Everyone already knows that you are carrying around a computer in your pocket. But your smartphone is more than just a computer—it's also a data collector. I'm going to guess that yours can measure acceleration, magnetic field, sound, location, and […]
An embryo starts out as just a single cell. It’s not long before it divides into two cells, then four, then eight, and so on — a process marked by rapid growth, in which these early, unspecialized cells proliferate wildly […]
Click:PR release storytelling platform Depending on who you are and what you’re into, Earth isn’t particularly habitable. OK, sure, if you’re some kind of polyextremophile microorganism, the world is your oyster. Even oysters are your oyster. You can manage temperatures […]
First the phones gave. They gave connection and communication. Then they gave music and movies and maps. Then came the apps, and with the apps came… well… everything. And we took it all gladly. But somewhere along the way, the […]
The transmission electron microscope was designed to break records. Using its beam of electrons, scientists have glimpsed many types of viruses for the first time. They’ve used it to study parts of biological cells like ribosomes and mitochondria. You can […]
Elon Musk is kinda worried about AI. (“AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization and I don’t think people fully appreciate that,” as he put it in 2017.) So he helped found a research nonprofit, OpenAI, to help […]
In 2011, the storied space shuttle flew for the last time. Three spacecraft survive in retirement as specimens in museums around the country. But the program isn’t dead yet: Many of its parts are popping up as zombie components in […]
Last night, NASA reached out one final time to the Opportunity rover on Mars, hoping the golf-cart-sized machine would phone home with good news. Since June, the robot has been unresponsive, likely because a planet-wide sandstorm coated its solar panels […]
In November 2016, a team of scientists from the Medical Research Council in Gambia visited primary schools armed with hundreds of beige-colored nylon socks. Handing them out to children there aged five to 14, the researchers instructed them to wear […]
Fire is chaos. Fire doesn’t care what it destroys or who it kills—it spreads without mercy, leaving total destruction in its wake, as California’s Camp and Woolsey fires proved so dramatically this month. But fire is to a large degree […]