In one study, he traced the motion of a carnation leaf every few hours over the course of three days, revealing an irregular looping, jagged path. The swoops of cucumber tendrils and the zags of ...

The earliest climate models made specific forecasts about global warming decades before those forecasts could be proved or disproved. And when the observations came in, the models were right. The ...

Dog barking also brings groups together – but it’s not a beautiful sound. It is a much more urgent noise, just like the sounds you make when you are hurt or very pleased. Many smaller animals, like ...

Ship emissions and lightning With engines that are often three stories tall and burn viscous fuel oil, ships traveling into and out of ports emit copious quantities of soot and sulfur particles. The ...

While on the road, you’re probably thinking more about your destination than the pavement you’re driving over. But building roads requires a host of engineering feats, from developing the right ...

If you want to know which way to spin your globe, make the goofy “thumbs-up” sign with your right hand. Imagine your thumb is the Earth’s rotation axis, pointing to the North Pole. Your fingers will ...

The lame-duck period in the U.S. is longer than in other Western democracies, which tend to make the transition over a period of just days. For instance, when the U.K. Labour Party won parliamentary ...

When I first landed an internship as an archives technician at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House-National Historic Site – the D.C. home of the woman who founded Bethune-Cookman University – I didn ...