Wildfires aren’t just tearing through larger swaths of the American West. They’re spreading more quickly, too. A team of researchers looked at NASA satellite data on 60,000 wildfires in the contiguous United States between 2001 and 2020. After classifying each blaze by the most it grew in a single day, …
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As soon as you put starch in your mouth — whether in the form of a dumpling, a forkful of mashed potatoes or a saltine — you start breaking it down with an enzyme in your saliva. That enzyme, known as amylase, was critically important for the evolution of our …
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The ocean is filled with microscopic creatures that thrive in the sunshine. These bacteria and plankton periodically clump up with detritus, like waste produced by fish, and then drift softly downward, transforming into what scientists call marine snow. In the inky depths of the ocean that the sun can’t reach, …
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