Southeast Asian cities were among five most polluted in the world on Friday according to air-monitoring organization IQAir, with Ho Chi Minh City ranked second-most polluted, followed by Phnom Penh and Bangkok fourth and fifth, respectively. In the Thai capital, a thick smog was seen covering the city's skyline. Workers,… Read
The decision by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to end its fact-checking program and otherwise reduce content moderation raises the question of what content on those social media platforms will look like going forward. One worrisome possibility is that the change could open the floodgates to more… Read
President Donald Trump will once again withdraw the United States from the Paris climate deal, the White House said on Monday, removing the world's biggest historic emitter from global efforts to fight climate change for the second time in a decade. The decision would place the United States alongside Iran,… Read
Modern scrub mints, delicate flowering plants that grow mostly in Florida, likely result from ancient hybridization, according to a recent study I published with colleagues. Scrub mints are a clade – a group of organisms that share a common ancestor. They grow exclusively on the North American coastal plain. Many… Read
More than one-third of all animals on Earth, from beetles to cows to elephants, depend on plant-based diets. Plants are a low-calorie food source, so it can be challenging for animals to consume enough energy to meet their needs. Now climate change is reducing the nutritional value of some foods… Read
A material that’s been around since people built shelters – wood – is increasingly being proposed for low- and mid-rise buildings. Companies behind these “mass timber” projects say that wood is a lower-carbon alternative to steel or concrete and brings other benefits, such as faster construction time and lower cost… Read
Fast fashion is everywhere – in just about every mall, in the feeds of influencers on social media promoting overconsumption, and in ads constantly popping up online. Its focus on the continual production of new clothing is marked by speedy fashion cycles that give it its name. Fast fashion is… Read
Clouds form when water vapor – an invisible gas in the atmosphere – sticks to tiny floating particles, such as dust, and turns into liquid water droplets or ice crystals. In a newly published study, we show that microplastic particles can have the same effects, producing ice crystals at temperatures… Read
The global aquaculture industry has tripled in size since the year 2000, with producers raising a mind-boggling diversity of species, from seaweeds and clams to carp, salmon and cuttlefish. Many of these creatures are undomesticated and lead complex and highly social lives in the wild. The rapid growth in aquaculture… Read
Atmospheric rivers – those long, narrow bands of water vapor in the sky that bring heavy rain and storms to the U.S. West Coast and many other regions – are shifting toward higher latitudes, and that’s changing weather patterns around the world. The shift is worsening droughts in some regions,… Read