Louise Glück was photographed outside her home in Cambridge, Mass., after being named the 2020 Nobel laureate in literature.
Daniel Ebersole/Nobel Prize Outreach
As the climate warms, devastating fires are increasingly likely. The 2020 fires pushed the Southern Rockies beyond the historical average. Is there hope for the Northern Rockies?
A health service on its knees.
Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images
Hospitals have been destroyed, and doctors and health care staff killed. Gaza’s health services may take years to recover, warns a Palestinian health specialist.
Israeli tanks gather near the border with the Gaza Strip on Oct. 13, 2023.
Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
The US response to 9/11 included a declaration that America would destroy its enemies. The effort took decades, and thousands of lives on both sides, and never really succeeded.
An Osage delegation with President Calvin Coolidge at the White House on Jan. 20, 1924.
Bettman via Getty Images
The Osage murders of the 1920s are just one episode in nearly two centuries of stealing land and resources from Native Americans. Much of this theft was guided and sanctioned by federal law.
Cable locks can help prevent against accidental shootings.
Rookman / Getty Images
A scholar of the laws of war explores the complex issues raised by Israeli bombing of Gaza in retaliation for the slaughter of its citizens.
Family and friends of those taken hostage by Hamas during an attack on Israel react during a press conference on Oct. 13, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Avner Cohen, Middlebury Institute of International Studies
Israel’s foundational social contract – that the government would keep Israelis safe – was severed with the deadly attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
People in Tel Aviv on Oct. 12, 2023, light candles in memory of civilians and soldiers killed, as well as hostages taken, by Hamas.
Amir Levy/Getty Images
Israel’s war with Hamas is unlike anything Israelis have seen before in some important ways, writes an Israeli filmmaker. But in other ways, it is reminiscent of the distant and not so long ago past.
Itching, and the subsequent urge to scratch, can make eczema worse.
Kinga Krzeminska/Moment via Getty Images
Itch-sensing neurons in your skin are intertwined with your immune cells. Counterintuitively, the molecule that connects them triggers responses that both worsen and improve skin conditions.
Smoke can get in around windows and doors.
AP Photo/Reed Saxon
Wildfire smoke, even from fires far away, carries potentially harmful gases that, once inside, tend to stick around. An air quality specialist offers an easy, cheap, effective way to deal with it.
The Russian economy: A Potemkin village?
Getty Images
A new study traces how Russia’s empire building, especially in Ukraine, resulted in long-term economic damage and fomented rebellion for over a century.
Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system launches interceptor missiles to shoot down incoming missiles and rockets.
Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images
If Israel’s Iron Dome is the best air defense system in the world, how did so many Hamas missiles get through? An aerospace engineer explains it’s a game of numbers.
The power of putting basic elements in just the right order is key to both Jewish mysticism and computer coding.
WhataWin/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Advanced artificial intelligence is new, but a similar idea has been around for hundreds of years: the power of a just-right sequence of numbers, letters or elements to animate matter.
Resistance training can take many forms and can be individualized to suit a person’s needs as they age.
Jamie Grill/Tetra Images via Getty Images
Many people in Gaza are reliant on the United Nations and other international aid groups to meet their basic needs, like food and medical care. A scholar of peace and conflict economics explains why.
Israeli soldiers ride on a transport vehicle near Re'im, Israel, on Oct. 10, 2023.
Marcus Yam/ Los Angeles Times
Liam Collins, United States Military Academy West Point
A special forces officer explains why an overreliance on intelligence is a recipe for disaster.
A registered nurse treats Dominic Rodriguez for a skin injury related to xylazine use in Philadelphia in May 2023. Treatment vans are allowed in the city, but not supervised injection sites.
Matt Rourke/AP Photo
Horseshoe crabs play a unique role in medicine, but they’re also ecologically important in their home waters along the Atlantic coast. Can regulators balance the needs of humans and nature?
The El Niño pattern stands out in the warm sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacific in 2023.
NOAA Climate.gov
Newly approved and updated vaccines are the best tools available to combat COVID-19, the flu and RSV, as infections and hospitalizations tick upward and cold and flu season gets underway.
Chicana artist Yolanda Lopez’s artwork: ‘Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe.’
Yolanda Lopez
Controlled experiments are impossible in astronomy, as are direct measurements of physical properties of objects outside our solar system. So how do astronomers know so much about them?