SCIENCE
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New Pneumonia Vaccine Guidelines Could Save More People from Deadly Disease
The respiratory bugs that surge every winter, from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to whooping cough, hit us with nasty coughs, fevers and chills—and they can also create the perfect opportunity for deadly pneumonia. Often misunderstood as a single sinister ailment (one your parents have ominously warned that you’d catch if you forgot your coat), pneumonia actually describes a lung infection…
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What Caused This Seven-Mile Scar in Australia’s Outback?
December 2, 2024 4 min read What Caused This Seven-Mile Scar in Australia’s Outback Seen on Google Earth? A man scouring Google Earth found a mysterious scar in the Australian outback. And now scientists know what caused it By Matej Lipar & The Conversation US This Google Earth image shows a mysterious scar etched into Australia’s barren landscape. The following…
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‘Marine Snow’ Studies Show How the Ocean Eats Carbon
November 29, 2024 2 min read ‘Marine Snow’ Studies Show How the Ocean Eats Carbon The ocean’s digestive system is dictated by picky microbes and precise dynamics of drifting debris By Susan Cosier Carbon falls as “marine snow” through ocean layers. From the sunlit top 200 meters of the sea, plankton carcasses, excrement and molt particles constantly drift toward the…
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How Magnet Fishers Catch Underwater Garbage, Guns and Sometimes Treasure
Magnet fisher James Kane cradles a shiny, four-pound magnetic disk: a stainless-steel shell housing an alloy of iron, neodymium and boron. He hucks it into a lake in a public park in New York City, then tugs it slowly toward shore with a sturdy synthetic rope. As the powerful magnet bump bump bumps along the bottom, it kicks up a…
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Scientists Scramble to Save Climate Data from Trump—Again
CLIMATEWIRE | Eight years ago, as the Trump administration was getting ready to take office for the first time, mathematician John Baez was making his own preparations. Together with a small group of friends and colleagues, he was arranging to download large quantities of public climate data from federal websites in order to safely store them away. Then-President-elect Donald Trump…
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Grumpy Voters Want Better Stories. Not Statistics
In the aftermath of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, polling has once again come under fire. In a small surprise after 2020’s drawn-out ending, results came quickly on November 6, returning former president Donald Trump to the White House. In the final count, Trump collected 312 electoral votes to 226 for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. While some votes are still…
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The Arecibo Message, Earth’s First Interstellar Transmission, Turns 50
A half-century ago humanity sent its first postcard to the stars, carried by a narrow beam of radio waves. It was November 16, 1974—a turbulent time on planet Earth. The cold war was reaching its crescendo, and the world economy was still sputtering from a Middle East oil embargo that was imposed the previous year. The U.S. had retreated from…
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AI Analysis of Police Body Camera Videos Reveals What Typically Happens during Traffic Stops
A decade ago then president Barack Obama proposed spending $75 million over three years to help states buy police body cameras to expand their use. The move came in the wake of the killing of teenager Michael Brown, for which no body camera footage existed, and was designed to increase transparency and build trust between police and the people they…
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What Trump Can—And Probably Can’t—Do to Reverse U.S. Climate Policy
November 8, 2024 5 min read What Trump Can—And Probably Can’t—Do to Reverse U.S. Climate Policy The new president-elect can go beyond just pulling out of the Paris Agreement. But it may be more difficult to roll back clean energy policies By Gautam Jain & The Conversation US In 2019, then-President Donald Trump visited a liquid natural gas facility in…
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Rainwater Could Help Satisfy AI’s Water Demands
November 7, 2024 5 min read Rainwater Could Help Satisfy AI’s Water Demands A few dozen ChatGPT queries cost a bottle’s worth of water. Tech firms should consider simpler solutions, like harvesting rainwater, to meet AI’s needs By Justin Talbot Zorn & Bettina Warburg In late September Microsoft announced that it had reached a deal to reopen the Three Mile…
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