Nov 21 Why the fattest bear is the picture of health By Vicky Stein Scientists say bears are the “metabolic magicians of the mammalian world.” And someday, the secrets of these bears' cycles may help inform human health, too. Continue reading
Nov 20 Watch 5:33 Thanks to this lab, we can better protect our homes from fire By Nsikan Akpan California's recent spate of wildfires has caused devastating death and destruction. Can scientific experimentation help us minimize the scope of fire disasters? Scientists at the National Fire Research Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland, are studying how materials burn and combust, in… Continue watching
Nov 19 How to cook the perfect Thanksgiving turkey, according to science By Jamie Leventhal Thanksgiving turkeys often come out dry and tasteless, but not this year. Here's how you can use basic chemistry to make a stunning main dish for you and your guests to gobble down. Continue reading
Nov 18 From pine cones to hobbit holes, mimicking nature can help humans adapt to wildfires By Andrea Thompson, Scientific American One of the biggest reasons wildfires are creating such huge disasters in recent years is the expansion of the West’s population into fire-prone wildland areas. Continue reading
Nov 16 The new definition of the kilogram will change the way we weigh everything By Vicky Stein On Friday, representatives from 57 nations will gather in a conference room in Versailles, France to redefine the kilogram. In other words: the way we weigh the world is about to change. Continue reading
Nov 15 Watch 6:07 Paradise gone, wildfire evacuees faced with rebuilding their lives By Cat Wise In the tally of death and destruction from California's Camp fire, officials confirm that 56 people died, 130 are missing and 8,800 homes have been destroyed in the town of Paradise. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports from Chico, California, where… Continue watching
Nov 14 Watch 5:47 What’s the truth about Zika virus in post-hurricane Puerto Rico? By Beth Murphy At the Zika epidemic's 2016 height, 10 percent of Puerto Rican women were testing positive for the disease. But when Hurricane Maria slammed the island in September 2017, crippling its health care system, the focus shifted to hurricane recovery, and… Continue watching
Nov 14 Climate change has intensified hurricane rainfall, and now we know how much By Julia Griffin Hurricane Harvey wasn’t an outlier. A new study reports that climate change intensified the rains of other recent cyclones by between 4 and 9 percent. Continue reading
Nov 13 Watch 8:40 The science behind California’s surging wildfires As three major fires blaze in California, we consider some of their causes, both human and meteorological. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien has been filming a NOVA documentary on megafires and witnessed the Camp Fire not long after it began. He… Continue watching