Author: MOST. JESMIN AKTER

Prepare for intense heat, drought and some flooding — it’s officially El Niño season, the National Weather Service announced Thursday.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.This El Niño event could be on par with some of the strongest documented in the past, according to models from the NWS.“There is a 63% chance that we’re looking at a very strong El Niño during the November to January time period that could rank amongst the largest El Niño events in the historical record,” Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist for the NWS in Los Angeles, said…

When NASA’s Artemis III mission launches next year, the crew won’t include any women — a revelation that sparked controversy after the agency on Tuesday announced the four astronauts selected for the flight.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“Not a single woman flying on Artemis III is an insane choice,” Alexandra Doten, a space influencer who goes by Astro Alexandra, posted said Tuesday on X.NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attempted to address these criticisms head-on Wednesday.“I have seen reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage,” he said in a statement.Isaacman said that some astronauts may…

NASA on Tuesday named the four astronauts it plans to send on the Artemis III mission, the next major step in its return-to-the-moon program. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas are expected to launch into Earth orbit next year, with the goal of testing out two commercially built lunar landers being developed to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2028. Bresnik will be the mission’s commander, with Parmitano, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, serving as the pilot.…

The United States spent more than half a century and hundreds of millions of dollars driving the flesh-eating New World screwworm as far from its borders as possible. Now, it’s back.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The species can eat the tissue of any warm-blooded animal, but it’s a particular threat to livestock and is often fatal for cattle. Some environmentally minded bioethicists have openly debated whether it would be moral to deliberately drive the screwworm into extinction.“There are some species that it’s worth considering wiping out altogether and I do think…

How did Freese do it? By scraping his way through the college and professional ranks and continuing to improve, channeling the same energy he had as a young boy leaping onto his bed. “I just continue to remind myself,” Freese told NBC News, “I’m always a student of the game.”Being a student happens to run in the family. Matt’s paternal grandparents, Ernst and Elisabeth Freese, were German scientists who immigrated to the U.S. after World War II and ended up working for the National Institutes of Health. Ernst was a renowned molecular biologist who studied DNA mutations, the link between…

There’s a new type of Lyme disease in New York state.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Almost all cases of the tick-borne illness in the United States are caused by corkscrew-shaped bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. But B. burgdorferi is actually one of two Lyme disease-causing species in the U.S. The other, Borrelia mayonii, is far more rare. Until now, it has only ever been detected in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Both types of bacteria are spread by deer ticks. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Thursday, a case…

Your brain is capable of learning to multitask without your realizing it, according to a new study. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.It has long been thought that using your brain to work simultaneously on multiple things was impossible. That’s because problem-solving, logical planning and abstract thinking are all carried out by a key region of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex, which is notoriously inflexible.“It’s made to do one thing at a time, which is often a good thing,” said Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University…

Meanwhile, Colorado just finished the period of unlimited fishing on the Antero Reservoir, where about 5 million sportfish — mostly trout — had been stocked since 2020. Typically, the daily trout limit there is four.The reservoir, which is operated by Denver Water, is being drawn down for the summer, to redirect water to another reservoir where less will be lost to evaporation. The Antero Reservoir has the highest rate of evaporation in the utility’s system because it’s shallow and broad. Denver Water said it will save the equivalent of 2,500 Olympic swimming pools by moving water out of the reservoir.“The…

Hurricane season in the Atlantic kicked off Monday, and, for the first time in more than a decade, forecasters expect it to be relatively slow.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The below-average forecast is driven by the expectation that a strong El Niño pattern will develop, which is associated with less hurricane formation in the Atlantic. The opposite is true in the Pacific, however, which should have an active season.Most hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. form in the Atlantic, where forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predict the…

LONDON — Dismissed as a natural phenomenon for more than a century, red stripes on a rock in Wales have been found to be the oldest known prehistoric art in Britain and northwestern Europe — created by human fingers 17,100 years ago, according to new research. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.An international team of scientists revisited Bacon Hole, a cave near Mumbles in South Wales, to re-examine the series of red-pigmented horizontal stripes on a panel first discovered there in 1912. The markings were initially identified as prehistoric art in…