Speed walking isn’t exactly an option for sloths, which is why these animals have always relied upon a dense forest canopy to navigate their natural habitat safely. An abundance of trees has historically kept sloths relatively protected from threats like cars, electricity lines, and ground-dwelling predators. But humans have been encroaching upon sloth habitats in […]
While you sun, swim, and snorkel in the ocean this summer, scientists are working deep beneath the surface to protect some of its most precious marine life from becoming bycatch. Gillnets are the tool of choice for catching many species, from salmon to cod to tuna. But these mesh fishing nets are nearly invisible in […]
You may see your movie watching sessions and therapy sessions as completely separate activities, but they’re probably more linked than you think. For example, The Incredible Hulk sheds light on anger management, Titanic is a study on relationship compatibility, and the horror film It is an easy segue to talking about childhood trauma. Those are […]
A poster on the office wall of UFO-seeking hero Fox Mulder in The X-Files famously declared that the truth is out there. NASA has decided to take its first official steps toward determining what that truth may be. This fall, an independent NASA-commissioned team will embark upon a study of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), or […]
The ubiquitous Swiss Army knife was first invented in the late 19th century, but humans have been using and sharing similar multipurpose tools for much, much longer. Sixty-thousand to 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens ventured out of Africa, eventually landing in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. While that migration was not the first, scientists […]
If you think pinning down the position of a black hole sounds complicated, you can imagine how much harder it is to identify one moving 100,000 miles per hour — which makes astronomers’ recent feat so impressive. For the first time ever, data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has allowed scientists to record the mass […]
Meet Ross and Hugo Turner, a.k.a. The Turner Twins. They’re professional adventurers who’ve rowed across the Atlantic (netting the duo two world records), scaled Mount Elbrus in Russia, and have traveled to four of the world’s Continental Poles of Inaccessibility — by bicycle and paramotor, no less — to list but a few of their […]
After a devastating fire tore through the 859-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, the sounds of its 10 bronze bells ceased to echo through the city. They’d escaped damage but have been rung only once since — on April 15, 2020, the one-year anniversary of the blaze. Then the chapel returned to silence, […]
Great teachers have the power to create vivid memories from our youth that we carry with us into adulthood. But one middle school teacher in Montclair, New Jersey, has been using a memory from his own childhood to share an important lesson about empathy and acceptance. When Daniel Gill was 9 and living in New […]
Got a daughter, niece, cousin, or little sister who loves baseball? Thanks to trailblazer Maria Pepe, they can make lifelong memories and forge important bonds while competing in their favorite game as Little League baseball players — an experience that was historically reserved only for boys. In an interview with Today, Pepe, who grew up […]
Rwanda operates a health system that reaches over 90% of its population and has long been a leader in implementing new medical technology. But for years it had a major problem: blood delivery. Most people in the East African country live in rural areas, meaning blood had to travel by road — a long journey […]
While it’s often said that not all heroes wear capes, a few in the vicinity of the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, England, do wear scuba tanks, as Emma Lyon can attest. On May 7, Lyon was attending a regatta and had been cheering on a local race participant with such enthusiasm that the ring […]