The Climate Crisis Is Driving People to Substance Abuse
Kamal Sonavane knew she’d pass out if she chewed smokeless tobacco one more time. It was a scorching April afternoon in the middle of another [more…]
Category: Science
How NASA Is Protecting Its Precious Asteroid Bennu Sample
The NASA recovery team began by taking samples of the desert ground and atmosphere where the capsule landed. Then they gingerly loaded it onto a [more…]
Why Rain Is Getting Fiercer on a Warming Planet
One of the weirder side effects of climate change is what it’s doing to rainfall. While most people think about global warming in terms of [more…]
How to Make a Pig Heart Transplant Last in a Person
With any organ transplant, doctors are trying to balance how to prevent infections while tamping down the immune system. Without immunosuppressive drugs, the transplant organ [more…]
The Secret of How Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there [more…]
The World’s Largest—and Stinkiest—Flower Is in Danger of Extinction
This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Parasitic, elusive, and emitting an overwhelming odor of putrefying flesh, [more…]
Behold the Latest Treasures Unearthed at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor
In addition to his military achievements, Moctezuma I is remembered for his focus on the cultural and religious development of Tenochtitlán. He promoted the construction [more…]
Inside the Race to Stop a Deadly Viral Outbreak in India
On the morning of September 11, critical care specialist Anoop Kumar was presented with an unusual situation. Four members of the same family had been [more…]
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Is About to Bring Asteroid Pieces Back to Earth
Seven years after it left for the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is returning with a celestial souvenir. On the morning of Sunday, September [more…]
A Medieval French Skeleton Is Rewriting the History of Syphilis
Using an unblemished femur from the same burial site as a control, his lab extracted degraded DNA present in the bone, sequenced it, and identified [more…]
