Science & Environment

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, pledged on Thursday to seek out experts globally to discover the reasons for the increasing rates of autism in the United States. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Mr. Kennedy announced at a cabinet meeting held by President Trump. …

Esme Stallard Climate and science reporter Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images Countries have agreed a global deal to tackle shipping emissions, after nearly ten years of negotiations. The agreement covers the vast majority of the world’s commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines. The deal was nearly derailed after Saudi …

Helen Briggs BBC environment correspondent•@hbriggs Getty Images Starlings are known for their noisy chatter and distinctive swirling flights known as murmurations Fewer starlings are visiting UK gardens, according to the conservation charity, the RSPB. It says its Big Garden Birdwatch, which took place over the last weekend in January, recorded the lowest number of starlings since the survey began in …

On Thursday, researchers unveiled the most precise measurement yet of a neutrino, scaling down the maximum possible mass of the ghostly specks of matter that permeate our universe. The result, published in the journal Science, does not define the exact mass of a neutrino, just its upper limit. But the finding helps bring physicists closer to figuring out just what …

For decades, fishermen sailing off the coast of Taiwan have sometimes discovered fossils in their trawling nets: the bones of elephants, buffalo and other big mammals that lived tens of thousands of years ago, when the sea level was so low that Taiwan was linked to Asia by a land bridge. But in 2010, a Taiwanese paleontologist was presented with …

In the past few days, UK firefighters have been tackling wildfires across the UK. Source link

The emergency department waiting room was jammed, as it always is, with patients sitting for hours, closely packed on hard metal chairs. Only those with conditions so dire they needed immediate care — like a heart attack — got seen immediately. One man had had enough. He pounded on the glass window in front of the receptionist before storming out. …

The Trump administration has cut funding and staffing at the program that oversees the federal government’s premier report on how global warming is affecting the country, raising concerns among scientists that the assessment is now in jeopardy. Congress requires the federal government to produce the report, formally known as the National Climate Assessment, every four years. It analyzes the effects …

The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk has entered a new arena: satellite internet. Amazon, the company that Mr. Bezos started as an online bookseller three decades ago, is now a merchandising behemoth, the owner of the James Bond franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets like Echo smart speakers and one of the most powerful …

Xavier Le Pichon, a French geophysicist whose pioneering model of the earth’s tectonic plates helped revolutionize how scientists understand movements of the earth’s crust, died on March 22 at his home in Sisteron, in the south of France. He was 87. His death was announced in a statement by the Collège de France, France’s highest educational institution, where Dr. Le …