For many meat eaters, summer barbecues wouldn’t be the same without the mouthwatering aroma of burgers cooking on the grill. But many people are now open to trying plant-based alternatives, as long as they closely resemble the taste, odor, appearance and texture of real beef. Now, researchers report that the aromas of a couple of […]

In 2019, astronomers spotted something incredible in our backyard: a rogue comet from another star system. Named Borisov, the icy snowball traveled 110,000 miles per hour and marked the first and only interstellar comet ever detected by humans. But what if these interstellar visitors—comets, meteors, asteroids and other debris from beyond our solar system—are more […]

Researchers have developed a mathematical model that can predict the optimum exercise regime for building muscle. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used methods of theoretical biophysics to construct the model, which can tell how much a specific amount of exertion will cause a muscle to grow and how long it will take. The […]

The Pfizer vaccine is on a fast track for FDA approval, hearings possible today according to the NYTimes. I suspect the political pressures are enormous. Still, how can approval be possible when the safety record of this vaccine is far worse than any vaccine in the past, including many that were pulled from the market? Efficacy […]

Pavements are an abundant urban surface, covering around 40 percent of American cities. But in addition to carrying traffic, they can also emit heat. Due to what’s called the urban heat island effect, densely built, impermeable surfaces like pavements can absorb solar radiation and warm up their surroundings by re-emitting that radiation as heat. This […]

Bumbling in the breeze,your banded body driftscasually into view.Flower waker, pollinator.Every lacy step acareful caressacross the countless facesof your foraged design.Flying in manufactured circleswe trace the trajectoryof your industry,plotting each wayward beatagainst the fluctuating cadenceof your body’s warmth.A sturdy, sterile curvecharting the fragilityof our coincidencein a worldthat we must learnto share. A bumblebee attached to […]

Scientific research has shown that sexuality exists on a spectrum. But how certain are people about where they fit on it? A new University of Sydney study suggests that people’s reported sexual orientation can change after reading about the nature of sexual orientation. Published in peer-reviewed journal, Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study found that a significant […]

Extreme heat is an increasingly common occurrence worldwide, with heat-related deaths and illnesses also expected to rise. The authors of a new two-paper Series on Heat and Health, published in The Lancet, recommend immediate and urgent globally coordinated efforts to mitigate climate change and increase resilience to extreme heat to limit additional warming, avoid permanent and […]

Low and uneven turnout is a serious problem for local democracy. However, simply moving off-cycle, local elections to be held on the same day as statewide and national contests doubles voter turnout and leads to an electorate that is considerably more representative in terms of race, age, class and partisanship, according to new University of […]

A newly described gene allows the malaria parasite to defend itself from adverse conditions, such as the high temperatures of fever that are the classic clinical symptom of human infection. A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) in collaboration with investigators at Penn State describes how the gene activates a protective […]