Science

"What you need to know about toxic “forever chemicals” the EPA is restricting" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Europe endured a record number of "extreme heat stress" days in 2023, two leading climate monitors said Monday, underscoring the threat of increasingly deadly summers across the continent.

In a year of contrasting extremes, Europe witnessed scorching heatwaves but also catastrophic flooding, withering droughts, violent storms and its largest wildfire.

Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an AI-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed.

China manufactures around 70 percent of the world's sex toys, most of it the "hardware" on display at the fair -- whether that be technicolour tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalised silicone dolls.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday classified two so-called "forever chemicals" as hazardous substances, meaning those responsible for releasing them will have to pay to clean up contamination.

The two chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), are the most studied and most widely detected among the "forever chemicals" known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).

The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unravelling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms.

It’s long been suspected that some of these ingredients may have been delivered from space. Now a new study, published in Science Advances, shows that a special group of molecules, known as peptides, can form more easily under the conditions of space than those found on Earth. That means they could have been delivered to the early Earth by meteorites or comets – and that life may be able to form elsewhere, too.

Modern physics suggests time may be an illusion. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, suggests the universe is a static, four-dimensional block that contains all of space and time simultaneously – with no special “now”.

What’s the future to one observer, is the past to another. That means time doesn’t flow from past to future, as we experience it.

Many people around the world make and eat fermented foods. Millions in Korea alone make kimchi. The cultural heritage of these picklers shape not only what they eat every time they crack open a jar but also something much, much smaller: their microbiomes.

On the microbial scale, we are what we eat in very real ways. Your body is teeming with trillions of microbes. These complex ecosystems exist on your skin, inside your mouth and in your gut. They are particularly influenced by your surrounding environment, especially the food you eat. Just like any other ecosystem, your gut microbiome requires diversity to be healthy.

The deadly heatwave that hit Africa's Sahel region in early April would not have occurred without "human-induced" climate change, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group published Thursday.

The West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced an exceptional heatwave from April 1 until April 5, with soaring temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius triggering a large number of deaths.

Human history was forever changed with the discovery of antibiotics in 1928. Infectious diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and sepsis were widespread and lethal until penicillin made them treatable. Surgical procedures that once came with a high risk of infection became safer and more routine. Antibiotics marked a triumphant moment in science that transformed medical practice and saved countless lives.

But antibiotics have an inherent caveat: When overused, bacteria can evolve resistance to these drugs. The World Health Organization estimated that these superbugs caused 1.27 million deaths around the world in 2019 and will likely become an increasing threat to global public health in the coming years.