National Geographic
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COVID’s positive side-effect: fewer contagious illnesses. How can we make that last?
Many of us have likely noticed what the data is bearing out: Strict social distancing and masking protocols not only ...
2.5 billion: That’s how many T. rexes may have roamed the Earth over their 3-million-year reign
On average, researchers estimate that some 20,000 T. rex lived at any one time and that about 127,000 generations of ...
COVID-19 Survival Guide: The virus will be with us forever. Here’s how we can adapt
Eventually—years or even decades in the future—COVID-19 could transition into a mild childhood illness, like the four endemic human coronaviruses ...
‘Dark angels of evolution, terrific and terrible’: How viruses have shaped evolution, for better or for worse
[Many] viruses bring adaptive benefits, not harms, to life on Earth, including ours. We couldn’t continue without them. We wouldn’t ...
Already blamed for ‘widespread insect declines,’ neonicotinoid insecticides may threaten mammals, too
On an overcast January day in Estelline, South Dakota, Jonathan Lundgren zips his quilted jacket over a fleece, pulls down ...
Empathy fatigue: The quickly rising global COVID death toll is too much for our brains to process
More tragedy doesn’t always elicit more empathy; it can counterintuitively bring about apathy. The magnitude of the death toll can ...
Who is the superspreader that infected Trump? There is a genetic tool available to find out if the White House wanted to use it
The [White House Rose Garden] gathering has been described as a superspreader event, as at least a dozen guests have reported ...
Coronavirus missiles: See for yourself if 6 feet of separation is enough protection from a cough
[Lydia] Bourouiba, a fluid dynamics scientist at MIT, has spent the last few years using high-speed cameras and light to ...
COVID-19 is deadlier than the flu
Texas is just one of the states that has experienced a surge in coronavirus cases over recent weeks after relaxing ...
Video: Iceland breeds heat-tolerant trees to restore native forests amid climate change
The landscape of Iceland has changed a lot in a thousand years. When the Vikings first arrived in the ninth ...
Farm workers fear coronavirus infection as they labor to keep US fed during COVID-19 pandemic
While millions of Americans shelter in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, farmworkers on California’s cool central coast move ...
Historical amnesia: Measles outbreaks remind us why it’s perilous to forget life before vaccines
I suffer, like most people, from a notorious Catch-22: Vaccines save us from diseases, then cause us to forget the ...
Banana-destroying fungus hits South America. Is genetic engineering the solution?
A fungus that has wreaked havoc on banana plantations in the Eastern Hemisphere has, despite years of preventative efforts, arrived ...
Balance of Nature: Ecology’s enduring myth debunked
Strolling across his animated kingdom—Pride Rock in the distance—Mufasa explains to his young son Simba: “Everything you see exists together, ...
Genetic engineering is changing our food. An expert explains everything you should know
SCIENTISTS CONTINUE TO find new ways to insert genes for specific traits into plant and animal DNA. A field of promise—and ...
‘The Tangled Tree’: Book explores what’s wrong with Darwin’s theory of evolution
Until recently, the central tenets of Darwin’s theory of evolution, from how heredity works to the gradual variation in species, had ...
Two moms, no dad? Gene editing allows same-sex mice to have babies
Using gene editing and stem cells, researchers in China have helped mice of the same sex bear pups. While this ...
‘Zombie gene’ could explain why elephants rarely get cancer
[B]igger animals, which have more cells, should have greater occurrences of cancer. By that reasoning, elephants, with hundreds of times ...
The next food revolution: Brought to you by CRISPR gene editing
Crispr has the potential to boost yields, disease resistance, and taste, and even tackle allergens like gluten. It could radically ...
Remnants of ancient society found in Ecuador’s cloud forest
In the 1850s, a team of botanists venturing into the cloud forest in the Quijos Valley of eastern Ecuador hacked their way ...
Can you inherit a laugh? Book explores this and other genetics questions
Why are people today often taller than their ancestors? If you have blue eyes or red hair, does that mean your children will ...
Which of our hominid ancestors forged stone weapons used to kill rhino in the Philippines 700,000 years ago?
Stone tools found in the Philippines predate the arrival of modern humans to the islands by roughly 600,000 years—but researchers aren’t ...
Life on Earth: How aliens might go about discovering us
[L]ight-years from our solar system, other intelligent beings on a similar planetary oasis might be gazing in our direction and ...
Viewpoint: Green Revolution II will require GMOs and a paradigm shift toward lower-input farming
From the 1960s through the 1990s, yields of rice and wheat in Asia doubled. Even as the continent’s population increased ...
National Geographic confesses to history of ‘racist’ coverage in special issue
National Geographic strives to deepen our understanding of the world and our role in it. It’s difficult to understand 21st-century America ...
Should we create ‘genetically superior’ bee species resistant to varroa mites?
In Australia, the bee industry is trying to find a way to protect Aussie bees from the varroa mite before ...
Viewpoint: How genetics challenges the ‘folk notion’ of distinct races
Speaking from the BBC studio in London where he hosts the weekly radio program Inside Science, [geneticist Adam] Rutherford explains how ...
How the Netherlands became a high tech farming center
Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much ...
