When Annlyse Retiveau leaned in to sniff my armpits, I held my own breath as she inhaled. I’ve spent a vast majority of my life using products to avoid this precise critique—another human intentionally evaluating my armpit aroma. Yet, whether we like it or not, humans do smell each other, and we can glean useful social cues and health information from the body odor of others, albeit…
Read moreGENEVA — The U.N. weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and is warning that the world’s efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate.
The World Meteorological Organization said there is a “high probability” that 2024 will …
Read moreIn mid-January, threatening social media messages started showing up on the accounts of a small New Jersey organization devoted to rescuing ocean mammals that wash up on the beach. Some said “we’re watching you.” Others accused staff of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) being “whale murderers.” Some people wrote that they were going to show up at the group&…
Read moreIt’s a very good thing spacecraft can’t get bored, because if spacecraft could get bored, the Kepler space telescope would have gone out of its mind long ago. It was in March 2009 when NASA launched Kepler into orbit around the sun, pointed it to a small patch of deep space containing about 150,000 stars, and gave it one instruction: “Don’t blink — ever.&#…
Read moreThe COVID-19 pandemic will forever be associated with unprecedented lockdowns and inconveniences such as wearing masks in public. And that’s largely because health experts had no idea exactly where the SARS-CoV-2 virus was lurking, and how risky crowded settings such as workplaces, classrooms, and public transportation were.
But what if an easy-to-use, mobile device could detect, in…
Read moreFor most people, Aug. 2, 2023 has been a day that’s gone largely unremarked upon. But for the planet as a whole, it was a very big—and very bad—date. Aug. 2 marked this year’s so-called Earth Overshoot Day—the day on which the annual resources humanity extracts from the earth exceeds the planet’s ability to regenerate them in the same year. Haul more fish from the ocean than can breed…
Read moreFloodwaters have started to recede four days after the destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam, laying bare environmental destruction as well as the risk of catastrophic health problems for the downstream population.
Ecological damage alone from the collapse of the dam in its southern region will be more than 55 billion hryvnia ($1.5 billion), although the consequences have just start…
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Fatih Birol has spent much of the last few years as head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) laying out a path for the world to decarbonize its energy use. The IEA’s recent reports have called for a dramatic scale up in financing for renewable energy and warned that the worl…
Read moreA landmark United Nations assessment of global progress on cutting emissions shows countries are largely failing to meet their commitments, putting the planet on course for catastrophic global warming.
The UN’s climate change secretariat calculated the progress every country in the world has made on their pledges to reduce emissions and assessed how much it’s helping to tackle global …
Read morePeople who have inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)—which is the umbrella term for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis—often experience a range of symptoms, from intense abdominal cramping and pain to persistent diarrhea and overwhelming fatigue. Living with IBD can significantly disrupt everyday life and make it challenging to maintain physical and mental wellbeing.
The…
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