According to the United Nations (UN), nearly 1 billion of the 8 billion people in the world live in slums (1). These dense and disordered communities form in urban areas without a formal plan; their residents frequently lack addresses. Often they don’t have immediate access to water, power, or emergency services. Slums stem from all […]
Can the principles of topology help improve the world’s slums? Read More »
IN JUNE 2014, oncologist Fabrice Denis of the Jean Bernard Center, a cancer hospital in Le Mans, France, began approaching people diagnosed with advanced lung cancer whose disease hadn’t progressed after initial treatment. He wanted them to try an unconventional approach to health care. It didn’t involve a new drug, a combination therapy or an experimental
The Patient Stays in the Picture Read More »
Space oddities may help reveal dark matter and other secrets in the Milky Way. Astronomer Warren Brown explains. In April, the European Space Agency released the second massive trove of data from Gaia, a spinning, scanning satellite that for nearly five years has been spying on a billion stars. Its goal is to produce a
Unbound and Out: Boosted by black holes, stars speed off, leaving clues behind Read More »
Armies of zombie computers caused a lot of mayhem in 2018. In January, one cluster of infected, connected machines attacked the three biggest banks in the Netherlands. The attack crippled computer systems and left customers uncertain about their money. In February, a website for computer programmers, called Github, was knocked offline by a network of
Rise of the botnets Read More »
As wildfires grow in number and intensity, scientists look for the fingerprints of global warming The biggest fire in California history ignited shortly after noon on July 27, 2018, and burned until mid-September. Called the Mendocino Complex Fire, its twin infernos started at the same time. They also burned close to one another and quickly
Is climate change fanning megafires? Read More »
Pedestrians in downtown Miami one weekday last November might have noticed something unusual about the blue Ford Fusions threading their way through the city’s congested streets. An odd-looking array of cameras and sensors sat atop each car’s roof. And inside, the person in the driver’s seat almost never touched the steering wheel. Unlike the conventional
Can self-driving cars make roads safer and less congested? Read More »
Some of the smallest, most useful machines known to science are the biological molecules that keep living things living. The protein myosin drives the contraction and relaxation of muscle. Kinesin drags cellular cargo around the cell. Motor enzymes unwind, rewind, and maintain DNA, and bacteria use a molecular motor to rotate their whip-like flagella up
What’s the best way to build a molecular machine? Read More »
NASA is studying what personality an astronaut candidate needs to make the journey to Mars. Can we go to Mars without going crazy? In May 2001, Discover’s cover story asked exactly that, exploring unanswered questions about the psychological perils of humans crammed together and flung through space. At the time, scientists didn’t have much data to
Want to be a Mars Astronaut? You’ll Need the Proper Mindset Read More »
In late 2013, something big and strange showed up in the Gulf of Alaska. Scientists called it “the Blob.” It wasn’t a monster. Instead, it was a monstrous amount of heat in the surface water of the northern Pacific. And it didn’t begin to dissipate until 2016. Scientists soon observed the same heat-up farther south.
The Blob: Fingerprint of climate change shows up in some extreme weather Read More »
Inspiration often comes from unusual sources. Nelson Sepúlveda knows this firsthand. He got his big idea for a new source of power simply by looking out the window at the right time. Sepúlveda is an engineer at Michigan State University in East Lansing. He studies materials that can be used to build tiny electronic devices.
What powers these electronics? We do! Read More »
