SCIENCE

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Strongest Evidence Yet Shows Air Pollution Kills As California’s Camp Fire raged in 2018, soot and other pollution filled the skies. Particulate matter concentrations widely surged above 12 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3), pushing them into the Environmental Protection Agency’s “unhealthy” range. And in … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] An Immune Protein Could Prevent Severe COVID-19–if It Is Given at the Right Time When the immune system fights viruses, timing is key. And this maxim may be especially true for its defense against the deadly severe form of COVID-19. Several new studies of … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] NASA’s Ingenuity–the First Ever Off-World Helicopter–Is Set for a ‘Wright Brothers Moment’ on Mars The SUV-sized Perseverance rover due to launch to Mars this week has a sidekick: a svelte four-pound helicopter with four-foot-long rotor blades that weigh as light as feathers. It will … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Scientists Unveil First Ever Pictures of Multiple Planets around a Sunlike Star For the first time ever, scientists have managed to capture images of multiple planets twirling about another sunlike star. Yet despite its stellar host’s resemblance to our own, the snapshots of this … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Quantum Tunneling Is Not Instantaneous, Physicists Show Although it would not get you past a brick wall and onto Platform 9¾ to catch the Hogwarts Express, quantum tunneling—in which a particle “tunnels” through a seemingly insurmountable barrier—remains a confounding, intuition-defying phenomenon. Now Toronto-based experimental … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] COVID Pandemic Shows Telecommuting Can Help Fight Climate Change As COVID-19 forced many workers across the U.S. to move from downtown office towers to spare rooms and kitchen tables, their commutes shrank from an average of almost 30 minutes (often in bumper-to-bumper traffic) to … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] COVID-19 Pandemic Shows Telecommuting Can Help Fight Climate Change As COVID-19 forced many workers across the U.S. to move from downtown office towers to spare rooms and kitchen tables, their commutes shrank from an average of almost 30 minutes (often in bumper-to-bumper traffic) to … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Experimental Blood Test Detects Cancer up to Four Years before Symptoms Appear For years scientists have sought to create the ultimate cancer-screening test—one that can reliably detect a malignancy early, before tumor cells spread and when treatments are more effective. A new method reported … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Contact Tracing, a Key Way to Slow COVID-19, Is Badly Underused by the U.S. There is no coronavirus vaccine. Medications for COVID-19 are still being tested. Across the U.S., states that once acted as if the pandemic was going away are setting new daily … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Genes May Influence COVID-19 Risk, New Studies Hint As COVID-19 continues its fateful march around the globe, researchers have seen patterns of characteristics tied to bad cases of the disease. Increased age, diabetes, heart disease and lifelong experiences of systemic racism have come into … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] The Best Way to Watch Comet NEOWISE, Wherever You Are Comet NEOWISE has been entertaining space enthusiasts across the Northern Hemisphere. Although its official name is C/2020 F3, the comet has been dubbed NEOWISE after the Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) space … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Overcoming Psychological Biases Is the Best Treatment against COVID-19 Yet In March, as COVID-19 was spreading rapidly, and the lives of Americans were turned upside down, the country was deeply worried about ventilators. There did not seem to be enough of the breathing machines … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] A Nixon Deepfake, a ‘Moon Disaster’ Speech and an Information Ecosystem at Risk What can former U.S. president Richard Nixon possibly teach us about artificial intelligence today and the future of misinformation online? Nothing. The real Nixon died 26 years ago. But an AI-generated … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] After Surgery, Black Children Are More Likely to Die Than White Children Studies have repeatedly shown that Black patients’ experiences with the U.S. health care system are worse than those of white patients at almost every stage, from infancy to geriatric care. In surgical … Read more

[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Second Coronavirus Strain May Be More Infectious–but Some Scientists Are Skeptical The hubbub around mutations in the virus that causes COVID-19—and how they might make it more infectious—has been around since the early phase of the pandemic. A preprint study about a particular mutation involving … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Babies’ Mysterious Resilience to Coronavirus Intrigues Scientists As the new coronavirus continues to burn through populations, studies are beginning to shed light on its impact on infants. And so far the findings have been promising for parents and researchers alike. The initial data suggest … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] For Sustainable Oyster Harvesting, Look to Native Americans’ Historical Practices Oysters once abounded in the estuaries along the eastern coast of the U.S. But overharvesting, pollution and disease have taken a devastating toll on a keystone species. Of the live eastern oyster reefs that … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Comet NEOWISE Could Be Spectacular: Here’s How to See It This month a cosmic visitor is gracing the skies. A comet swept past the sun on July 3, and it has since become visible to the naked eye. The rare opportunity to glimpse the … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Ships Hit Smaller Sea Animals More Often than Researchers Thought The danger to whales and other large marine mammals from oceangoing vessels’ propellers and bows has long been recognized. And efforts are in place to track and curb such ship strikes. But a new … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Vaccinations Have Sharply Declined Nationwide during the COVID-19 Pandemic Since the coronavirus pandemic started spreading across the U.S. and state governments issued stay-at-home orders, millions of Americans have isolated themselves for months to avoid exposure. One result is that parents across the country have … Read more

   [responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Summer on Mars: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Is One of Three Missions Ready to Launch If space exploration was a popularity contest, Mars would be struggling for admirers. Once the darling of 20th-century planetary scientists, the world’s allure has cooled somewhat as other exciting locales—the woefully … Read more