Tag Archives: science

1 in 3 Americans Live in Areas With Dangerous Air Pollution

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Within five miles of Kim Gaddy’s home in the South Ward of Newark, New Jersey, lies the nation’s third-busiest shipping port, 13th-busiest airport, and roughly a half-dozen major roadways. All told, transportation experts say, …

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How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations. Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to …

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Green Roofs Are Great. Blue-Green Roofs Are Even Better

You might visit Amsterdam for its famous canals, and who could blame you, really. But the truly interesting waterways aren’t under your feet—they’re above your head. Beautiful green roofs have popped up all over the world: specially selected plants growing on structures specially designed to manage the extra weight of …

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Here’s a Clever Way to Uncover America’s Voting Deserts

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In Georgia’s 2020 gubernatorial election, some voters in Atlanta waited over 10 hours to cast a ballot. One reason for the long lines was that almost 10 percent of Georgia’s polling sites had closed over the preceding seven years, despite …

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How One Corporation Is Cashing In on America’s Drought

This story originally appeared in the The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the West’s smallest rural enclaves. Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community …

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Unruly Gut Fungi Can Make Your Covid Worse

Fungi are an indispensable part of your microbiome, keeping the body’s host of microorganisms healthy as part of a system of checks and balances. But when you’re hit by an infection, fungi can be thrown out of equilibrium with other organisms inside you, leading to a more severe infection and …

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We Finally Know Where Neuralink’s Brain Implant Trial Is Happening

Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink has chosen the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, as the initial study site to test its Telepathy device. The first participant in Neuralink’s study, Noah Arbaugh, underwent a successful procedure at the institute in January to get the device implanted. Known as a brain-computer …

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The Rise of the Carbon Farmer

Patrick Holden strolls across the field, pausing from time to time to bend and point out a bumblebee, or a white butterfly, or a dung beetle. A wide expanse of blue sky stretches above. Beneath, undulating green hills, sprawling hedgerows, a horizon broken only by the jagged tips of Wales’ …

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