There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Animal and plant life is declining across the globe at rates never seen before in human history. And alongside this decline, extinction rates are speeding up — as many as one million plant and animal species are at risk of being lost forever, according to a landmark United Nations report in 2019.What’s more, humans may be uniquely responsible for fueling these losses. Activities like agriculture and aquaculture are changing the habitats of animals at an “u ...read more

The weekends just don’t feel long enough. On Fridays, you’re exhausted from a long work week. Saturdays are for running around doing errands that you weren’t able to get done on the weekdays. And then, come Sunday, you’re left dreading the work week ahead. But while the Sunday Scaries aren’t a new phenomenon, in recent years, they seem to have gotten worse, which may have a lot to do with how we view work/life balance in this country. Here’s why you’re getting the Sunday Scaries an ...read more

The realization that our universe is expanding is one of the most transformative discoveries in cosmology. While once hotly debated, this observational reality now forms the bedrock for our modern conceptions of the cosmos.The first evidence for an expanding universe came through Albert Einstein’s discovery of the general theory of relativity in 1917. Other scientists have since gathered more evidence, and expanded his ideas into more tangible models.Einstein's Expanding UniverseEinstein’s t ...read more

These days, we're accustomed to seeing very high resolution satellite images revealing the horrifying impact of extreme weather. Below, I offer a particularly dramatic example: before and after images of the destruction wrought by a tornado — one of at least 20 in an outbreak across the South — that ravaged Rolling Fork, Mississippi on March 24, 2023.But I was struck even more by the broader perspective seen in the image above, published by NASA. Instead of a relatively close up view of home ...read more

Did a tiny amino acid, a cluster of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur atoms, kill Beethoven, and not syphilis or lead poisoning, as previously proposed?A new genetic analysis of his hair, borrowed from collectors, suggests that the acid, called methionine, may have greatly accelerated his death from liver disease. Genetics of BeethovenPerhaps the greatest composer of all time, Beethoven had a simple but serious genetic mutation that affected the PNPLA3 protein – found in fat and li ...read more

In the early stages of colon cancer — the fourth most common cancer in the U.S. and the second-leading cause of cancer deaths — there are usually no obvious symptoms. And yet, if it is caught early, it’s highly treatable.Thanks to screenings, colon cancer rates have declined steadily among people in their 50s and 60s, says Jeffrey Meyerhardt, a chief clinical research officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and professor at Harvard Medical School. At the same time, he says, t ...read more

The name Tyrannosaurus rex means the “king of the tyrant lizards,” and by all accounts, that’s exactly what T. rex was. A ruthless and fearsome predator, it ruled the world in the Late Cretaceous Period, around 90 million years ago. With teeth as big as a banana, a crushing bite and a sense of smell as keen as a cat, this infamous theropod was a vicious predator. But how smart was T. rex? What do we know, and what can we know about the brains of the most ferocious predator that the ...read more

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear meltdown in history. Today, much of the area around the old plant in Ukraine and in bordering Belarus remains uninhabited, including the city of the same name and Pripyat. But that’s only true if we’re talking about humans.Many animals still live in the area. In many cases, wildlife populations have thrived due to the lack of human presence for more than 35 years. But does this mean the animals that live in the area have adapted to the unique ...read more

This is Part 2 of a look at the evolution of women in volcanology, especially at the US Geological Survey. You can read Part 1 here.A Hawaiian eruption was an unexpected destination for Alexa Van Eaton. This was her second stint in the USGS. She had previously worked at CVO as a postdoctoral researcher and felt she didn’t really fit in there as an early-career female scientist. The mostly over-40 male staff of CVO was nothing new to her. Her professors in Florida and her Ph.D. advisor in New Z ...read more

When a surfer paddles out to catch a wave, their silhouette creates an image to a shark swimming below. Against a bright sky in the water, a human could resemble the body of a seal, or a shark's favorite prey. We've commonly heard that this is why sharks attack humans. Recently, however, a new study challenges this theory. Eric Clua, a marine biologist and veterinary doctor based in French Polynesia, and Carl Meyer, a biologist at the University of Hawai’i, published a paper in Behaviour that ...read more