This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria recently pounded Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, the severity of the storms was often attributed to climate change. “Four Underappreciated Ways That Climate Change Could Make Hurricanes Even Worse,” was the headline in the Washington Post; “Hurricane Harvey’s […]
You know that feeling. TFW you're in the market for a new phone, and you can't decide which one to buy. For the past month, if you're an Apple fan, chances are you've been feeling that feel a bit more than usual. This year, like every year, Apple released new phones—the iPhones 8 and 8 […]
When Alexander Fleming came back from a Scottish vacation in the summer of 1928 to find his London lab bench contaminated with a mold called Penicillium notatum, he kicked off a new age of scientific sovereignty over nature. Since then, the antibiotics he discovered and the many more he inspired have saved millions of lives […]
Today, the Nobel committee kicked off its 2017 season by awarding the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to three scientists for their discoveries of the molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms. The Americans—Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young—used fruit flies to isolate a gene that dictates the biological clock ticking away […]
The 007-meets-the-X-Files adventures in Cuba continue. Last week the US Department of State recalled non-emergency personnel and families home from the embassy in Havana, citing injuries and illness among 21 people—“hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues, and difficulty sleeping” according to a statement from secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Those 21 people weren’t just […]
Tansy was not into sports. The little border collie, a rescue, didn’t care for agility trials or flyball. But her adopted family—with two other border collies already in the house—played them all the time. Border collies, the elite athletes of the canine universe, are working dogs. They go a little nuts without something to do. […]
Maybe you've heard that Tiangong-1, China's 19,000-pound prototype space station, is scheduled to rain down on Earth … eventually. As in, some time between now and next April. Most of the spacecraft will burn up in orbit—but sizable chunks (up to 220 pounds, by one estimate) could end up making landfall. Thing is, nobody's sure […]
In early August, a Google engineer named James Damore posted a document titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” to an internal online discussion group. His memo was a calm attempt to point out all the ways Google has gone wrong in making gender representation among its employees a corporate priority. And then, on August 5, the […]
Female scientists were reporting sexual abuse and harassment by professors years before the #MeToo movement exploded in the public eye last fall. From unwanted comments and weird texts to missed promotions and direct assaults, female graduate students and postdocs are often vulnerable while working in male-dominated field camps, laboratories, or remote observatories where there are […]
These days any old schlub can pilot a drone without cratering it, what with good old autopilot tech, but there are drone pilots out there whose abilities push the limits of human cognition. Drone racing is a truly insane endeavor (now with its very own Drone Racing League!)—with human pilots banking around corners and through […]