debate over the impact of aggression in the virtual world on children's behavior in the real world. The high court's ruling is based on law and politics; it noted that states don't have the right to restrict children's First Amendment rights. Still, the science to date suggests that violent video games do negatively affect the behavior of children.

California's 2005 law was written by Senator Leland Yee (D–San Francisco), who is a child psychologist. In a statement on his Web site, Yee expressed disappointment today's ruling, accusing the majority of the Supreme Court with "once again put the interests of corporate America before the interests of our children."

A newly discovered asteroid should zoom past Earth June 27, posing no threat to the planet but significantly bending the orbital path of the asteroid [see orbital diagram at left].

The space rock, known as 2011 MD, was first detected on June 22 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project at a telescope in New Mexico. Based on how much sunlight it reflects, 2011 MD is estimated to be five to 20 meters in diameter, according to the Web site of the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Program Office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

2011 MD is expected to pass over the Southern Hemisphere at an altitude of about 12,000 kilometers at 1:00 P.M. (Eastern Daylight Time). That will bring the asteroid within the orbit of some high-altitude satellites, although the chance of a collision is vanishingly small. Asteroids frequently buzz the planet, often undetected, but the increased capabilities of asteroid-spotting searches in the past several years has made it more common that smallish asteroids such as 2011 MD are discovered before their planetary flybys. "One would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every six years on average," Don Yeomans and Paul Chodas of NASA's NEO Program Office wrote on the program's Web site.

LINDAU, Germany—Microsoft founder Bill Gates thrilled a crowd of 566 young researchers from 77 countries gathered here June 26 for the opening ceremony of the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates, and he wasted no time in telling them what to do.

His advice was borne of his own trajectory from technologist to billionaire to philanthropist. As Microsoft became successful, Gates learned of the challenges faced by those not born in "the same wealthy country that I was," he said. And that knowledge then helped him figure out what to do with his wealth and how to give it back to people in an effective way. His focus turned to improving the health, agriculture and innovation prospects for the world's poorest people.

"I admonish you to consider the needs of the poorest in the work that you do," he told the scientists. "The advances there will be particularly important in coming years and without your attention they will not take place." Gates made his comments following his induction into the honorary senate of the Foundation of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.

Plutonium has a half-life of about 24,000 years. And scientists have known for decades that even in small doses, it is highly toxic, leading to radiation illness, cancer and often to death. After the March nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, people the world over worried that plutonium poisoning might affect those near the compromised plant—and beyond.

Inhaled plutonium can land in the lungs, where it can lead to cancer, but it—and any that is ingested—can also find its way into the blood stream where it is slowly absorbed into the body.