Latest posts
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What Organoids Can Model and Where They Fall Short
Stem cells can be coaxed into structures that resemble parts of organs. They reproduce some behaviour faithfully and lack the context that makes a whole organ work.
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What Ocean Circulation Does and Why It Is Watched Closely
Ocean currents move heat, carbon and nutrients around the planet on timescales of centuries. Measuring whether that circulation is changing is difficult and the answers matter a great deal.
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How Exoplanet Atmospheres Are Actually Measured
Exoplanets are too distant to image directly in most cases. Their atmospheres are inferred from tiny changes in starlight, which sets strict limits on what can be known.
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What Precision Oncology Can and Cannot Yet Do
Matching treatment to the genetic profile of a tumour has delivered real successes and a large number of disappointments. The gap between the two is the interesting part.
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Why Weather Forecasts Get Better and Still Have Limits
Forecast skill has improved substantially over decades, but there is a hard horizon beyond which specific weather cannot be predicted. Knowing where that horizon is explains a lot about forecast behaviour.
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Why Thawing Permafrost Is a Feedback, Not Just a Symptom
Permafrost is ground that has stayed frozen for years or longer. It stores a large quantity of carbon, and thawing changes both what it releases and how the land behaves.
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What Nanomedicine Has Delivered and What Still Blocks It
Delivering a drug to a specific place in the body sounds like a solved problem. In practice, nanoparticles get most of the way there and then meet the body’s clearance systems.
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How Gene-Edited Crops Differ From Earlier Modified Ones
Editing lets breeders change a plant’s own genes rather than add genes from elsewhere. That distinction matters scientifically and has reshaped how some countries regulate these crops.
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Why Concrete Is a Larger Climate Problem Than It Looks
Concrete is the most used manufactured material on Earth, and its binder is made by heating limestone. Most of its emissions come from chemistry, not from burning fuel.
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What Desalination Costs Beyond the Energy Bill
Desalination turns seawater into fresh water reliably, and its energy cost has fallen substantially. Its remaining problems are what happens to the concentrate and what the intake does to marine life.