Weather forecasting is a powerful tool. During hurricane season, for instance, meteorologists create computer simulations to forecast[1] how these destructive storms form and where they might travel, which helps prevent damage to coastal communities. When you’re trying to forecast space weather, rather than storms on Earth, creating these...
3-legged lizards can thrive against all odds, challenging assumptions about how evolution works in the wild
We are lizard[1] biologists[2], and to do our work we need to catch lizards – never an easy task with such fast, agile creatures.
Years ago, one of us was in the Bahamas chasing a typically uncooperative lizard across dense and narrow branches, frustrated that its nimble agility was thwarting efforts to catch it. Only when finally...
Why are elements like radium dangerous? A chemist explains radioactivity and its health effects
Curious Kids[1] is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [2]. “What is radium and why is it dangerous?” – Aurora, 10, Laredo, Texas The element radium can be found in extremely tiny amounts in the Earth’s crust and oceans, and in
... Our engineering team is making versatile, tiny sensors from the Nobel-winning ‘metal-organic frameworks’
When the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[1] honored Omar Yaghi – the “father of metal-organic frameworks,” or MOFs – along with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson, it celebrated more than the creation of a new class of crystalline materials. It recognized a revolution quietly reshaping how scientists capture, store and sense molecules....