Humanity Is Flushing Away One of Life’s Essential Elements
We broke phosphorus.
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Science
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How Archaeologists Are Using Deep Learning to Dig Deeper - The New York Times
Trawling ancient history with neural nets.
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Who Is the Smartest Dog? Let the Competition Begin.
Scientists in Hungary are streaming experiments with dogs that know many words, featuring them in a contest of canine intelligence.
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Why is America running out of water?
Partner Content: Decreasing precipitation and rising populations could bring a perfect storm of water shortages for the United States. Where is our water going?
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The Search for Life on Venus Could Start With This Private Company
Rocket Lab may be able to send a small spacecraft to probe the clouds of Venus long before NASA or other space agencies are able to do so.
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How cats and dogs see the world
Dogs and cats don't see as clearly as humans—and they're lacking in the color department—but they can see movement much better than we can.
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How Ultra-Black Fish Disappear in the Deepest Seas
Researchers have found fish that absorb more than 99.9 percent of the light that hits their skin.
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The Thinnest Paper in the World
The process of making tengujo is fairly simple, but the nearly transparent product that results is almost magical.
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‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here's why that happens.
Video calls seemed an elegant solution to remote work, but they wear on the psyche in complicated ways.
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Why ‘Tiger King’ Is Not ‘Blackfish’ for Big Cats
Critics say the popular Netflix series and its directors lost sight of the conservation and animal welfare problems at the heart of the story of Joe Exotic.
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They Wanted Research Funding, So They Entered the Lottery
A survey of New Zealand scientists found that recipients of a randomized funding program favored random allocations of some kinds of grant money.
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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM
A new study explores a strange paradox: In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.
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The Navy's Patent for a Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Is Wild
The designs seemingly stretch the limits of science.
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These Ants Use Germ-Killers, and They’re Better Than Ours
Parasitic fungi do not seem to develop resistance to the chemicals, suggesting new ways to prevent antibiotic resistance.
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What makes dogs so special and successful? Love.
After searching for dogs' intelligence, a top canine scientist concluded that their true gift is affection.
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How Does Antarctica’s Only Native Insect Survive Extreme Cold?
The Antarctic midge spends more than half its life frozen. A better understanding of how it does so could have implications for human health.
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The Space Between Galaxies Isn’t Empty
Most of the atoms in the universe lie in its flyover country.
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How a shallow fault running directly below Seattle went undiscovered for a millenium
About 1,100 years ago, a major earthquake rocked Puget Sound, suddenly shooting what is now Restoration Point on Bainbridge Island up about 23 feet while Seattle's West Point sunk more than three feet. The quake, which would likely have had a magnitude greater than 7.5, rattled along the Seattle Fault Zone, a several-mile-wide fault that runs east-west, from Issaquah to Hood Canal, passing through the stadiums and Alki on its way.
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No, someone hasn’t cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript
Medieval scholar: "Sorry, folks, 'proto-Romance language' is not a thing."
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People Are Clamoring to Buy Old Insulin Pumps
How an obsolete medical device with a security flaw became a must-have for some patients with type 1 diabetes
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NASA Kelly twins study shows harsh effects of space flight and a brutal return to Earth
Scott Kelly says he didn’t feel normal until 8 months after he returned from the International Space Station.
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Weird water phase “ice-VII” can grow as fast as 1,000 miles per hour
Science of fiction: Exotic form of ice could freeze an alien ocean in a few hours.
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The Fertility Doctor’s Secret
Donald Cline must have thought no one would ever know. Then DNA testing came along.
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Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? Scientists Camouflaged Horses to Find Out
If you spend time around horses or flies, you might want to invest in some zebra print.
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One Giant Step for a Chess-Playing Machine
The stunning success of AlphaZero, a deep-learning algorithm, heralds a new age of insight — one that, for humans, may not last long.
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Freshwater is getting saltier, threatening people and wildlife
Road de-icing, industrial activity and other culprits are pushing salt levels in rivers and streams to alarming levels.
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The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert
In the Martian landscape that is the Atacama desert, astrobiologists are learning how to recognize extraterrestrial organisms.
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Killer Tulips Hiding in Plain Sight
Thanks to the compounds used to protect precious flowers, antifungal resistance is here—and it could be just as dangerous to humans as antibiotic resistance.
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Is Science Stagnant? - The Atlantic
Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong?
