This year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science looked at, among other things, fire, siestas, alien life and nuclear forensics

CALIFORNIA, though regarded by some as one of the more civilised parts of the world, is prey to wildfires. Last August, for example, a fire took hold to the north of Los Angeles. Over the course of almost two months it devoured 65,000 hectares (160,000 acres) of chaparral and forest, destroyed 89 houses and claimed the lives of two firefighters. Over the past few years other parts of the American west have burned in similar fashion. Australia, too, saw serious fires last year. The question on many people’s minds, therefore, is whether such fires are becoming more common, and if they are, whether that is a result of climate change.

To examine this question (and many others, in many fields of scientific endeavour), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held its annual meeting this year in San Diego. On February 19th a session was devoted to the environmental role of fire. It brought together palaeontologists and ecologists, as well as climate experts, because fire is a natural and useful part of both past and present ecosystems—a fact that human fire controllers have only reluctantly come to recognise in their zeal to snuff out any blaze as soon as possible. …