Cascade Tuholske is a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN); Chris Funk is the director of the University of California Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazards Center; and Kathryn Grace is an associate professor of Geography, Environment, and Society at the University of Minnesota. This article first appeared on…
Note from the Editor (10/8/21): One of the writers of this 2006 study, David Julius, is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2021 for discoveries into how the human body feels temperature and touch. The pain was throbbing, itching, aching, stabbing, stinging, pounding, and piercing. Pain has a variety of…
COVID-19 has claimed the lives of about 675,000 people in the United States, according to the CDC. This outbreak has surpassed the 1918 influenza pandemic in terms of mortality, making it the deadliest in recent American history. Vaccines are our most powerful weapon in the fight against the new coronavirus. In the United States, three…
Few things in life attract more unsolicited advice than how to care for one’s children. However, advice on what to eat, when to eat it, and how much to eat usually takes the cake. As a result, it’s normal if you’re concerned about nutrition and wellness as a parent or caretaker. While there is unlikely…
Copyright 2021, from Leigh Cowart’s Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose. PublicAffairs, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., has granted permission for this reprint. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of a rental car in a dusty lot of the county fairgrounds in Auburn, California, my hands trembling subtly.…
Fresh eyes can transform the world, and a world beset by pandemics, climate change, and unfairness is primed for change like none we’ve ever seen. That’s why, after a five-year hiatus, Popular Science is reintroducing the Brilliant 10: an annual list of early-career scientists and engineers who are coming up with novel solutions to issues…
Aaron Bolds didn’t think about becoming a doctor until he tore a ligament in his knee in a basketball competition when he was 15 years old. His orthopedic surgeon was Black, and the two got along swimmingly. “When he asked how my grades were, I told him, ‘I’m a straight-A student,’” she said. Bolds, who…
Both cigarettes and opioids have a high potential for addiction and death. Profiteering companies sell both substances based on science that has been skewed by spin or outright lies. Both have been challenged for multibillion-dollar sums of money. Opioids, on the other hand, are not like cigarettes. And, as the opioid settlements near the conclusion,…
When terrorists hijacked two planes and brought down the World Trade Center buildings, John Feal, now 54, was a supervisor for a demolition business. 20 years ago, two additional planes slammed into the Pentagon and a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, respectively. Feal, who is from Long Island, New York, arrived the day after the great…
The delta form, which is still the prevalent strain in the United States and many other parts of the world, has been on public health officials’ concerns recently. However, as virologists have long cautioned, new variants are likely to emerge for some time, and preliminary data suggests that a new strain is currently circulating in…