Tag Archives: science

India’s capital, New Delhi, is preparing a new weapon in the fight against deadly air pollution: cloud seeding. The experiment, which could take place as early as next week, would introduce chemicals like silver iodide into a cloudy sky to create rain and, it’s hoped, wash away the fine particulate …

As Olivier Gardet piloted the drone around the mountain, his colleague, who was looking through goggles connected to its infrared camera, could see the avalanche clearly: a long tongue of debris, visible from 2 kilometers away. Then he noticed the heat signature of a person moving across it, digging frantically …

I was standing at the precipice, a middle-aged woman, yearning for a new beginning and trying to reinvent my life. After spending two decades raising my daughter alone, cherishing every moment of motherhood, I finally had the time to focus on my career and love aspirations, but the world seemed …

More than half the world’s population is expected to be overweight or obese by 2035. Excess weight is often linked with cardiovascular disease: It can lead to higher blood pressure or cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Now, the makers of the popular weight-loss drug Wegovy …

This story originally appeared in Hakai and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Arah Narida leans over a microscope to gaze into a plastic petri dish containing a hood coral. The animal—a pebbled blue-white disk roughly half the size of a pencil eraser—is a marvel. Just three weeks ago, …

It’s flu season. At state health departments and academic medical centers, and at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, epidemiologists are intently watching two sets of data: the number of flu cases and the number of Americans taking flu shots. So far, the balance between them looks good. …

I saw this post on Reddit: Would a cockroach survive a fall from the stratosphere? Oh, what a lovely question. But why stop there? The stratosphere only goes up 50 kilometers—what about a cockroach falling from outer space? Space starts at the Kármán line, which is 100 kilometers up (or …

When Hannah Lovaglio’s children were born, she didn’t think twice about the newborn health screening they received in the hospital. The routine test uses a few drops of blood from a heel prick to test for dozens of potentially fatal or disabling genetic diseases. “I assumed that this was for …

Here’s the inconvenient truth about your electric vehicle: Making its battery has a big impact on the environment. Producing an EV often generates more emissions than building a conventional car, with the benefits of going electric realized only after a good amount of driving. “Building batteries is creating a very …

The blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy has a new rival. Today, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug for weight management called Zepbound, made by American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. The weekly injectable drug is meant for adults who are overweight or obese and have at least …