Category: General

Engineers in Singapore have developed a sustainable cooling tile made from mushrooms and bamboo. It’s a new biodegradable building material that mimics elephant skin and can keep buildings cool without relying on air conditioning or…

Social media influencers encouraging travellers to “stroke” sharks are behind a rise…

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve—akin to identifying a peak to climb—and then they must develop a…

Most people think of tick bites as nuisances or, at worst, vectors for Lyme disease. But imagine waking up in the middle of the night with hives, your throat closing up, all because you ate some pork hours earlier.

That was Cathy…

You check food labels, buy BPA-free bottles, and avoid microplastics as best you can, but have you ever questioned what’s in your toothpaste? New independent testing suggests that dozens of popular brands may be hiding an unpleasant…

While the menopause occurs as a single day in a woman’s life – when the ovaries cease producing hormones – the time leading up to this life-changing event can last for several years. This extended period in a woman’s life is referred to as…

Many adults can remember the days when their screen time was limited to Saturday morning cartoons, as well as their class’s weekly visit to the computer lab to play Oregon Trail. It was a quick half-hour of fatigued oxen, snakebites, and…

Beneath the quiet plains and bustling cities of the U.S. and Canada, an ancient process is slowly playing out. According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience, pieces of North America’s oldest and most stable rock are dripping…

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter just captured its first image of the Curiosity rover…

Grid batteries have a halo effect for other power generators too. Most thermal power plants—coal, gas, nuclear—prefer to run at a steady pace. Ramping up and down to match demand takes time and costs money, but with batteries soaking up some…