As COVID-19 blasts its way across the globe, viral wellness videos, tweets and social media posts are springing up in its wake. Whatever the platform, these blitzes share the same underlying message: Certain supplements and natural remedies can prepare your immune system to do battle against the infection caused by the novel coronavirus. Some online […]
This week, the White House issued a warning for anyone who recently fled New York City: Quarantine yourself for a full 14 days or risk spreading COVID-19 to a new community — regardless of whether you’re showing symptoms. “To everyone who has left New York over the last few days, because of the … number […]
Despite knowing dark matter is out there, astrophysicists are still missing one critical detail. “We know where it is and how much of it there is, but we don’t know what it is,” says Ben Safdi, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan. Some think this mysterious substance is made of hypothetical subatomic particles called […]
You know, for how often we see the sun, there’s an awful lot we don’t know about it. I mean, we know it’s powered by nuclear fusion, that it’s 92.96 million miles away, and that it’s about a million times bigger than the Earth by volume. But there’s more to it than that. Like, why is […]
The world is in the grip of a serious pandemic as a novel virus sweeps from continent to continent, causing cases of sometimes-deadly COVID-19. Yet much of the global social media response has centered around a somewhat trivial and comical side effect: the hoarding of toilet paper. News reports cover accounts of people coming to […]
If an advanced, intelligent species had once inhabited Mars, but went extinct for some reason, would we have any way to know it today? Depending on how technologically advanced the civilization was some things will be visible. Archaeological evidence of structures, tools or even machinery could tell us a lot. The images below show some […]
As health care workers, grocery store employees and delivery truck drivers repeatedly expose themselves to COVID-19, one thing has become clear to engineers: Robots could be handling some of these dangerous tasks. In an editorial in Science Robotics, researchers argue that many essential but risky jobs could be performed by robots during health emergencies. Some […]
A large iceberg floats among sea ice floes off the coast of Greenland, as seen during an aerial survey on April 21, 2018. (Source: NASA/Linette Boisvert) Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be buoyed by news that an expanse of Arctic sea ice the size of Arizona and Nevada has gone missing. But given the state of the […]
In Venice, the often murky canals recently began to get clearer, with fish visible in the water below. Italy’s efforts to limit the coronavirus meant an absence of boat traffic on the city’s famous waterways. And the changes happened quickly. Countries that have been under stringent lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus have experienced an […]
It is new, but not entirely. The coronavirus upending the world right now is so similar to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus of 2002–03 that virologists opted to simply call it SARS-CoV-2. Yet there seem to be some crucial differences between the virus that caused an epidemic 17 years ago and the one […]
Parents and caretakers diving into homeschooling this week might be learning just how hard teaching can be. For those trying to boost their child’s vocabulary, there’s one method that might help the cause: Let your kid sleep on it. New research in the journal Royal Society Open Science suggests that kids in grade school with […]
Why don’t we have drugs to treat COVID-19 and how long will it take to develop them? SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 – is completely new and attacks cells in a novel way. Every virus is different and so are the drugs used to treat them. That’s why there wasn’t a […]
Genomic research showing that the COVID-19 coronavirus likely originated in bats has produced heavy media coverage and widespread concern. There is now danger that frightened people and misguided officials will try to curb the epidemic by culling these remarkable creatures, even though this strategy has failed in the past. As an environmental historian focusing on […]
Living things must deal with a universe that is both regular and ever-changing: No day exactly mirrors the last, yet the sun and moon still appear at their appointed hours. Cells contain their own seeming chaos, with countless molecules cooperating to produce subtle responses and behaviors. And in recent decades, a great deal of focus […]
There have been more casualties from school shootings in the past 18 years than in the entirety of the 20th century, a study shows. American veterans spend extensive time in traumatic combat settings, trainings, and near-death experiences. Natural disasters, crime, and abuse are found all across the nation. There is little doubt that the presence of trauma […]