Unprecedented January wildfires in Los Angeles signal an emerging pattern of compound climate disasters, as record-breaking Santa Ana winds up to 100 mph combine with the driest start to a winter season in the city’s history. The Palisades and Eaton fires have each burned over 10,000 acres amid drought conditions Read more…
The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta’s decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means “extremely dangerous times” lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users. The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg’s move to relax content moderation on the Facebook Read more…
Communities across the U.S. experienced unprecedented warmth in 2024, with numerous cities breaking temperature records set just a year earlier. Phoenix recorded an average temperature of 90.5F and endured 70 days with highs at or above 110F, surpassing its previous record of 55 days. Major metropolitan areas including Chicago, Nashville, Read more…
Computer scientists are using hypothetical devices called “oracles” to advance the field of computational complexity theory, exploring fundamental questions about problem-solving difficulty. These theoretical tools, which instantly provide correct yes-or-no answers to specific questions, help researchers understand relationships between different classes of computational problems. Oracles have proved particularly valuable in Read more…
A 65-year-old patient in the United States with underlying medical conditions has died from bird flu. According to NBC News, “health officials considered the case to be the “country’s first severe human H5N1 infection.” The Louisiana Department of Health said the patient had been exposed to a combination of a Read more…
Toyota’s Woven City, a $10 billion “living laboratory” on the site of a former car factory, is set to welcome its first 100 residents in fall 2025. The first residents will be Toyota employees and affiliates, but the city aims to expand to include “external inventors and their families.” The Read more…