As parents have long observed, children learn with ease, rapidly absorbing information in their environment and picking up new skills and knowledge at a rapid pace. Things are not so easy for most adults — in particular, they have more difficulty learning languages — but they can be masterful at relying on hard-won experience to get them through life’s challenges.

Over the past five years the price of oil has gone through wild swings — record highs are followed by more “normal” periods, sharp spikes alternate with modest troughs. Powering all this volatility is a complex mix of economics, political factors and industry developments.

The melting of land-based ice masses as a consequence of climate change has significant implications for sea level rise. The shrinking of the ice sheets in the Earth’s polar regions has been the subject of intense study for many years now, but scientists have been sharpening the satellite tools and techniques they use to analyze the true mass of ice and its rate of decline.