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Two weeks ago, the Pine Gulch Fire became the largest wildfire in Colorado history when it grew to an area nearly the size of Chicago. The 139,000-acre blaze, ignited July 31, was fueled by another record: The area where the fire occurred experienced its hottest August in at least 126 years. Garfield and Mesa counties […]

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign-up here.. Please consider a monthly contribution to support this newsletter. At Nature, Nicky Phillips, David Cyranoski and Smriti Mallapaty covered the announcement that a collaboration between researchers at AstraZeneca and the […]

People who live in the southern U.S. are used to evacuating when severe hurricanes are headed their way. Yet in the case of 2017’s Hurricane Irma—which was the costliest tropical cyclone ever to hit Florida and caused $50 billion in damages in the U.S.—the choice to leave or remain turned into a political storm. According […]

More than 3,500 years ago a catastrophic volcanic eruption struck ancient Thera, known today as the Greek island of Santorini. Ash and pumice rained across the Mediterranean, and tsunami waves rolled onto faraway shores in Crete. In the 1960s archaeologists on Santorini uncovered a Minoan settlement frozen in time, with vibrant wall frescoes decorating multistory […]

It is a central dilemma of human life—more urgent, arguably, than the inevitability of suffering and death. I have been brooding and ranting to my students about it for years. It surely troubles us more than ever during this plague-ridden era. Philosophers call it the problem of other minds. I prefer to call it the […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved the design of a new kind of reactor, known as a small modular reactor (SMR). The design, from the Portland, Ore.–based company NuScale Power, is intended to speed construction, lower cost and improve safety over traditional nuclear reactors, which are typically many times larger. Supporters of SMRs […]

Adhering to social distancing guidelines, I placed the bag on the doorknob, knocked three times loudly, and quickly stepped back six feet Nothing. I knocked once again and placed my ear by the door. The faint sound of footsteps informed me that “Mr. Roberts” (a pseudonym) was making his way to the door, hindered by […]

Two men walked into a Trader Joe’s supermarket in Manhattan near closing time one day in July. When an employee asked them to put on masks, they allegedly proceeded to rip a mask from one worker’s face, hit another and pull the hair of a third. Such physical attacks are less common than a string […]

Untreated drug and alcohol use contributes to tens of thousands of deaths every year and affects the lives of many more people. We have effective treatments, including medications for opioid and alcohol use disorders, that could prevent a significant number of these deaths, but they are not being utilized widely enough, and people who could […]