Oct 9, 2023 | Salon.com
The first time I talked to Dr. Katalin Karikó on the phone, it was late 2020. I knew that Karikó had helped create mRNA vaccines — the ones developed by pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer/BioNTech (where Karikó works) to fight the COVID-19 pandemic — and I expected to discuss science.
Instead, I unexpectedly found myself wishing I knew how to speak Hungarian....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 8, 2023 | Salon.com
Although Ozempic is currently fashionable as a cosmetic weight loss drug, especially among the rich and famous, its intended use is to help individuals with diabetes or who struggle with severe obesity. Yet coverage of this drug is often filled with stories about dangerous long-term side effects like constant nausea and abdominal pain....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 6, 2023 | Salon.com
A new report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) revealed that more than 43 million children were displaced due to weather events — all of which were linked to climate change — in the years from 2016 to 2021. This amounts to roughly 20,000 child displacements every single day.
The climate change-linked weather events included storms and floods (which comprised 95 percent of the incidents), followed by droughts and wildfires....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 4, 2023 | Salon.com
Astronomers who were perplexed by the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) images of the universe’s earliest galaxies can breathe a little more easily: Scientists have just explained away certain features of those galaxies that had previously been regarded as impossible.
The confusion began last year after the JWST discovered the universe’s earliest galaxies seemed to be too massive to have formed immediately after the Big Bang....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 3, 2023 | Salon.com
Jacuzzi-level temperatures of the Amazon River have killed more than 100 pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) in Brazil over the past week after more than 120 carcasses were seen floating in Lake Tefé, which is connected to the Amazon River.
According to the Mamirauá Institute, a research facility funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science, the dolphins’ deaths can likely be attributed to a historic drought and record-high water temperatures, which in some places have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit — the same heat of a typical Jacuzzi....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 3, 2023 | Salon.com
The dictionary definition of “Luddite” broadly refers to “one who is opposed to especially technological change.” Although the dictionary also mentions that Luddites were a real 19th Century movement, this is not the main way in which people use the term. If a person is a Luddite in the modern age, that supposedly means they are a hard-headed reactionary irrationally frightened by technology....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 1, 2023 | Salon.com
When on Tuesday scientists lifted the lid off of OSIRIS-REx — a spacecraft that recently visited Bennu, an asteroid which might collide with Earth in the year 2182 — the researchers found something so overwhelming, they literally “gasped” at the “scientific treasure box” just discovered inside.
Those quotes were taken from a post on X (formerly Twitter) by NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division, which is located at NASA’s Johnson Space Center....
Originally posted on salon.com
Oct 1, 2023 | Salon.com
Owls are associated with intelligence, which isn’t surprising, because these birds have incredible smarts and even distinct personalities, as ecologist Carl Safina learned firsthand. After he and his wife Patricia rescued a baby screech owl that couldn’t be returned to the wild, they learned a lot about what owls are really like, as it grew up and raised its own baby owls....
Originally posted on salon.com
Sep 29, 2023 | Salon.com
One of the world’s most prominent advocates for taking action to halt human-caused climate change is Dr. Michael E. Mann, a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania. The climatologist and geophysicist’s latest book is “Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.”...
Originally posted on salon.com
Sep 28, 2023 | Salon.com
No one wants to imagine giant cloud filled with plastic raining crud water all over them. Unfortunately, that is increasingly becoming reality, according to a recent study published in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters. A team of Japanese scientists analyzed cloud water sampled at Mount Fuij and other Japanese mountains summits from 1300 to 3776 meters in altitude to search for microplastics....
Originally posted on salon.com