Tag: SCIENCE

If the idea of swarms of delivery drones dropping packages all over our cities started out as a joke, for some reason the punchline hasn’t landed yet. Amazon applied for a patent in 2015 for a command center, like a beehive, plopped into your city, which isn’t a worrying metaphor at all. Google has its…

Every day, UPS, Fedex, and DHL deliver about 37 million packages to doorsteps, front desks, and receiving docks across the globe. Along the way each one will pass through dozens of hands as they’re stacked, sorted, and smushed into planes and trucks. That’s why so many of them show up looking a little, well, world-weary.…

This story originally appeared on The New Republic and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Samantha Sieber’s grandfather had a traditional American burial. His body was embalmed, put in a metal casket, and laid to rest at a cemetery, where the grounds would be perpetually cared for. “It felt good to give him what he wanted,” said Sieber,…

Around 2013, plastic surgeons like Boris Paskhover started to notice a bizarre trend in their doctor’s offices. More and more young patients—under 40, as young as 20—were asking for nose jobs. In Paskhover’s office in New York, new patients would plop down, hand over their phone, and complain about how their schnoz looked in selfies.…

George Church towers over most people. He has the long, gray beard of a wizard from Middle-earth, and his life’s work—poking and prodding DNA and delving into the secrets of life—isn’t all that far removed from a world where deep magic is real. The 63-year-old geneticist presides over one of the largest and best-funded academic…

When Ariana Anderson had her first child, she was as clueless as any new parent about how to interpret her infant’s cries. Every wail, every sob sounded an urgent alarm to her postpartum brain. But by the time Anderson’s third kid came along, the UCLA computational neuropsychologist realized she had become fluent in baby. Her…

This week we are heading for the stars and we’re going to stay there. In the early 18th century, French astronomer Charles Messier began observing and cataloging nebulae and clusters of stars. In total 100 celestial objects are now known as the Messier catalog, and we’re going to look at some of the prettiest in…

It's time for another giant robot-like machine that battles other huge stuff—yes, it's the release of Pacific Rim Uprising. The movie comes out on Friday, March 23, and while I don't know much about the plot, I do know that humans pilot super large Jaegers that are almost 300 feet tall. So now is a…

Google wants to help its users take back their time. On Tuesday, at its annual developers conference, the company announced several new features designed to help people monitor and manage the time they spend on their devices. The goal: Enable users to understand their habits, control the demands technology places on their attention, and focus…

Scientists lust after genomes like the wolf from a Tex Avery cartoon, heart pounding in throat, tongue lolling, fist pounding on the table, submarine-dive-ahOOOgah!-alarm sounding—all out of desire for the hot, hot data curled coaxingly inside every one of your cells. Think of all the information tucked into those sinuous DNA spirals—and the life-saving discoveries…