Stella Barnes 20395 posts 0 comments

Your kitchen sponge is teeming with microbes. But repeated contact with food waste is not the only reason; a sponge’s unique structure plays a role, too. It could even inspire a new way to grow bacteria for research, according to a study in Nature Chemical Biology. One of the biggest challenges microbiologists face is culturing bacteria species that will not readily grow in a laboratory. Some microbes are incredibly finicky, and scientists often have no idea what conditions these organisms need. “It’s kind of like trying…

Two years and counting into the COVID pandemic, we’ve all seen plenty of misinformation and junk science, whether online, on cable news or even in person by those eager to share their (sigh) “alternative views.” Meanwhile, trust in public health experts and institutions is at a discouraging low. It’s easy for sensible folks to feel exhausted by trying to do the right thing for public health, or for their kids’ education, in the face of so much negativity directed toward science. So the self-titled debut album of the Sound…

NONFICTION The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time: The Arctic Mission to the Epicenter of Climate Change by Markus Rex, translated by Sarah Pybus Greystone Books, 2022 ($28.95) On October 4, 2019, the Polarstern, a German icebreaker the length of a football field, sidled up to a thick ice floe above the Arctic Circle and turned off its engines. Soon the sun would set for months. The remaining open ocean around the boat would ice over, and three million square miles of liquid would turn solid in the span…

Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 lowers the risk of long COVID after infection by only about 15%, according to a study of more than 13 million people1. That’s the largest cohort that has yet been used to examine how much vaccines protect against the condition, but it is unlikely to end the uncertainty. Long COVID — illness that persists for weeks or months after infection with SARS-CoV-2 — has proved difficult to study, not least because the array of symptoms makes it hard to define. Even finding out how common it is has…

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose by 4 percent in the first quarter, as American drivers hit the road in record numbers during the first three months of the year. U.S. motorists logged 753 billion miles on the road through March, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That's the highest first-quarter tally since the federal authorities began keeping track in 1970. The extra miles highlighted the continued recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and came in the face of a run-up in gasoline and diesel prices. In…