Aug 22 'Old Town Road' defied a 20-year trend in hit music. Math explains why By Nsikan Akpan A new study shows the average lifetime in the charts for singles and albums has dropped dramatically since the 1990s. How did "Old Town Road" buck this trend?… Continue reading
Aug 21 This young scientist studies wild animals. Bias against disability won't stop her By Vicky Stein Field biologist Charlotte Devitz is part of a trend: researchers expanding the boundaries of accessible science. Continue reading
Aug 18 Huge wildfires in the Arctic and far North send a planetary warning By Nancy Fresco, The Conversation More than 600 wildfires have consumed more than 2.4 million acres of forest across Alaska this summer, and fires are also raging in northern Canada and Siberia. Continue reading
Aug 16 Does the placenta carry germs? What parents should know before they eat one By Nsikan Akpan What started as an innocent look into the trend of people consuming placentas uncovered a heated academic debate over whether the placenta has a microbiome. Continue reading
Aug 13 Explainer: Why the August night sky lights up with the Perseid meteor shower By Christopher Conselice, The Conversation Many people have some idea that a meteor shower is when material in space falls to the earth. That is essentially true, but what these particles are and where they come from isn’t as well known. A greater understanding of… Continue reading
Aug 08 Forget coral bleaching. Warming oceans are killing reefs and dissolving their skeletons By Berly McCoy Hotter oceans are killing corals, not just bleaching them. Then their reef corpses dissolve. Continue reading
Aug 08 United Nations predicts hungry future, due to global warming, that can be avoided By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press A new United Nations report examines how global warming and land interact in a vicious cycle. Human-caused climate change is dramatically degrading the land, while the way people use the land is making global warming worse. Continue reading
Aug 07 Why mental illness can't predict mass shootings By Nsikan Akpan More than 90 percent of violent crimes — including shootings — would likely still occur even if every suspect with a mental health condition was stopped before they carried out an attack. Continue reading
Aug 01 New 3D maps of the Milky Way confirm our galaxy is warped By Vicky Stein It turns out our Milky Way galaxy isn't the flat spiral disk we thought it was before -- dark matter or collisions with other galaxies could have twisted it out of shape. Continue reading
Jul 31 This new nanotech could help clean up Earth's microplastics By Berly McCoy Chemists have adapted emerging technology -- called nanocoils -- to dissolve microplastics and turn the pollution into food for algae. Continue reading