Technology companies are increasingly looking to nuclear power plants to provide the emissions-free electricity needed to run artificial intelligence and other businesses. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have recently struck deals with operators and developers of nuclear power plants to fuel the boom in data centers, which provide computing services to …
Read More »Space: The Final Fashion Frontier
In its quest to shape the aesthetics of everything, the fashion world has extended its glossy, well-decorated tentacles into all sorts of unexpected areas: sports, film, hotels, furniture, publishing. And, as of Wednesday, space. The cosmos is not just the final frontier, apparently. It’s the final fashion frontier. Or so …
Read More »A Fading Tree, Once Majestic, Had to Come Down. But It Wasn’t the End.
When you live a long time with trees, they become a part of you. So it pained me to take down the old sugar maple, my arboreal cathedral, one rafter at a time, her demise not from flames but an underground blaze of fungus. Small honey-colored mushrooms fruiting at her …
Read More »Flying Into Storms Improves Forecasts, but It Is Rare in Asia’s Typhoon Alley
The storm hunters from Hong Kong braced themselves as Super Typhoon Yagi rattled their small jet. At 30,000 feet, they released probes into the Category 4-strength storm as it churned south of the city last month, gathering data many meteorologists consider crucial to improving forecasts. “Some prefer going with an …
Read More »These Scientists Tested Dolphin Breath. They Found Plastic.
Scientists have found plastic pollution almost everywhere they have looked. In clouds. On Mount Everest. In Arctic snow. Now, for the first time, tiny plastic particles have been detected in the breath of dolphins. The findings, published on Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, point to the ubiquitousness of …
Read More »Water Crises Threaten the World’s Ability to Eat, Studies Show
High food prices, meet the global water crisis. The world’s food supply is under threat because so much of what we eat is concentrated in so few countries, and many of those countries are increasingly facing a water shortage. That’s the conclusion of three independent studies published this week. One …
Read More »Global Electricity Demand Is Rising Faster Than Expected, I.E.A. Says
Demand for electricity around the world is rising faster than expected, making it harder for countries to slash their emissions and keep global warming in check, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday. Over the next decade, the world is poised to add the equivalent of Japan’s annual electricity demand …
Read More »Bumblebee Queens Prefer to Live in a Toxic Home
North-facing, sloping ground with loose, sandy soil — if you’re a bumblebee queen on the market for a winter home, these features will have you racing to make an offer. But scientists were recently stunned to find there’s something else these monarchs like in a place to hibernate: pesticides. In …
Read More »Ananda Lewis, Former MTV V.J., Says She Has Stage 4 Breast Cancer
The former MTV V.J. Ananda Lewis said in a CNN round-table discussion that was posted online on Tuesday that her breast cancer, which she first learned she had in 2019, metastasized last year and had reached Stage 4. In a phone interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Lewis, …
Read More »Columbia Cancer Surgeon Notches 5 More Retractions for Suspicious Data
The chief of a cancer surgery division at Columbia University this week had five research articles retracted and a sixth tagged with an editor’s note, underscoring concerns about research misconduct that have lately bedeviled Columbia as well as cancer labs at several other elite American universities. With the latest retractions, …
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