This past year is expected to be the second hottest year on record, following three years of record-breaking high temperatures. Greenhouse gas emissions are again rising, and new research shows that, due to human disruptions, both Arctic permafrost and tropical forests are releasing more carbon than they’re storing. Nonetheless, the Trump administration is dismantling federal climate policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Nowhere is the gap between climate science and federal climate policy more obvious than at the Environmental Protection Agency. Administrator Scott Pruitt denies the link between carbon dioxide and climate change, and has called for military-style Red-team-Blue-team debates of climate science.

This year’s top stories in biomedicine bring science and social values head-to-head: Multiple teams this year announced that they had used CRISPR/CAS9 gene editing technology to modify human embryos. Although some of the claims about efficiency and accuracy are under debate, the research community is undeniably moving ahead with controversial work that even many fellow scientists say should be subject to better rules and regulations than currently exist.

If you’ve never heard of the LabLit genre, you’re not alone. Cell biologist and author Jenny Rohn went looking for novels about scientists and discovered there were only a couple hundred such books in existence. She now tracks fictional portrayals of scientists on her webzine LabLit.com , and she runs through some of this year’s best on Living Lab Radio.

Our ears are actually better at picking out trends than our eyes. That’s just one reason that Mark Ballora of Pennsylvania State University turns big data into beautiful soundscapes. He has transformed data from hurricanes and stars, and is working with deep-sea biologists. On Living Lab radio, we talk with Mark about d ata sonification, and s eeing with your ears.

Doctors can image your body and decode your genes in search of what ails you. But Kenneth Mandl of Harvard University says that, to reap the full benefits of big data, doctors need access to the records of as many patients as possible. He’s calling for clinical information commons , but acknowledges we have to find a balance between technology and personal attention in medical care.

You probably knew that whales make sounds to communicate. But did you know that fish are chatting down there, too? It turns out that fish vocalize to find mates, and ship noise may be interfering. A new study looked at haddock and cod, two commercially important fish species, to find out more about how fish are managing in an increasingly noisy ocean. We talk to researcher Jenni Stanley of Northeast Fisheries Science Center at NOAA in Woods Hole. Fish and Ships: Unfortunately, Not a Great

America’s first offshore wind farm went online just over a year ago, and three developers have plans to put hundreds of turbines in the waters south of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in coming years. Not everything has gone perfectly with Deepwater Wind’s Block Island Wind Farm. But scientists have found no evidence of negative environmental impacts, and neighbors, fishermen, and the tourism industry have been praising the project. Jennifer McCann is the director of U.S. Coastal Programs at

It’s been forty five years since the last Apollo mission. Apollo 17 returned to Earth on December 19, 1972, and no one has set foot on the moon since. But scientists are still studying the samples brought back by Apollo astronauts. We talk to David Kring, principal investigator at the Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is feminism. How did they come up with that? In part, it’s based on how often people searched for the definition on the Merriam Webster website. That hasn’t always been the case. We talk with Peter Sokolowski, Merriam Webster’s editor at large.