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Representative Image of dry environmental conditions affecting mosquito numbers and public health (AI-generated image) Mosquitoes have all but vanished from parts of the United States this summer, and residents in states like Minnesota say they cannot remember a season this quiet. A historic drought sweeping through the West and Midwest has cut mosquito populations by…

Areas once linked to the old city dump were transformed with trees, shrubs and grasses. (Boston preservationa alliance photo) When Boston began work on the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, better known as the Big Dig, in 1991, it was taking on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the city’s history. The project was planned to…

When it comes to solar panels, they are usually spread across rooftops or open fields where they serve more purposes than just providing energy. But near Chandrasan village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, a roughly 2,460-foot ribbon of panels sits above moving irrigation water, turning an existing canal into both a power site…

Honeybees can be trained with nothing more than the promise of a sugary reward; they learn to pick out a specific face and keep picking it out later, even when it appears from a slightly different angle or sits among faces they have never encountered before. It is a strange and slightly humbling discovery, not…

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System, only slightly larger than Earth’s Moon, but what lies beneath its battered surface is anything but small. Its metallic core stretches out to nearly 85 per cent of the planet’s total radius, leaving behind a rocky shell so thin it barely qualifies as a shell at…

Quote of the day by Melinda French Gates Growth rarely feels comfortable while it is actually happening. Learning something new, taking on more responsibility, or simply stepping into an unfamiliar situation tends to bring real uncertainty along with it. Melinda French Gates put a name to that discomfort directly. “When something’s uncomfortable, it means you’re…

For generations, women along Japan’s Ise-Shima coastline have entered the sea without scuba equipment or oxygen tanks to gather seafood from the seabed. Known as Ama, or ‘women of the sea’, these traditional free divers rely on breath-holding, years of experience and an intimate knowledge of the ocean. Some have continued the demanding work well…

Fresh gun attack in Thailand days after mass shooting A local government official was hospitalised after being shot at a government office in Nonthaburi, on the outskirts of Thailand’s capital, on Monday, officials said.A gunman was arrested following the incident, which came days after a teenager’s deadly shooting rampage at a school in the same…

Croatia was still dealing with the hidden legacy of the Balkan wars when scientists began looking to an unlikely ally: honeybees. Years after mines had been buried across fields, forests and rural land, uncertainty over their locations continued to complicate farming, development and everyday life. Traditional mine-clearance teams faced the difficult task of finding explosives…

A large coprolite of a carnivorous dinosaur found in Harding County, South Dakota, US. Image Credit: Poozeum/Wikipedia Around 540 million years ago, the biological landscape of Earth went through a huge transformation called the Cambrian explosion. During this era, the ancestors of most modern animal groups began to appear, depicting a massive surge in biodiversity….