The Genetic Age review: Is genetic engineering a costly distraction?
Matthew Cobb’s latest book is a disturbing history of genetic engineering, which asks whether it is worth the money – or the risk Humans 24 August 2022 By Michael Marshall…
Heat-loving, oil-eating bacteria are seeping out of the seafloor
A genetic analysis suggests that petroleum-eating bacteria that live thousands of metres beneath the seafloor seep out into the ocean where they may then float along currents Life 26 August…
New York Polio Case Revives Questions About Live Oral Vaccine
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The first case of polio in the U.S. since 2013 was announced by…
Canada’s Residential Schools Were a Horror
Editor’s Note (7/25/22): This story is being republished in light of Pope Francis’s visit to Canada to apologize to the Indigenous community for more than a century of abuses by…
Exploration Is Fundamental to Human Success
Schoolbooks typically present explorers as intrepid individuals who, at the behest of colonizing leaders, sail wooden ships to new lands, ride on horseback across uncharted mountains or slash their way…
Designer Crops of the Future Must Be Better Tailored for Women in Agriculture
For all the progress that scientists have made in breeding crops that feed more people, these breakthroughs typically elude a core demographic in low-income countries that rely on agriculture: women.…
High-Tech Seafloor Mapping Is Finding Surprising Structures Everywhere
Oceanographers are fond of saying that we know more about the moon’s surface than we do about Earth’s seafloor. It’s true. As of 2017, only 6 percent of the global…
How to Make Sure Wildfire Shelters Save Firefighters’ Lives
Wildfires burn hot, fast and unpredictably. Although wildland firefighters receive extensive training to keep themselves safe, they sometimes become cut off by flames that can reach temperatures of 1,600 to…
How Florence Nightingale Changed Data Visualization Forever
In the summer of 1856 Florence Nightingale sailed home from war furious. As the nursing administrator of a sprawling British Army hospital network, she had witnessed thousands of sick soldiers…
The Mystery of Milky Seas Is Finally Being Solved
On January 30, 1864, the Confederate warship CSS Alabama entered what its captain described as a “remarkable patch of the sea.” The Alabama, sailing southwest along the Horn of Africa,…