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Groups campaigning for electronics manufacturers to make it easier for people to repair their own devices scored a surprise victory when Apple promised to sell parts and tools for fixing iPhones Technology 31 December 2021 By Matthew Sparkes iPhones require careful repairs wichan yodsawai/Alamy Apple made a surprise announcement in November that it would begin … Read more
By Simon Ings If we can’t beat water, perhaps we should learn to go with the flow Pete Saloutos/Getty Images Explore and protect ACROSS the globe, water went wild in 2021. Floods hit everywhere from Afghanistan to New Zealand, and the UK was affected by flash floods in the summer. So, as we begin 2022, … Read more
It’s now been two years since Chinese authorities first informed the World Health Organization about an unknown virus in Wuhan. How has our understanding of the virus changed since then and where does that leave us? Health 31 December 2021 By Helen Thomson A new hospital was rapidly built in Wuhan, China, in early 2020 … Read more
E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success. By the time I … Read more
On a recent morning, in Lower Manhattan, 20 scientists, including me, gathered for a private screening of the new film Don’t Look Up, followed by lunch with the film’s director, Adam McKay. The film’s plot is simple. An astronomy graduate student, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), and her professor, Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discover a new … Read more
Inventorying the plants in a tract of woods or fields or searching for invasive species can take days of hot, hard work slogging through thorny brush and tick-infested grass. Now, researchers have shown that simply capturing and analyzing the DNA plants release into the air can work as well as putting boots on the ground—and … Read more
In the United States, widespread hope greeted the decision by the Food and Drug Administration last week to authorize the emergency use of two different oral treatments for SARS-CoV-2 infection, which could mark a new era in which pills taken at home can prevent severe COVID-19. Global health advocates are also celebrating the preauthorization decision … Read more
NASA’s newest flagship space observatory should have enough fuel to more than double its minimum mission life peering into the history of the universe, according to an agency update. The long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration with the Canadian and European space agencies led by NASA, launched into space Saturday (Dec. 25) on an … Read more
The year 2021 was one of major scientific expansion. Thanks to a variety of exploratory missions and their cutting-edge instruments, astronomers have been able to peer into the cosmos like never before. Researchers have turned the Earth into a giant telescope to view powerful jets from a black hole. Solar system surveys have revealed new … Read more
Astronomers have captured a breathtaking radio wave image, showing our closest radio active black hole spewing out massive jets of plasma that span more than 16 times the size of the full moon in our sky. The supermassive black hole in question is located in the center of the galaxy Centaurus A around 12 … Read more