For months, the Trump campaign’s public statements and the President’s prepared remarks have repeated a message on climate change carefully calibrated not to alienate Republicans worried about the health of the planet: regardless of the science, Democratic plans to address the issue are too expensive. Last week, President Trump disregarded his own campaign’s meticulous messagi…
Read moreFifty-five years ago, a sentient supercomputer struck fear into millions of moviegoers with a chilling phrase:
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
The trope of artificial intelligence (AI) as the plot twist in Stanley Kubrick’s futuristic dystopia 2001: A Space Odyssey is entertaining; the reality is far more mundane, yet …
Read morePfizer scaled back its Covid-19 production targets earlier this year after the drugmaker ran into difficulties securing all the materials it needs to produce the shots at a large scale.
In news releases through September, Pfizer had said that it aimed to manufacture up to 100 million vaccine doses this year. But in several releases in November, the company cut that to an estimate of up to…
Read moreOrgan transplants save lives, but healthy specimens from the right donors are in short supply, which is why scientists are searching for more reliable ways to replace diseased organs that depend less on chance and more on some of the latest scientific advances.
Enter pigs, who are bringing hope to the 10,000 people in the U.S. currently waiting for liver transplants. On Jan. 18, researche…
Read moreChina has made few friends lately with the serial, uncontrolled reentries of the spent first stages of its Long March 5B spacecraft, which have posed potential threats to populations on the ground. Now, as the South China Morning Post reports, a Chinese rocket has created yet another mess—this time in orbit 500 km (310 mi.) above Earth, at an altitude that could imperil SpaceX&rs…
Read moreAdmit it: You have more important things to do than watch a baby giraffe being born or a baby hippo playing with a lawn sprinkler. So do most people. But that didn’t matter on April 15, when a mama giraffe gave birth at Animal Adventure Park in upstate New York and the park live-streamed the event. There were 232 million views, amounting to a collective 7.6 billion minutes watching, accor…
Read moreKathryn Clancy wrote an entire book about menstrual cycles. But even she was surprised by some of the pre-menopausal symptoms she recently began to experience at age 44.
“A lot of things that have to do with my uterus, ovaries, and breasts, I have been massively underprepared for as a Ph.D.-level expert in this field,” says Clancy, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Cham…
Read moreHurricane Harvey brought torrential rain, wind and flooding to the Texas shoreline, as it made landfall as a Category 4 storm Friday night. It has since weakened to a Category 1 storm.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott urged people in the hurricane’s path to evacuate, while weather forecasters employed uncharacteristically dramatic language as they warned of potential catastrophe.
The st…
Read moreLooking at the world around us, happiness may seem an unattainable goal. As we move into the fourth year of a pandemic that has killed millions and continues to threaten health and well-being worldwide, compounded by devastating consequences of climate change, spikes in hate crimes, and continued fallout from systemic oppression and inequality, there seems little reason to be happy. Indeed, res…
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