Policymakers rely on models during uncertain times to figure out how their choices could affect the future. Over the pandemic, an ensemble of many COVID-19 models outperformed any one alone.
The lung-on-a-chip can mimic both the physical and mechanical qualities of a human lung.
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University/Flickr
Many microscopy techniques have won Nobel Prizes over the years. Advancements like cryo-ET that allow scientists to see the individual atoms of cells can reveal their biological functions.
Common hazel dispersing pollen in early spring.
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Claire Guinat, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich; Etthel Windels, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Sarah Nadeau, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
After a nose swab tests positive for a virus or bacteria, scientists can use the sample’s genetic sequence to figure out where and when the pathogen emerged and how fast it’s changing.
Advance warning of high pollen levels could help people plan their activities to avoid allergies.
Dobrila Vignjevic/E+ via Getty Images
Scientists are building a pollen forecasting model using meteorology, botany, pollen count numbers and satellite imagery to help people plan ahead.
A November 2020 memorial in Washington, D.C. consisted of thousands of flags, each planted to remember someone who died of COVID-19.
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Record-keepers have a pretty good sense of how many people have died. But figuring out the cause of those deaths is a lot trickier – and that’s why reasonable modelers can disagree.
Halston with the Halstonettes – a group of models who were part of his entourage – at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1980.
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The subject of a new Netflix miniseries, Halston once ruled over New York’s fashion world. But the designer with a devil-may-care approach to his business dealings attempted too much, too quickly.
Electric service trucks line up after a snow storm in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 16, 2021.
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A vaccine that’s 70% effective might not be good enough if too few people are willing to be vaccinated, new research shows.
Nurses and other health care workers in New York mourned colleagues who have died during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
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Why one city suffers significantly more deaths than another isn’t always obvious. A simple experiment shows how failing to consider certain factors can point policy makers in the wrong direction.
Public health authorities rely on models to make decisions but how accurate are they?
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Why is there such a wide difference in projections for how much COVID-19 will spread? An expert in disease modeling explains what models can and cannot do.
An Indonesian island was home to H. Floresiensis – but how did the dwarfed human species evolve?
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We have all the technologies needed to make the electric grid run on renewables and lower pollution. What are they and what are the barriers to adopting them widely?
What factors contribute to some places having many, while other places have few?
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Linguists have a lot of largely untested theories. Borrowing a tool from ecology, researchers built a model that didn’t look for one worldwide explanation.
What goes into all for one and one for all?
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Where do the cooperative skills that hold together human societies come from and why don’t our selfish instincts overwhelm them? Evolutionary game theory suggests that empathy is a crucial contributor.
Images created by NASA with satellite data helped the U.S. Department of Agriculture analyze outbreak patterns for southern pine beetles in Alabama, in spring 2016.
NASA
Big data open-access publishing and other advances offer ecologists the ability to forecast events like pest outbreaks over days and seasons rather than decades. But scholars need to seize this opportunity.
Is this how we got the sperm and the egg?
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We tend to think of archaeological sites as dead silent – empty ruins left by past cultures. But this isn’t how the people who lived in and used these sites would have experienced them.