- — The Climate Crisis Is Threatening Spain’s Saffron Crop
- Growers fear a perfect storm for a tradition that has long bound rural communities together.
- — MDMA and Psilocybin Are Approved as Medicines for the First Time
- Many are celebrating Australia’s decision to pave the way for these psychedelic therapies, but questions around accessibility remain.
- — What Would Earth’s Temperature Be Like Without an Atmosphere?
- If you want to know what the cloud of gas that surrounds the planet is really doing for us, you have to see what the world would be like without it.
- — The Secret to Making Concrete That Lasts 1,000 Years
- Scientists have uncovered the Roman recipe for self-repairing cement—which could massively reduce the carbon footprint of the material today.
- — Scientists Grew Mini Human Guts Inside Mice
- These tiny organoids with working immune systems mimic the function of the GI tract and could be used to study intestinal diseases and drugs to treat them.
- — The Last Drug That Can Fight Gonorrhea Is Starting to Falter
- Data gaps, funding cuts, and shyness about sex let gonorrhea gain drug-resistance. There are no new treatments yet.
- — Spotted a UFO? There’s an App for That
- Enigma Labs launches a project to crowdsource and quantify data about “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
- — Why Bother Bringing Back the Dodo?
- Audacious plans to resurrect the long-extinct bird could be lucrative. But the moonshot raises thorny philosophical questions.
- — Did the Seeds of Life Ride to Earth Inside an Asteroid?
- Biological amino acids could have celestial or terrestrial roots. An experiment simulated their formation in deep space—but the mystery isn’t solved yet.
- — The Spaceport at the Edge of the World
- A tiny Scottish village is betting its future on rocket launches. But the plan may threaten the fragile landscape—and a tenacious billionaire’s ambitions.
- — The Case of the Incredibly Long-Lived Mouse Cells
- Scientists kept the rodents’ immune T cells active four times longer than mice can live—with huge implications for cancer, vaccination, and aging research.
- — ‘Nasty’ Geometry Breaks a Decades-Old Tiling Conjecture
- Mathematicians predicted that if they imposed enough restrictions on how a shape might tile space, they could force a periodic pattern to emerge. They were wrong.
- — The American West’s Salt Lakes Are Turning to Dust
- A new research and monitoring program aims to conserve threatened but overlooked saline ecosystems.
- — How Sensor-Dangling Helicopters Can Help Beat the Water Crisis
- A simultaneous solution to California’s extreme drought and flooding is to bank more water underground. Send in the choppers (and a few ATVs).
- — You Might Survive a Nuclear Blast—if You Have the Right Shelter
- The escalating risks of Russia’s war in Ukraine have led scientists to study the unthinkable and model the aftermath of nuclear detonation.
- — The Problematic Arrival of Anti-Obesity Drugs
- Fat activists say they’re tools of coercion. Celebrities are taking them to get slim. Is this really the road people want to go down?
- — Is It Time to Call Time on the Doomsday Clock?
- It’s been ticking down the seconds to nuclear apocalypse for three-quarters of a century, but it’s not so helpful when it comes to climate change.
- — This Startup Is Using AI to Unearth New Smells
- Google Research spinout Osmo wants to find substitutes for hard-to-source aromas. The tech could inspire new perfumes—and help combat mosquito-borne diseases.
- — The World’s Farms Are Hooked on Phosphorus. It’s a Problem
- Half of the globe’s crop productivity comes from a key fertilizer ingredient that’s non-renewable—and literally washing away.
- — Hey EV Owners: It’d Take a Fraction of You to Prop Up the Grid
- If you agree to provide some of your car’s battery power in times of high energy demand, you’ll get paid, and help make the grid more stable.
- — Why Not Cover Ugly Parking Lots With Solar Panels?
- In France, a plan to cover swaths of asphalt with photovoltaics will bring renewable energy even closer to urban areas where it’s needed.
- — Why the Search for Life in Space Starts With Ancient Earth
- Need to estimate, from trillions of miles away, how likely another world is to host life? There’s a flowchart for that.
- — How Airports Catch Illicit Radioactive Cargo
- Hidden screening devices are used to track the movement of dangerous materials—and recently caught a shipment of uranium at London’s Heathrow Airport.
As of 2/5/23 6:34am. Last new 2/4/23 7:07am.
- First feed in category: Scientific American