The new comprehensive World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness has just appeared in Science Advances. Written by a group of distinguished scientists lead by Italian Fabio Falchi, it is a noteworthy accomplishment. The first atlas appeared in 2001, but...

In an age of rapid global population growth, demand for safe, clean water is constantly increasing. In 2010 the United States alone used 355 billion gallons of water per day. Most of the available fresh water on Earth’s surface is found in...

With the appearance of robotic financial advisors, self-driving cars and personal digital assistants come many unresolved problems. We have already experienced market crashes caused by intelligent trading software, accidents caused by self-driving cars and hate speech from...

The history of science is also a history of people resisting new discoveries that conflict with conventional wisdom.

When Galileo promoted Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolves around the sun – counter to church doctrine about the Earth being the...

On June 9, a law allowing patients with terminal illnesses to end their lives with help from a physician came into effect in California, opening conversations about whether human life should be prolonged against the desire to die peacefully and with dignity.

A...

Over the past 15 years, drones have progressed from laboratory demonstrations to widely available toys. Technological improvements have brought ever-smaller components required for flight stabilization and control, as well as significant improvements in battery technology. Capabilities once...

Twenty years ago, no one in the United States could claim a right to “physician aid in dying” (also called “physician-assisted suicide”). Today, more than 52 million Americans can.

On June 9, California became the fifth state to...

For Jude Law, playing the part of early 20th-century novelist Thomas Wolfe is a tall order. Yes, the actor is a half-foot shorter than the literary giant he portrays in the film “Genius,” which tells the story of Wolfe and his contentious, complicated relationship with prominent Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth).

But...

We seriously need to do something about CO2 emissions. Besides shifting to renewable energy sources and increasing energy efficiency, we need to start putting some of the CO2 away before it reaches the atmosphere. Perhaps the impacts of human-induced climate change will be so severe that we might even have to capture CO2 from the air and convert...

There is a well-documented “digital divide” between rural and urban areas when it comes to broadband access. As of 2015, 74 percent of households in urban areas of the U.S. had residential broadband connections, compared with only 64...