Bread is on the rise. The number of people Googling “bread” hit an all-time high this week. Instagrammers and Twitterers alike are rolling in dough—not figuratively, but literally—and bread-making has become such a popular activity during this incredibly stressful time of coronavirus self-quarantining that grocery stores are running low on flour and yeast.None of this…
Category: Science and Nature
The Analogy Between Covid-19 and Climate Change Is Eerily Precise
For a brief moment there, it looked as though the coronavirus pandemic might escape the muck of partisanship. It’s true that Donald Trump, wary of a recession during a reelection year, had first tried to talk the virus into submission. His counterfactual insistence that the situation was under control did nothing to slow the viral…
The Magic of Teaching Science Labs Isn’t Lost Online
To help flatten the curve of Covid-19 cases, universities across the nation have closed, and many professors are scrambling to transition to teaching online. This sudden shift is easier for some, especially those that already have online content readily available. For others, especially those who teach science labs, this may seem impossible. Both of us…
This Ankle Exoskeleton Was Designed to Make Running Easier
Photo: Stanford UniversityRunning is one of the most affordable forms of exercise, but it’s also one that people love to groan about—and for good reason. It’s a high-impact sport that can be hard on the body, and that’s without factoring in however you might feel about your individual athleticism. But Stanford engineers have found a…
Kingdom of Frost Explores How Frozen Landscapes Shaped Humanity
Growing up in the Norwegian Arctic—one of the coldest places on Earth—journalist Bjørn Vassnes became fascinated with the natural sciences. Today, he pens a science column for one of Norway’s most popular daily newspapers and hosts the television science program Schrödingers katt (Schrödinger’s cat) on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. But it wasn’t until he began…
How Supercomputers Are Helping to Fight Covid-19
Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee.Photo: Carlos Jones/ORNLA host of companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Google, along with universities and national labs have teamed up to form the COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium. This new partnership is designed to provide scientists with supercomputing resources as they figure out how to combat…
DOJ Pursues Covid-19 Fraudsters Peddling Fake Vaccine Kits
Scammers have utilized every tool at their disposal to pry credit card numbers, passwords, and Medicare information out of consumers during the covid-19 outbreak: robocalls, phishing emails, and texts masked as World Health Organization PSAs; e-commerce facades advertising household items; sham charities; and, especially, promises of a non-existent vaccine. This weekend, the Department of Justice…
Can Drugs for Malaria, HIV, and Ebola Treat Covid-19? New WHO Trial Aims to Find Out
Covid-19 patient samples being prepared for testing at Northwell Health Labs in Lake Success, New York.Image: APThe World Health Organization is launching a multinational clinical trial in which four existing drugs will be used to treat patients with covid-19. The project currently includes 10 countries and will potentially involve thousands of patients currently battling the…
Climate Deniers Are Out of Ideas
Photo: GettyFolks, the Washington Post had itself a Sunday night. The paper inexplicably published a puff piece on the “anti-Greta,” a German teen peddling soft climate denial who’s being supported by a group of old white guys at the Heartland Institute. It took two reporters to do one of the most egregious pieces of both…
What’s New on Netflix the Week of March 9, 2020
Image: NetflixIf you want to watch Men in Black on Netflix you only have a few more days to do it. Both Men in Black and Men in Black II are leaving the service on March 14 to make way for new programming on the streaming service, and there’s tons of it this week.A number of…