This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The oil and gas industry has found itself under a harsh spotlight as concern over climate change increases across the world. Lately, oil and gas majors have responded to the scrutiny with a series of pledges, plans, … Continue reading "On climate change, oil and gas companies have a long way to go"

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can float in the air. In particular, it can linger in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, spreading farther than 6 feet from its source. These indoor public spaces are high risk and should be avoided while the virus is still spreading. But, increasingly, people are returning to those spaces: Bars … Continue reading "Coronavirus is in the air. Here’s how to get it out."

If Joe Biden beats Donald Trump this November and ends up in the Oval Office in January, he’ll quickly face one of the gravest challenges any president has seen in the modern era: Hundreds of thousands of Americans will be dead from Covid-19. Public trust in scientific and government institutions will be depleted. If the … Continue reading "What Biden can do to fix Trump’s Covid-19 mess"

Mushrooms that don’t brown. A treatment for sickle-cell anemia. Driving malaria-carrying mosquitoes to extinction. Resurrecting the woolly mammoth. Editing genes in human embryos to make them less susceptible to HIV. These are just a handful of the possibilities of the versatile gene editing tool known as CRISPR that scientists have explored in the few years … Continue reading "CRISPR has ignited a gene-editing revolution. These Nobel-winning women scientists were the spark."

Researchers at the University of Nevada have reported that a 25-year-old man was reinfected in June with SARS-CoV-2, the virus the causes Covid-19. He joins a handful of other confirmed cases of reinfection in people without immune disorders — in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Ecuador — where researchers have demonstrated that the genetic … Continue reading "You can get reinfected with Covid-19 but may still have immunity. Let’s explain."

Much ink has been spilled over the “replication crisis” in the last decade and a half, including here at Vox. Researchers have discovered, over and over, that lots of findings in fields like psychology, sociology, medicine, and economics don’t hold up when other researchers try to replicate them. This conversation was fueled in part by … Continue reading "Science has been in a “replication crisis” for a decade. Have we learned anything?"

Germany gets a lot of favorable Covid-19 press — and for good reason. Its daily new cases per million people have been persistently lower than any of its Western European neighbors, and its death rate, from the beginning of the outbreak, has been among the lowest in Western Europe: currently 0.15 deaths per million people, … Continue reading "The 4 simple reasons Germany is managing Covid-19 better than its neighbors"

With the US presidential election weeks away, we have the tempting possibility of a viable political solution to the looming climate crisis. If elected, a Biden administration may deliver sweeping climate legislation. But there is no guarantee of what that might ultimately look like or when it will happen. And under the current administration, the … Continue reading "How the 137 million Americans who own stock can force climate action"

Early results from the two leading US Covid-19 vaccine trials are expected in November, in what will likely be a major milestone in the race to end the pandemic. The final leg of the race, however, will be actually getting people vaccinated. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has offered guidance on … Continue reading "States need billions to prepare for Covid-19 vaccines. The federal government isn’t helping."

For the past five months, Melinda Webster has lived on an icebreaker ship frozen in an ice floe near the North Pole. For Webster, a sea ice geophysicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, it was an ideal observatory. She and a team of 14 other scientists set out, as part of the largest polar … Continue reading "Why the record low Arctic sea ice this October is so alarming"