Articles

Environment
US Mainland Honey Was as Clean as Certified Organic Imports; 30% of Hawaii's Certified Organic Honey Was Not
Pick up a jar labeled USDA organic honey in an American supermarket and the label is almost certainly describing a farm somewhere else. Brazil, Argentina, or one of a handful of apiaries in Hawaii.…
By Andreja Jezernik2mo ago3 min read
Space
An Honest Map of Mars's Buried Ice, Including the Places Where the Answer Is 'We Don't Know'
Every so often a meteorite punches through the dust of the Martian midlatitudes and leaves something startling behind: a splash of bright white ice at the bottom of a fresh crater, visible from orbit…
By Kristopher R. Jeffay2mo ago5 min read
AI & Technology
A Humanoid Dodged 95% of Thrown Balls Using Its Own Head Camera, Outperforming Tidier Safety Maths
A ball comes in at a humanoid robot standing in a Caltech lab. It has no motion-capture rig watching the room, no external tracker, no operator feeding it coordinates. All it has is a camera on its…
By Diana Brinker2mo ago5 min read
Environment
The Diet Target That Cuts Emissions in Rich Cities and Raises Them in Poor Ones
There is a number in this study that is true of the world and true of almost no city in it. Ask a global food model what would happen if every urban population on Earth switched to the reference diet…
By Anna Kotlyar2mo ago5 min read
AI & Technology
The Slowest Part of a Quantum Computer May Be the Ordinary Software Reading Its Errors
Every quantum computer that corrects its own errors is running a race against itself. The hardware measures its qubits over and over, thousands of times a second, and each round produces a small…
By Wilkens Etienne2mo ago5 min read
Environment
Nowhere Left to Climb: A Volcano's Beetles Run out of Mountain
Climb Volcán Cacao in northwestern Costa Rica and the forest changes under your feet. At the bottom is seasonally dry lowland forest that bakes. About 1,500 vertical meters higher, at the top, is…
By Andreja Jezernik2mo ago5 min read
Environment
The Seafloor Vault: Once Permafrost Carbon Settles Into Arctic Nearshore Mud, Less Than a Tenth of It Is Breathed Back Out
Qikiqtaruk is a small, treeless island off the Yukon coast, and every summer it gets smaller. Waves undercut its ice-rich bluffs, thawed ground slumps, and slabs of Pleistocene permafrost drop into…
By Oli Kotyk2mo ago5 min read
Space
Clay in Neptune's Rings Came From Inside a World That No Longer Exists
Ryleigh Davis was not looking for clay. She and her colleagues at Caltech had aimed the James Webb Space Telescope at Neptune's rings and three of its small inner moons to answer a plainer question:…
By Diana Brinker2mo ago6 min read
Science
Why Folic Acid Protects a Developing Spine: The Vitamin a Connection
In 1991 the Medical Research Council stopped a trial early. Women who had already carried one pregnancy affected by a neural tube defect were given either folic acid or a placebo before trying to…
By Gabriela Szalayová2mo ago5 min read
Natural Disasters
Three Philippine Typhoons, Re-Run in Three Atmospheres
Haiyan is over. It came ashore in the Philippines in November 2013, and what it did there is a matter of record. But a storm that has finished happening can be made to happen again, which is the…
By Anna Werner2mo ago5 min read
Environment
Arctic Sea Ice Holds Nanoplastics and Releases Back While It Is Still Freezing
Pull a litre of seawater from beneath the ice north of Svalbard and hold it up to the light. It looks like the cleanest water anywhere on the planet, and by most measures it is. What it also carries,…
By Andreja Jezernik2mo ago6 min read
Environment
Tire Rubber in a Place With No Roads: Nanoplastics Turn up in Antarctic Soil
There is a corner of Antarctica where it does not snow enough to bury anything. The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a polar desert of bare gravel and frozen ground, kept ice-free by winds that strip away…
By Oli Kotyk2mo ago5 min read

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Articles

US Mainland Honey Was as Clean as Certified Organic Imports; 30% of Hawaii's Certified Organic Honey Was Not

An Honest Map of Mars's Buried Ice, Including the Places Where the Answer Is 'We Don't Know'

A Humanoid Dodged 95% of Thrown Balls Using Its Own Head Camera, Outperforming Tidier Safety Maths

The Diet Target That Cuts Emissions in Rich Cities and Raises Them in Poor Ones

The Slowest Part of a Quantum Computer May Be the Ordinary Software Reading Its Errors

Nowhere Left to Climb: A Volcano's Beetles Run out of Mountain

The Seafloor Vault: Once Permafrost Carbon Settles Into Arctic Nearshore Mud, Less Than a Tenth of It Is Breathed Back Out

Clay in Neptune's Rings Came From Inside a World That No Longer Exists

Why Folic Acid Protects a Developing Spine: The Vitamin a Connection

Three Philippine Typhoons, Re-Run in Three Atmospheres

Arctic Sea Ice Holds Nanoplastics and Releases Back While It Is Still Freezing

Tire Rubber in a Place With No Roads: Nanoplastics Turn up in Antarctic Soil