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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has placed a question mark over the future of the International Space Station, long a symbol of post-Cold War cooperation, where astronauts and cosmonauts proudly live and work side-by-side. The outpost was the subject of a menacing Twitter thread by Russian space agency head Dmitry Rogozin, who warned Thursday that … Read more
A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 375, Issue 6583. After passing through a security gate, the van descends into a tunnel that burrows under the forests of Olkiluoto, an island off Finland’s west coast. The wheels crunch on crushed stone as a gray, wet October day gives way to darkness. “Welcome to … Read more
The head of Russia’s space agency warned Thursday (Feb. 24) that new sanctions imposed on his country could have dire consequences for the International Space Station program. “Do you want to destroy our cooperation on the ISS?” read one of the tweets from Roscosmos Director-General Dimitry Rogozin, which was translated by Rob Mitchell for Ars … Read more
COVID-19 Africa builds mRNA vaccine capacity The drive to help African countries produce vaccines with messenger RNA (mRNA) technology got big boosts last week from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the company BioNTech. The success of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines made by the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration and Moderna led to intense global demand, but African countries … Read more
One of the creepiest encounters I’ve ever had came 25 years ago, when I moved into my first house. Turning on the bathroom light early one morning, a gigantic centipede—with its blur of legs—ran up and over my foot without breaking stride. Now, even the sight of one sends shivers up my spine. Not so … Read more
This morning, hours after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mikhail Gelfand canceled his regular lecture on comparative genomics and instead had a heart-to-heart conversation with his students over Zoom. “I’m an old man,” says the bioinformatics specialist at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology near Moscow, rattling off a list of wrenching … Read more
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced yesterday that it will effectively terminate the controversial China Initiative, a programme that sought to protect US laboratories and businesses from espionage. Instead, the programme will be broadened to cover other countries of concern and renamed. Scientists who spoke to Nature are relieved to see the initiative end—the programme frequently … Read more
France’s nuclear regulator has ordered ITER, an international fusion energy project, to hold off on assembling its gigantic reactor until officials address safety concerns. This month, the ITER Organization was expecting to get the green light to begin to weld together the 11-meter-tall steel sections that make up the doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak. But … Read more
Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but a new study suggests it could have an unexpected downside: A few minutes of mopping indoors with a fresh-scented cleaning product can generate as many airborne particles as vehicles on a busy city street. The finding suggests custodians and professional cleaners may be at risk of health effects … Read more
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant and its surrounding area are showing increased radiation levels after heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops in the region, Ukrainian officials said Friday (Feb. 25) Online data from the Chernobyl exclusion zone’s automated radiation-monitoring system shows that gamma radiation has increased 20 times above usual levels at multiple observation points, which … Read more