In the wake of the damaging Alberta fires, there has been a lot of attention paid to what role climate change plays in wildfires. Yet 2016 is also a powerful El Niño year, which has created ideal conditions for the extraordinary fires in Alberta.

So what climate phenomena could have led to the persistent warm, dry conditions and the extreme...

Was May 2016 the month that faith in print newspapers finally died?

On May 6, The New Day, a tabloid print-only newspaper launched by publisher Trinity Mirror in the U.K., shut down. The paper was the first new national daily newspaper in the U.K. for 30 years. It closed after just nine weeks.

The...

Big data offers us a window on the world. But large and easily available datasets may not show us the world we live in. For instance, epidemiological models of the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa using big data consistently overestimated the risk of the disease’s spread...

Among the millions of people enslaved in the United States before 1865, hundreds of thousands attempted to flee from those who held them in bondage.

Some left temporarily to protest...

There’s a lot of stuff you’d expect to find in baby formula: proteins, carbs, vitamins, essential minerals. But parents probably wouldn’t anticipate finding extremely small, needle-like particles. Yet this is exactly what a team of scientists here at Arizona State...

On April 17, Pennsylvania became the latest state to pass medical marijuana legislation, which will take effect this month. And recently Ohio’s House of Representatives has passed a plan to permit medical marijuana in the state.

Research suggests that marijuana – or more specifially compounds in marjuana – may have potential as a...

So-called “nudge units” are popping up in governments all around the world.

The best-known examples include the U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team, created in 2010, and the White House-based Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, introduced by the Obama administration in 2014. Their mission is to leverage findings from behavioral...

The amount of water vapor in the air – humidity – profoundly alters our experience of the environment around us. A hot, dry morning in the desert of California feels miles apart from a hot, sticky one in the Cambodian jungle.

People generally dislike hot and humid...

“Brazil’s young democracy is being subjected to a coup,” said Dilma Rousseff after the Senate on May 12 voted 55 to 22 to remove her as president and move forward with impeachment.

Is this really a coup, as Rousseff and her supporters believe? Coups usually entail the violent overthrow of a government or a trampling of...

President Barack Obama spared almost no one in his last performance at this year’s White House correspondents' dinner. He laughed along with the crowd as he skewered a host of celebrities and politicians.

But long after that lighthearted evening is forgotten, I believe the president and other progressives will continue to share bemused...