Artificial Intelligence
To Clear Deadly Land Mines, Science Turns to Drones and Machine Learning
In a field in Oklahoma, researchers are using new technology to spot deadly munitions built to maim and kill
Stories by Dominic Smith
Oceans
Dive into a Vanishing Invisible Forest to See What Climate Has Changed
Our kelp forests are largely unobserved, but now they are vanishing. To understand why, scientists dive underwater and look down from space. Their research reveals a complex system at risk of collapse...
Conservation
Wildfires Are Putting Giant Sequoias at Existential Risk
The future of these guardians of the forest, some thousands of years old, is not assured
Automobiles
Did Your Catalytic Converter Get Stolen? The Pandemic—and Rhodium—Could Share Some Blame
In 2021 the search phrase “what precious metal is in a catalytic converter” saw a more than 5,000 percent increase in use. Here’s why.
Public Health
A Visual Guide to the New Coronavirus Variants
The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus seems to be suddenly acquiring mutations at a rapid rate. The most worrying variants, first discovered in South Africa and Brazil, increase the virus’s contagiousness and may even help it evade the human immune system...
Medicine
What Is Chronic Kidney Disease, and How Might It Affect You?
In the U.S., a third of Americans are at risk of chronic kidney disease, and age is a major factor. More than half of Americans older than 75 are thought to have some sort of kidney damage...
Medicine
The Clitoris: A Reveal Two Millennia in the Making
In the history of sexual anatomy, the clitoris has long been dismissed, demeaned and misunderstood. Here is a view of the clitoris you’ve probably never seen.
