The time fathers devote to child care every week has tripled over the past 50 years in the United States. The increase in fathers’ involvement in child rearing is even steeper in countries that have expanded paid paternity leave or created incentives for fathers to take leave, such as Germany, Spain, Sweden and Iceland. And a growing body ...Read more

The Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week is the longest-running cable television series in history, filling screens with sharky content every summer since 1988. It causes one of the largest temporary increases in U.S. viewers’ attention to any science or conservation topic.

It’s also the largest stage in marine biology, giving ...Read more

Baby showers. Babymoons. Baby-arrival parties. There are many opportunities to celebrate the 40-week transition to parenthood. Often, these celebrations implicitly assume that pregnancy is cooperative and mutually beneficial to both the parent and the fetus. But this belief obscures a more interesting truth about pregnancy – the mother and ...Read more

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, began sending up fountains of glowing rock and spilling lava from fissures as its first eruption in nearly four decades began on Nov. 27, 2022.

Where does all that lava come from?

We asked Gabi Laske, a geophysicist at the University of California-San Diego who led ...Read more

About two-thirds of Jews today – or about 10 million people – are Ashkenazi, referring to a recent origin from Eastern and Central Europe. They reside mostly in the United States and Israel. Ashkenazi Jews carry a particularly high burden of disease-causing genetic mutations, such as those in the BRCA1 gene associated with an increased ...Read more

At least $25.7 billion in new US clean-energy factories are in the works, thanks in part to the generous subsidies in President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law. Most of these projects — and the jobs that come with them — are in traditionally conservative states.

In Dalton, Georgia, green energy hasn’t been a priority. Its Congressional...Read more

SAN JOSE, California — Twitter and other companies have unveiled plans to chop more than 900 Bay Area jobs in a fresh round of tech and biotech layoffs that could jolt the region’s increasingly wobbly economy.

In recent days, plans for 913 tech and biotech job cuts — including hundreds more at Twitter — have been revealed in official ...Read more

I’m a huge fan of helicopters.

If there’s a helicopter flying where I can see it, I usually stop and watch it.

As a kid, one of my favorite Christmas presents was called the Vertibird, which was a toy helicopter with a real set of blades that turned. The chopper was attached with a long cable to a base with a motor. The Vertibird flew in a...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — It was the morning of Jan. 22 when the fears of Florida wildlife biologists became reality.

Reports of a highly infectious new bird flu strain had been confirmed a month prior in Canada, the launching pad for several migratory bird species that make their way to Florida. Biologists had been watching with anxious anticipation as ...Read more

Tropical cyclones have been growing stronger worldwide over the past 30 years, and not just the big ones that you hear about. Our new research finds that weak tropical cyclones have gotten at least 15% more intense in ocean basins where they occur around the world.

That means storms that might have caused minimal damage a few decades ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The Biden administration has announced a plan to provide $250 million to accelerate environmental projects around the shrinking Salton Sea, helping to revitalize its ecosystems and control hazardous dust in a deal that will clear the way for California to take less water from the drought-ravaged Colorado River.

Leaders of the ...Read more

As the world parses what was achieved at the U.N. climate change conference in Egypt, negotiators are convening in Montreal to set goals for curbing Earth’s other crisis: loss of living species.

Starting on Dec. 7, 2022, 196 nations that have ratified the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity will hold their 15th Conference of the...Read more

“Future chips may be 10 times faster, all thanks to graphene”; “Graphene may be used in COVID-19 detection”; and “Graphene allows batteries to charge 5x faster” – those are just a handful of recent dramatic headlines lauding the possibilities of graphene. Graphene is an incredibly light, strong and durable material made of a ...Read more

A 70-foot shrimp boat — once docked in the town of Port Royal — has joined New York City subway cars and other unusual materials that make up a man-made reef off of South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island, where black sea bass, grouper and barracuda and other fish hang out.

On Oct. 25, the Palmetto Pride, a shrimp boat with Beaufort-based Sea...Read more

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef is once again at risk of being categorized as endangered, after the United Nations reported ongoing threats to the natural wonder including pollution and climate-fueled bleaching.

A monitoring mission sent to Queensland in March to study the dangers to the Great Barrier Reef found ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It’s that time of year again: White sharks, just like snowbirds, have started heading south for the weather. They’re turning toward Florida’s waters after spending the summer off Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, hunting seals and tuna.

Several sharks have begun pinging off South Florida, as part of a tagging study by ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA officials said the Orion spacecraft traveled to its farthest distance from Earth on Monday, two days after breaking a record set by Apollo 13.

On Saturday, Orion, which launched atop the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16, surpassed the previous record of 248,655 miles from the planet, which ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA officials said the Orion spacecraft is approaching its farthest distance from Earth on Monday, two days after breaking a record set by Apollo 13.

On Saturday, Orion, which launched atop the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16, surpassed the previous record of 248,655 miles from the planet, ...Read more

If you look back at the history of Atlantic hurricanes since the late 1800s, it might seem hurricane frequency is on the rise.

The year 2020 had the most tropical cyclones in the Atlantic, with 31, and 2021 had the third-highest, after 2005. The past decade saw five of the six most destructive Atlantic hurricanes in modern history....Read more