Farmers in India cut their carbon footprint with trees and solar power
In 2007, 22-year-old P. Ramesh’s groundnut farm was losing money. As was the norm in most of India (and still is), Ramesh was using...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
A special brew may have calmed Inca children headed for sacrifice
Two Inca children slated for ritual sacrifice more than 500 years ago quaffed a special soothing concoction that has gone undetected until now. Those...
NASA’s InSight lander has recorded the largest Marsquake yet
Any Martians out there should learn to duck and cover. On May 4, the Red Planet was rocked by a roughly magnitude 5 temblor,...
Experiments hint at why bird nests are so sturdy
To build its nest, a bird won’t go for any old twig. Somehow, birds pick and choose material that will create a cozy, sturdy...
Prehistoric people may have used light from fires to create dynamic art
Prehistoric people may have used firelight to create the illusion of movement in their art. An analysis of 50 engraved stones excavated in France...
We finally have an image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way
There’s a new addition to astronomers’ portrait gallery of black holes. Astronomers announced May 12 that they have finally assembled an image of the...
Machine learning and gravity signals could rapidly detect big earthquakes
Massive earthquakes don’t just move the ground — they make speed-of-light adjustments to Earth’s gravitational field. Now, researchers have trained computers to identify these...
Here’s the latest good and bad news about COVID-19 drugs
Maybe you’ve heard that the pandemic is over in the United States. (It’s not.) Masks are no longer required in most places and large...
Eating meat is the Western norm. But norms can change
When my friend Julie Babulski was a freshman in high school in the mid-1990s, she decided to stop eating meat. “I loved animals. I...
Baby marmosets may practice their first distinctive cries in the womb
Cradled inside the hushed world of the womb, fetuses might be preparing to come out howling. In the same way newborn humans can cry...
A new treatment could restore some mobility in people paralyzed by strokes 
What has Perseverance found in two years on Mars? 
This robot automatically tucks its limbs to squeeze through spaces 
Greta Thunberg’s new book urges the world to take climate action now