decades

Record-breaking winds blast Europe in the worst storm in decades

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Record-breaking gusts of up to 122 mph (196 km/h) were recorded in England Friday (Feb. 18) as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium and parts of the Netherlands and France face their worst storm in over three decades. Trees have collapsed, trucks and cars have toppled on their sides, and thousands of homes have been left … Read more

US Could Get a Century’s Worth of Sea Level Rise in Just 3 Decades, Report Warns

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A new federal report with up-to-date projections for all states and territories predicts sea levels in the United States will rise more than three times as fast as they did last century.   According to new lines of data, the average sea level along the nation’s coastline could increase by 0.3 meters (or a foot) … Read more

Greenland lost enough ice in last 2 decades to cover entire US in 1.5 feet of water

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The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, and the toll on Greenland‘s massive ice sheet is becoming achingly clear. According to new satellite data compiled by Polar Portal, a collection of four Danish government research institutions, Greenland has lost more than 5,100 billion tons (4,700 billion metric tons) of ice in … Read more

Malaria-preventing bed nets save children’s lives—with impacts that can last for decades | Science

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Since the 1990s, bed nets impregnated with insecticides have been an invaluable tool for malaria prevention. Babies and young children who sleep under them are far less likely to die of the disease. But some scientists have worried this might increase the risk of contracting malaria later in life by preventing development of the immunity … Read more

Tiger Sharks, Tracked Over Decades, Are Shifting Their Haunts With Ocean Warming

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Christopher Intagliata: For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Christopher Intagliata. As it happens, tiger sharks have something in common with certain East Coasters.  Neil Hammerschlag: During the winter when it’s cold, they snowbird down near the Bahamas and off of Florida. And then during the summer, they migrate north. Intagliata: Neil Hammerschlag is director of the Shark Research & … Read more

Two decades of soldiers’ medical records implicate common virus in multiple sclerosis | Science

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One hundred and fifty years after a French neurologist first recognized a case of multiple sclerosis (MS) in a young woman with an unusual tremor, the cause of this devastating disease remains elusive. Now, a study that combed data from regular blood tests of 10 million U.S. soldiers has found the strongest evidence yet that … Read more

DeepMind cracks ‘knot’ conjecture that bedeviled mathematicians for decades

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The artificial intelligence (AI) program DeepMind has gotten closer to proving a math conjecture that’s bedeviled mathematicians for decades and revealed another new conjecture that may unravel how mathematicians understand knots.  The two pure math conjectures are the first-ever important advances in pure mathematics (or math not directly linked to any non-math application) generated by artificial intelligence, the researchers … Read more