This story originally appeared on HuffPost and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.At a high-level event Wednesday at the United Nations climate summit, Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg slammed world leaders for “misleading” the public with insufficient emission-reduction pledges and dove into the growing science that shows governments must act quickly to prevent…

This spring, a mysterious figure by the name of Quantum Bullshit Detector strolled onto the Twitter scene. Posting anonymously, they began to comment on purported breakthroughs in quantum computing—claims that the technology will speed up artificial intelligence algorithms, manage financial risk at banks, and break all encryption. The account preferred to express its opinions with…

Since July, a mysterious vaping-related lung illness has swept the country, sickening more than 2,200 people and killing 48. As the illnesses and deaths proliferated, so too did vaping bans. The city of San Francisco had already banned e-cigarette sales, and by September Massachusetts outlawed all e-cigarettes, followed by prohibitions against vaping products in Michigan,…

This time two years ago, it must have felt as though the long international campaign to eradicate polio—launched in 1988 and decades past its hoped-for end date—was at last nearing its goal. There were only 17 cases of naturally occurring polio in the world in 2017, half the number from the year before and incomprehensibly…

What would I do without internet videos? It's not just viral cat memes but also amazing humans like this guy, Xiao Qiang. In this short clip, the kung fu fighter appears to leap onto a bucket of water several feet off the ground—then bounce off the surface of the water like a trampoline. Whaaaat?It’s an…

Most stadiums are frigid by December. Sitting or standing for hours is hard enough on a nice day, but it can feel like torture when the sky is pelting you with snow, sleet, or rain. You don't generate as much heat when you're stationary, and drinking alcohol exacerbates body heat loss. If only it were…

This past winter, I played the roll of reluctant shut-in. I was recovering from a health calamity which forced me to spend my days working from a sofa in my den. I had never spent so much time inside my home—a 131-year-old, two-and-a-half-bedroom, fourth-floor apartment in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill Historic District. I live here with…

A warehouse in an industrial park about an hour’s drive north of downtown Beijing offers a paradoxical picture of China’s much-hyped, and increasingly controversial, artificial intelligence boom.Inside the building, a handful of squat cylindrical robots scuttle about, following an intricate and invisible pattern. Occasionally, one zips beneath a stack of shelves, raises it gently off…

Reliance Industries, one of India’s largest industrial houses, has acquired a majority stake in NowFloats, an Indian startup that helps businesses and individuals build online presence without any web developing…