Traffic Is Way Down Because Of Lockdown, But Air Pollution? Not So Much

Car traffic took a big dip beginning in late March, and headlines celebrated clean air around the U.S. But an NPR analysis of EPA data tells a more troubling story.

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The Closest Black Hole Is 1,000 Light-Years Away

An unseen object—probably a black hole—orbits with two normal stars in our cosmic neighborhood.

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Scientists Are Cloning the Coronavirus Like Crazy. Here's Why—and the Risks

In biology, the “dual-use” problem means that the techniques used to pursue legitimate research are the same as those used to engineer a bioweapon.

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COVID-19 Infection Makes Strong Immunity Against COVID-19 Reinfection

As the drive towards a vaccine against the new coronavirus accelerates, there’s some good news: People with COVID-19 have robust immune responses against the virus, scientists say. The researchers based their conclusions after testing immune T-cell counts in 20 patients who recovered from the infection.

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In A Post-Pandemic World, Renewable Energy Is The Only Way Forward

Changing the world’s energy map is cheap, especially if we factor in the natural disasters and the cost of treating the diseases it causes. If we simply put a price on the viability of the human species as a whole, it’s clear that pivoting to renewable energy is a no-brainer.

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Dust bowl conditions of 1930s US now more than twice as likely to reoccur

Climate breakdown means conditions that wrought devastation across Great Plains could return to region

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Can an artificial intelligence learn to beat the stock market?

On the far side of an office park in a suburb of Seattle, a supercomputer is teaching itself to beat the stock market. The holy grail of high finance doesn’t look like much: eight rows of servers enshrined in a black metal frame. But inside this austere enclosure, an incredible alchemy is taking place. Four hundred computers blink and hum as market data is digested at a rate of one quadrillion calculations per second, firing order requests to electronic traders in Chicago, 2,000 miles away.

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