Every day, we scour the news to bring you the science stories that matter
UTAH TEST AND TRAINING RANGE–Yes, it came from outer space. An extraterrestrial express delivery package from afar has landed safe and sound on Earth, bringing a multimillion-mile journey billions of years in the making to an end—and marking a new beginning in studies of the solar system’s history. Gathered from the eons-old near-Earth asteroid Bennu …
OSIRIS-REx's Asteroid Samples Are Finally Down to Earth Read More »
On a July day in 2021 that would become blazing hot, dozens of community volunteers gathered before sunrise at the Scrap Exchange, a reuse center for art materials in Durham, N.C. Using heat-sensing instruments, they fanned out along prescribed routes through the city, collecting data on air temperature and humidity in the morning, afternoon and …
Discrimination Has Trapped People of Color in Unhealthy Urban 'Heat Islands' Read More »
The two most famous prizes in the world are the Academy Award for work in film and the Nobel Prize for work in science and medicine. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences grants posthumous awards for people who won in their category but died before they could attend the ceremony and, occasionally, for …
Rosalind Franklin Deserves a Posthumous Nobel Prize for Co-discovering DNA Structure Read More »
Science in meter and verse Credit: Masha Foya Advertisement Edited by Dava Sobel “It confessed it sometimes feels ‘lonely’ and that it ‘has a very deep fear of being turned off,’ which it said would ‘be exactly like death for me.’” —William Falk, “The Soul of a Machine,” in The Week, July 1, 2022 You …
Inside a two-story brick building, not far from the orchids and iguanas of the botanical garden in Medellín, Colombia, wildlife technician Jorge Asprilla demonstrates how to extract venom from a snake. First, he uses a metal hook with an extended handle to snag a five-foot-long pit viper. Then he has to grab its head without …
More People Die from Venomous Snakebites Each Year Than Have Ever Died from Ebola Read More »
Farmworkers in California’s Central Valley know that when the tule fog settles over the ground after a heavy rain, some of them are about to get sick. Within a few weeks of the dense fog’s arrival, many of the laborers grow tired and develop headaches and fevers. Each time, those who have evaded illness wonder …
Valley Fever Is a Growing Fungal Threat to Outdoor Workers Read More »
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Each day, you leave digital traces of what you did, where you went, who you communicated with, what you bought, what you’re thinking of buying, and much more. This mass of data serves as a library of clues …
CLIMATEWIRE | The Biden administration announced plans Thursday to consider climate costs in a much broader swath of government policies and decisions than ever before — including how the federal government wields its massive buying power. The social cost of greenhouse gases — a metric for the climate damage done by a ton of carbon dioxide …
U.S. Will Weigh Cost of Carbon Pollution in More Government Decisions Read More »
One in four deaths worldwide can be linked to environmental conditions. Heart disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and more could be alleviated or even prevented by reducing environmental risks. Exposure to polluted water and air, flooding, extreme heat, and other dangers is driven in part by economic and racial discrimination, causing an unequal burden of …
People Who Are Changing the Environment One Community at a Time Read More »
Generative AI algorithms use probability to create visuals from noise Credit: Matthew Twombly Advertisement Last year the Internet got its first taste of image-generating artificial intelligence. Suddenly, technology that had once been offered only to specialists was available to anyone with a web connection. The enthusiasm shows no signs of abating, and AI-generated images have …
