Silicon Valley is shifting away from chatbot queries toward a future filled with resource-intensive agentic AIβand it's driving the data center buildout.
The science curriculum the industry is offering to schools casts plastics as safe, recyclable, and a source of good jobs. Critics say itβs propaganda.
The success of a program linking zoos across the US has created social media stars and generated a wave of interest in how to protect the endangered great apes in the wild.
The World Meteorological Organization is warning that the climate phenomenon that has the Pacific running a fever will last until at least February, with dire consequences for weather worldwide.
A thousand people voluntarily buried their cotton underpants for two monthsβnot to keep the Underpants Gnomes from stealing them, but as part of a citizen science project to map out soil health in 25 countries around the world. The results of this unique experiment were reported in a new paper published in the journal Plants People Planet.
βOur results show that how soil is managed can significantly affect both soil life and soil quality,β said co-author Marcel van der Heijden, an agroecologist at the University of Zurich. βHealthy, biologically active soil is crucial for fertility, nutrient cycling and many other ecosystem services.β
Soil health is critical for agriculture and, by extension, food security, not to mention a healthy global ecosystem, but it has been declining worldwide, per the authors. One key indicator of soil health is decomposition rates of complex organic matter, breaking down stuff like leaves, wood, even cadavers into simpler organic and inorganic compounds, releasing C02 and nutrients in the process. There have been relatively few large-scale national decomposition studies involving different land use types, although smaller studies have shown that how humans use a site can significantly affect the soil's biological diversity.
When a hurricane roars toward land, forecasters try to predict how high sea levels will rise to help coastal communities prepare for the worstΒ impacts.
But storm surge peak isnβt always the biggest problem. How fast water rises, how long it remains elevated, and how quickly it recedes all influence coastal erosion, infrastructure damage, emergency response, and recovery β and these factors can vary dramatically from storm toΒ storm.
AΒ new reportΒ from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provides a comprehensive assessment of the current capabilities of extreme event attribution (EEA) β a scientific field that analyzes whether and to what extent human-caused climate change influenced an individualΒ ex
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