The Arctic can appear to be a pristine, isolated frozen land. But human pollution has reached even this remote corner of the world—which the World Wildlife Fund has called “the chemical sink of the globe.” Now researchers have discovered that a virtually indestructible type of chemical has been building up in the region since the […]
At a restaurant industry executive event a little while ago, President Donald Trump stated that he was taking hydroxychloroquine or “the hydroxy” as he called it, in an effort to prevent COVID-19 infection. He also said many frontline workers—presumably referring to nurses, doctors and emergency medical technicians—were also taking the drug. Over the last few […]
Mucus…is a miraculous substance. It’s in our noses, of course—but it also helps us swallow. And it lubricates our eyes, so we can blink. But it’s not just us. Mucus is ubiquitous in the oceans, too. “Fish are covered in mucus. There are parrot fish that excrete mucus balloons around their head, presumably to protect […]
Carried by the wind, dust particles from places such as the Sahara Desert can float halfway around the world before settling to the ground. As the plastics discarded by humans break down into tiny pieces in the environment, they, too, drift through the atmosphere. Now scientists are a step closer to understanding how these globe-trotting […]
Firefighters plan to take an unusually aggressive approach to battling wildfires this year in an effort to avoid mass evacuations and encampments during the coronavirus pandemic. State fire officials told members of Congress yesterday that their goal is to suppress wildfires quickly to forestall the need for large evacuation shelters and sprawling base camps for […]
More than 113 million years ago, a strange reptile lived in what is now South Korea. It strode around on two legs like many dinosaurs, yet it was not one of them. The tracks it left behind indicate it was a relative of today’s crocodiles. And the details of its Cretaceous footfalls resolve one mystery—but […]
When patients with a new disease called COVID-19 started pouring into his hospital, pulmonary and critical care physician Bilal Jalil found himself turning to a pocket-size device he had been using to quickly check heart function in his private practice. It was a handheld point-of-care ultrasound, or POCUS, which consists of a simple probe that […]
Traumatic events like pandemics can spur transformative psychological growth Credit: Tom Grill Getty Images Advertisement Months of pandemic lockdowns, an economic crisis and necessary social upheaval are taxing each and every one of us. As Wired writer Matt Simon outlined in an article in early June, our bodies are programmed to deal with short spurts […]
For a fraction of a second in late April, a hyper-magnetized star in the Milky Way suddenly blasted out radio energy. Now scientists say that this sudden, strange blip could help to explain one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles: what powers the hundreds of other mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) that have been spotted much farther […]
When the Black Death spread across Europe starting 1346, science didn’t yet exist; to cope with the bubonic plague, people relied on superstition, rumor and religion. Nowadays we have the advantage of modern medical science, but religion continues to be a cornerstone of many people’s lives as they struggle to understand awful events. This is […]