Category: Science/Nature

Masaki Kashiwara, a Japanese mathematician, received this year’s Abel Prize, which aspires to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in math. Dr. Kashiwara’s highly abstract work combined algebra, geometry and differential equations in surprising ways. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, which manages the Abel Prize, announced the honor on Wednesday morning. “First […]

50 States, 50 Fixes Nearly 500 buildings in the state capital get their heat from a clean, renewable source located deep in the ground. It’s pretty easy to get into hot water in Boise. After all, it’s in Idaho, a state filled with hundreds of hot springs. The city has tapped into that naturally hot […]

50 States, 50 Fixes The air is filled with birdsong, the land a tableau of soft greens and gentle light. This is Ho‘oulu ‘Āina, a 100-acre preserve with an unusual twist. Linked to a community health center, it is a place where patients come to heal the land, and themselves. As climate change accelerates and […]

Last year, when Andre Rouhani and Gabriela Reyes toured Culdesac Tempe, a rental development outside of Phoenix, the place looked pretty sweet. It had winsome walkways, boutique shops and low-slung white stucco buildings clustered around shaded courtyards. The only surprise came when Mr. Rouhani, 33, a doctoral student at Arizona State University, asked about resident […]

Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of […]

Thomas Vilgis, a food physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Germany, has been in love with foie gras for a quarter century. The luxurious delicacy is a pâté or mousse made from the rich, fattened livers of ducks or geese. “It’s something really extraordinary,” Dr. Vilgis said, recalling his early encounters […]

A spiral of light illuminating the night sky captivated observers in Britain and much of Europe on Monday. Its cause: a SpaceX rocket, experts said, after the glowing spectacle ignited widespread curiosity and speculation about its origin. The ethereal display, seen from England to Eastern Europe, resembled a glowing celestial whirlpool in images posted on […]

The steep trail near the top of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway was covered in inches of spongy fallen needles and peppered with ankle-twisting pine cones. It was also shady, which felt remarkable after the first seven miles of the grueling Cactus to Clouds hike offered little more than a brittlebush leaf’s worth of relief. […]

On an early summer day in 1876 near Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, a middle-aged woman carrying three large, putrid mushrooms repulsed fellow travelers riding a horse-drawn trolley car. Even wrapped in paper, the stench of the aptly named stinkhorn mushrooms was overpowering, but the woman stifled a laugh upon overhearing two other passengers gripe […]

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal in a landmark climate case brought by 21 young people against the federal government, ending its 10-year journey through the courts. But the case provided a blueprint for numerous other climate-related lawsuits that have had greater success. Juliana v. United States argued that the government […]