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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Climate
How much does eating meat affect nations’ greenhouse gas emissions?
How much meat eating affects worldwide greenhouse gas emissions comes clear in new country-by-country analyses.
- Health & Medicine
COVID-19 testing in schools works. So why aren’t more doing it?
School COVID-19 testing programs can keep kids in class and safe, but face challenges ranging from deciding on a testing strategy to parental buy-in.
- Humans
Fossils and ancient DNA paint a vibrant picture of human origins
Paleoanthropologists have sketched a rough timeline of how human evolution played out, centering the early action in Africa.
- Science & Society
How science museums reinvented themselves to survive the pandemic
The pandemic forced science museums to reach out to their communities, and some built a wider following.
- Health & Medicine
The surge in U.S. coronavirus cases shows a shift in who’s getting sick
Younger, unvaccinated people are a rising share of COVID-19 cases, raising concerns anew that lack of vaccine access may hit minority populations hard.
- Particle Physics
How matter’s hidden complexity unleashed the power of nuclear physics
In the last century, physicists learned to split atomic nuclei and revealed a complex world of fundamental particles.
- Health & Medicine
How 5 universities tried to handle COVID-19 on campus
U.S. colleges opened in the fall with a patchwork of control measures to keep COVID-19 at bay.
- Physics
Explore every gravitational wave event spotted so far
This interactive visualization reveals the diversity of smashups that generate gravitational waves.
- Science & Society
These 6 graphs show that Black scientists are underrepresented at every level
In the U.S., Black people are underrepresented in STEM fields, both as students and in the workforce.
- Health & Medicine
Coronavirus shutdowns don’t need to be all or nothing
Governments are implementing more targeted restrictions like limiting restaurant capacity to slow a fall surge. Research suggests they could work.
- Animals
Cheap, innovative venom treatments could save tens of thousands of snakebite victims
Momentum is building to finally tackle a neglected health problem that strikes poor, rural communities.
- Health & Medicine
Five big questions about when and how to open schools amid COVID-19
Researchers weigh in on how to get children back into classrooms in a low-risk way.
