Leon N. Cooper, a Nobel-winning physicist who helped unlock the secret of how some materials can convey electricity without resistance, a phenomenon called superconductivity, and who did pioneering work in understanding how memory and the brain work, died on Wednesday at his home in Providence, R.I. He was 94. His …

Long before the League of Conservation Voters embraced him as the “greenest governor” in America, Jay Inslee of Washington had written a book about climate change that called for a clean-energy revolution that would be the equivalent of the Apollo space program in commitment and innovation. But Mr. Inslee’s visions …

Update, Oct. 26 — On Saturday, NASA said the astronaut who experienced a “medical issue” has been released from the hospital after an overnight stay and has now returned to Houston. “The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members,” the space …

In the dying days of the 12th century, with Norway in the grip of civil wars, the Baglers, a faction aligned with the archbishop, laid siege to Sverresborg, the castle stronghold of King Sverre Sigurdsson. The monarch was away, so the besiegers pillaged the castle, burned down houses and poisoned …

Today, few critters are as abundant as cicadas. Thousands of different cicada species are found throughout the world, and some even periodically emerge by the trillions. But the prehistoric world was not crawling with periodical swarms. The cicadas of the late Jurassic Period — which had bulkier bodies than today’s …

The comedian Stewart Lee used to include, as part of his routine, a recollection of a conversation he once shared with a taxi driver. The story, in his telling, went like this. The taxi driver was an unrepentant homophobe. To be gay, he believed, was immoral. Lee tried to point …

If you asked a Hollywood director or a New York writer to come up with a riveting World Series script for 2024, they would probably conjure the one we’ve got. On the field, the New York Yankees vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers is a marquee matchup, two teams bursting with …

Overdose deaths across the country decreased by more than 12 percent between May 2023 and May 2024, according to new federal data, a major development in the nation’s efforts to combat the effects of fentanyl. The decrease continued a trend observed in recent months, and was the largest on record, …

Yet again this winter, millions of Americans will wonder if a nagging cough or body aches is a sign they’re coming down with Covid or the flu. This time, they’ll have an expanded array of tools to get an answer without leaving the house. There are now nine at-home tests …

Malaria infection rates are soaring in Ethiopia, where a combination of armed conflict, climate change and mosquitoes’ growing resistance to drugs and insecticides has accelerated the spread of a disease the country once thought it was bringing under control. More than 6.1 million malaria cases, and 1,038 deaths, have been …