Science & Environment

Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist who proposed that cities should grow food in high-rises, popularizing the term “vertical farming” — an idea that crossed over from the realm of the purely fanciful to become a reality around the globe — died on Feb. 7 in Manhattan. He was 84. His wife, Marlene Bloom, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He lived …

Astronomers on Tuesday said that the asteroid designated 2024 YR4 had become the most likely sizable space rock ever forecast to impact planet Earth. The object, first detected in December, is 130 to 300 feet long and expected to make a very close pass of the planet in 2032. Its odds of impacting Earth on Dec. 22 of that year …

The Trump administration on Tuesday cut more than 10 percent of the work force at the National Science Foundation, an independent agency that supports cutting-edge scientific research, adding to the widespread purge of federal workers with probationary status that began last week. Michael England, a spokesman for the foundation, said in a statement that the agency fired 168 probationary employees, …

Numerous programs aimed at averting violence, instability and extremism worsened by global warming are ensnared in the effort to dismantle the main American aid agency, U.S.A.I.D. One such project helped communities manage water stations in Niger, a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups where conflicts over scarce water are common. Another helped repair water-treatment plants in the strategic port city of …

Scientists have long struggled to understand how human language evolved. Words and sentences don’t leave fossils behind for paleontologists to dig up. A genetic study published on Tuesday offers an important new clue. Researchers found that, between 250,000 and 500,000 years ago, a gene known as NOVA1 underwent a profound evolutionary change in our ancestors. When the scientists put the …

The notices came all weekend, landing in the inboxes of federal scientists, doctors and public health professionals: Your work is no longer needed. At the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, …

Louis Pasteur was at his most comfortable when working in his Paris laboratory. It was there that he had some of his greatest scientific triumphs, including experiments that helped confirm germs can cause disease. “Everything gets complicated away from the laboratory,” he once complained to a friend. But in 1860, years before he became famous for developing vaccines and heating …

Navin Singh Khadka Environment Correspondent, BBC World Service Getty Images Trump has said the US’s oil and gas will be sold all over the world The UN climate summit in the United Arab Emirates in 2023 ended with a call to “transition away from fossil fuels”. It was applauded as a historic milestone in global climate action. Barely a year …

At the annual gathering in Boston this week of one of America’s oldest scientific societies, the discussions touched on threats to humankind: runaway artificial intelligence, toxic “forever chemicals,” the eventual end of the universe. But the most urgent threats for many scientists were the ones aimed at them, as the Trump administration slashes the federal scientific work force and cuts …

By any measure, the diabetes drug Ozempic has been a blockbuster, racking up billions of dollars in annual sales. In the United States alone, pharmacies fill millions of prescriptions for Ozempic and related drugs, which have become popular for their weight-loss effects, every month. But in the beginning, before the celebrity endorsements and the think pieces and the global supply …