Enlarge / Adenoviruses remain the leading suspect, though no cause has been identified. (credit: Getty | BSIP ) The global tally of unexplained hepatitis cases within children has reached about 400, including 11 reported deaths, according to an update from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control . The cases come from more than […]
Enlarge (credit: David Aubrey ) Over the last decade or so, the science community has been concerned about what has been called the “reproducibility crisis”: the apparent failure of some significant experiments to produce the same results when they’re repeated. That failure has led to many suggestions about what might be done to improve matters, […]
Enlarge / An artist’s rendering of Star Harbor Academy in Colorado. (credit: Star Harbor) A group of astronauts, engineers, and business executives is betting on a vibrant space economy by launching a new initiative called “Star Harbor.” Among several planned activities, this spaceflight campus would train future astronauts and make facilities such as a neutral […]
Enlarge / NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter has been flying across the red planet for more than a year. (credit: NASA) The achievement of powered flight on another world is one of the great spaceflight feats of the last decade. Since its first brief hop on April 19, 2021, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter has subsequently made […]
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) The numbers are startling. We know roughly how much more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere before we exceed our climate goals—limiting warming to 1.5° to 2° C above preindustrial temperatures. From that, we can figure out how much more fossil fuel we can burn before […]
Enlarge (credit: Justin Lewis) Medical authorities have spent years convincing people to use sunscreen to limit their exposure to UV light. But that effort has had a bit of a setback, as several locations have recently banned the use of sunblocks by beachgoers. Those bans took effect after local waters were found to have high […]
Enlarge / A good amethyst may make a good metaphor for geology as a whole. (credit: Getty Images ) To outsiders, geology can seem as dull as a rock, with a lexicon just as opaque, but to insiders, it is a limitless source of wonder. Various authors have used different tools to crack open geology’s […]
Enlarge (credit: De Agostini Picture Library | Getty Images) Lake Whillans is a strange body of water, starting with the fact that there is liquid to fill it at all. Though buried under more than 2,000 feet of Antarctic ice, its temperatures climb to just shy of 0° Celsius, thanks to a combination of geothermal […]
Enlarge / Signage outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday, March 14, 2020. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now investigating 109 cases of unexplained liver inflammation—hepatitis—in young children from 25 states over the past seven months. Of the 109 […]
Enlarge / The vaquita’s population is small, but it may have purged most of its harmful mutations in the past. (credit: David Schneider) With only around 10 individuals left in the world, a tiny porpoise called the vaquita is facing extinction. Somewhat surprisingly, despite the relative shallowness of its gene pool, inbreeding isn’t likely to […]