Greenland Is Still Melting, and It’s September
CLIMATEWIRE | Ominous clouds rippled overhead, and scientist Jason Box raced to reach shelter before the rain hit. Box, a glaciologist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, had been…
It’s Time To Rethink the Origins of Pain
Every person who has ever felt pain has their origin story, and I certainly have mine. While performing a bench press more than a decade ago when I was in…
Physicists Struggle to Unite Around Future Plans
SEATTLE—After a year of seemingly endless Zoom meetings, Slack chats and e-mails, nearly 800 particle physicists descended on the University of Washington to share their scientific dreams and nightmares in…
These Tiny Pollinators Can Travel Surprisingly Huge Distances
It turns out that hoverflies may fly hundreds or even thousands of miles—all to help pollinate our flowers and vegetables.
The Number of Children Orphaned by COVID Keeps Rising
As an epidemiologist, I am used to studying waves of infection and measuring the rise and fall of deaths. While the deaths of parents and grandparents from COVID crash and…
To Clear Deadly Land Mines, Science Turns to Drones and Machine Learning
A warm wind blows across an empty field on the outskirts of Pawnee, Okla. A small group of researchers struggle against the stiff wind to set up a pop-up tent…
Poem: ‘Aerogel: A Quintain’
Liquid to gas at temperatures so highThat phase-distinctions blur and leave it thereIn place, that fine-wrought microscale arrayOf lattices the cosmic dust streams throughTo layer three, then rests in aerogel.…
Why So Few Young Kids Are Vaccinated against COVID—And How to Change That
As summer vacations wind down, the days get shorter and children prepare to go to school, preschool and day care, they could encounter an unwelcome classmate: COVID. Yet despite the…
Why Are Pakistan’s Floods So Extreme This Year?
With rivers breaking their banks, flash flooding and glacial lakes bursting, Pakistan is experiencing its worst floods this century. At least one-third of the country is under water. Scientists say…
Most People at Risk for Lung Cancer Never Get Screened: Here’s How to Fix That
In late 2014 then 40-year-old Katherine Benson was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer and told she had less than a year to live. “She was stunned,” says her father…