Sweat Is Helping You Survive Climate Change
The marketing campaign was a lasting success, even a century later. Last year, the global deodorant market was valued at $24 billion, and it’s on track to grow to $37 …
biology
The Secret of How Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there lies a vast biosphere with …
The World’s Largest—and Stinkiest—Flower Is in Danger of Extinction
This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Parasitic, elusive, and emitting an overwhelming odor of putrefying flesh, Rafflesia—often called the corpse flower—has …
Scientists Just Tried Growing Human Kidneys in Pigs
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In a first, researchers in China have used pigs to grow early-stage kidneys made up of mostly human cells. The advance is a step closer to producing organs in animals …
In a Fierce Desert, Microbe ‘Crusts’ Show How Life Tamed the Land
At first glance, the grit crust could seem like a routine example of what researchers call a biological soil crust, or “biocrust”—a community of coexisting bacteria, fungi, algae, and other …
Turtles Carry Signs of Humanity’s Nuclear History in Their Shells
On a spring day in 1978, a fisherman caught a tiger shark in the lagoon surrounding Enewetak Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the north Pacific. That shark, along …
How to Use AI to Talk to Whales—and Save Life on Earth
For researchers and conservationists alike, the potential applications of machine learning are basically limitless. And Earth Species is not the only group working on decoding animal communication. Payne spent the …
Florida’s War With Invasive Pythons Has a New Twist
That has created a problem. Around 2010, soon after meeting this big, new predator that could outcompete and eat them, South Florida’s mammal populations collapsed. Large and medium-size mammals have …
A New Idea for How to Assemble Life
According to assembly theory, before Darwinian evolution can proceed, something has to select for multiple copies of high-AI objects from the Assembly Possible. Chemistry alone, Cronin said, might be capable …
How a Firefly Course Is Saving Japan’s Favorite Glowing Insect
This story originally appeared on Atlas Obscura and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At the third meeting of the Moriyama City Firefly Forest Museum’s eight-week Firefly Course, a …