This Was The Decade Climate Change Slapped Us In The Face
Broken temperature records, unnatural disasters, and homes lost would show just how catastrophically humans had transformed the planet. It’s been a decade of adapting to a new normal while clumsily figuring out how to safeguard the future from a climate crisis that’s only going to get worse.
Are There Bacteria In Your Brain?
The brain is protected from the bacterial menagerie of the body by the blood-brain barrier, and is considered a sterile organ. Which made it all the more surprising when Rosalinda Roberts, along with Charlene Farmer and Courtney Walker, realized that the unknown objects in their slides were bacteria.
Drought And Floods — The Climate Exodus
More people around the world are fleeing from climate change than from war. If human-induced climate change continues at the current rate, the World Bank warns that by 2050 there could be as many as 180 million climate refugees.
How To Build An Eco-Warrior
Like her school-skipping compatriot Pippi Longstocking, the classic of children’s literature created by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, Greta Thunberg loves calling bullshit on adults, their “nuanced” worldview and self-congratulating conspiracies.
What Fruits And Vegetables Looked Like Before Humans Intervened
The fruits and vegetables we know and love are a lot more complicated than you’d think. They didn’t always look like they do. In fact, it took decades of human intervention to transform them into the delicious, nutrient-rich morsels they are today.
Future Shock In The Countryside
Conflicting populations already struggle against the seasonal chaos of floods and droughts. The large industrial centers that power fossil-fuel pollution are at risk—the Pearl River Delta is one—but disproportionate consequences are poised to fall upon areas that did little to contribute.
Kidney Stone Drug Found To Starve Pancreatic Cancer Cells To Death
A research team at Columbia University has made an exciting discovery, finding that a compound currently under development for a rare kidney stone disease can starve pancreatic cancer cells of a key amino acid they depend on, a technique that proved to stop tumor growth in mice.
A Banana Grown At Subzero Temps Also Has An Edible Peel
A Japanese farm introduced a new crop this winter: an organic banana with a peel that’s thin enough to eat. In a nod to this appealing outer covering, Setsuzo Tanaka, the banana’s inventor, has named his creation the Mongee (“mon-gay”) banana — which means “incredible banana” in Japanese.
Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works.
With more than 9 billion gigabytes of information traveling the internet every day, researchers are constantly looking for new ways to compress data into smaller packages. Cutting-edge techniques focus on lossy approaches, which achieve compression by intentionally “losing” information from a transmission.
How Long Will Australia Be Livable?
As the country suffers through one of its worst droughts on record, and heat waves shatter temperature records not once but twice within the same summer week, some are asking whether Australians can afford to keep returning to the same parched, scorched landscapes.
The Whale Arctic Visitor Center By Dorte Mandrup
300 km North of the Arctic Circle, on the tip of the island Andøya lies Andenes. A small town located amid dramatic landscapes – both above and below the ocean’s surface. The new Arctic attraction, The Whale, tells the story of the big inhabitants of this underwater world, rising as a soft hill on the rocky shore– as if a giant had lifted a thin layer of the crust of the earth and created a cavity underneath.
How Air Conditioning Created The Modern City
The shopping mall would have been inconceivable without air conditioning, as would the deep-plan and glass-walled office block, as would computer servers. The expansion of tract housing in postwar suburban America relied on affordable domestic air conditioning units.
Can We Survive Extreme Heat?
As the climate warms, heat waves are growing longer, hotter, and more frequent. Since the 1960s, the average number of annual heat waves in 50 major American cities has tripled. They are also becoming more deadly. Humans have never lived on a planet this hot, and we’re totally unprepared for what’s to come.
The Daring Journey Inside The World’s Deepest Cave
The Veryovkina Cave is the deepest known cave on Earth. It took half a century and about 30 expeditions for Russian cave explorers to reach its record depth of 2,212 meters. Speleologists still think there is more to be discovered.
The Berwyn Incident
They made an improbable duo of UFO hunters— a plump Miss Marple and a gun-toting gamekeeper. The true story of their long-odds mission to solve the “Roswell of Wales” in Llandrillo, a small village built around a broad stream at the base of the Berwyn Mountains in North Wales.
A Long Walk’s End
On May 18 2015, the FBI announced the search for a 53-year-old accountant accused of embezzling $8.7 million from an Ohio-based Pepsi distributor had come to an end. His name: James T. Hammes. Authorities say Hammes took the funds through a series of banking transfers while working as a controller for the distributor. Then he went for a hike.
Religion Is About Emotion Regulation, And It’s Very Good At It
Sigmund Freud argued that we humans are naturally awful creatures – aggressive, narcissistic wolves. We have the civilizing influence of religion to steer us toward charity, compassion and cooperation by a system of carrots and sticks, otherwise known as heaven and hell.
Inside The Race To Build The Best Quantum Computer On Earth
Given their size and wealth, both Google and IBM have a shot at becoming serious players in the quantum computing business. Companies will rent their machines to tackle problems the way they currently rent cloud-based data storage and processing power from Amazon, Google, IBM, or Microsoft.
The Fight To Save Broad Beach
Malibu homeowners banded together to address sea level rise. A decade later, they are at war with the city, the surfers, and each other. The choices are clear: Do nothing and lose the coast. Stall by dredging in sand, bouldering up revetments and emergency sea walls. Or look at long-term solutions.
The True Toll Of The Chernobyl Disaster
On 26 April 1986 reactor number four at the power plant suffered a catastrophic explosion that exposed the core and threw clouds of radioactive material over the surrounding. Covered up by a secretive Soviet Union at the time, the true number of deaths and illnesses caused by the nuclear accident are only now becoming clear.
The Promise And Peril Of Space Tourism
The Overview Effect is a phenomenon chronicled by astronauts to describe a sudden sense of awe or divine recognition that they feel when they depart from the planet and then turn and look back at it. A space tourism industry is being built on the proposition of personal and existential transformation. But at what cost?