Science

The green streaks only last for 30 seconds, then vanish. What are they?

Raging fires throughout the United States and Australia over the past year have put vulnerable species at risk. But not all blazes are devastating—in fact, fire can promote biodiversity. In grasslands, fires prevent trees and roots from taking hold. This allows grazing animals the space and vegetation they need to […]

These days, about half of the protein the world’s population eats is from seafood. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how brand-new biotech and old-fashioned breeding programs are helping keep up with demand, by expanding where we can farm fish and how fast we can […]

“I really want to settle that concern that people have about that.”

He’s a northern saw-whet owl, one of the smallest owls in the U.S.

While even the best cancer drugs don’t buy much time for most people whose cancer has spread, there are rare exceptions: The patients whose multiple tumors melt away and who remain healthy years later. Researchers have long dismissed these “exceptional responders” as unexplainable outliers. Now, an effort to systematically study […]

In 2018, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pulled off a dazzling materials science magic trick. They stacked two microscopic cards of graphene—sheets of carbon one atom thick—and twisted one ever so slightly. Applying an electric field transformed the stack from a conductor to an […]

History is written, read, told — but rarely ever is it smelled.