THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. A 10-month-old boy in the Gaza Strip was recently paralyzed by poliovirus—the first such case in the region this century. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a limited ceasefire to allow 640,000 children in the enclave to be …
Read More »The Mosquito-Borne Disease ‘Triple E’ Is Spreading in the US as Temperatures Rise
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A 41-year-old man in New Hampshire died last week after contracting a rare mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis virus, also known as EEE or “triple E.” It was New Hampshire’s first human case of the …
Read More »What Cancún’s Tourists Don’t See Is a Sprawling Concrete Jungle
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. The wide mowed lawns and leafy trees, the sports fields shining under their illuminated lights, the bouncy castles in the children’s play areas—especially the bouncy castles—are what Celia Pérez Godínez envies. These are the trappings of …
Read More »Boeing Starliner Returns Home to an Uncertain Future
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, stricken with thruster problems and helium leaks, has left the International Space Station, wrapping up a disappointing test flight that has clouded the long-term future of the Starliner program. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard Starliner on June 5, closed the spacecraft's hatch Thursday …
Read More »Why Super Typhoons Like Yagi Are More Common Than You’d Think
The year’s first super typhoon erupted over the steamy waters of the western Pacific Ocean on Thursday as Yagi churned toward an eventual landfall in southern China. Having formed as a tropical cyclone in the Philippine Sea on Sunday, the powerful storm peaked on Thursday afternoon local time with maximum …
Read More »Moon GPS Is Coming
“You have arrived at your destination.” This phrase, delivered with robotic cadence, is familiar to anyone who uses satellite navigation systems to guide them on sightseeing strolls, cross-country road trips, and all manner of journeys from point A to point B. But what if your destination is literally out of …
Read More »Ski Resorts Are Stockpiling Snow to Get Through Warm Winters
It’s time to check on the snow pile. In mid-August, Marko Mustonen, commercial director of Levi ski resort in northern Finland, logs on to a live webcam view of an elongated heap of snow snaking down a hillside. He shares his screen with me on Zoom so that I too …
Read More »Strange Noises Are Coming from Inside Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft
On Saturday, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft. “I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making …
Read More »Wildfires Are Contaminating Water Supplies
If you stood on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the rumbling water may have appeared black. This slurry of ash and charred soil cascaded toward the reservoirs that supply drinking water for the downstream city of Fort Collins, home …
Read More »Students Find New Evidence of the Impossibility of Complete Disorder
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In late 2017, Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney met as undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since then, the pair have written a mind-boggling 57 math proofs together, many of them profound advances in various fields. In February, Sah …
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