An aerial view of an open pit phosphate mine

Life According to Phosphorus

Phosphorus is essential for fertilizing high-yield agriculture. The US domestic supply, restricted to Florida, is expected to run out in a couple of decades.

Juneberry: A Summer Sweet for People, Pollinators, and Birds

For millennia, Indigenous peoples in North America derived sustenance from the juneberry, known also as the misâskwatômin, serviceberry, shadbush, or saskatoon.
Coco de mer

Coco De Mer: The Magical Derrière of the Sea

Once viewed as a precious item of mysterious origin, the seed of the coco do mer palm, though better understood today, remains a rare and valuable commodity.
A demonstration of Radiovision in Charles Francis Jenkins’ laboratory in Washington, D.C., 1925

Phantoscopes, Radiovision, and the Dawn of TV

After creating a projector called the Phantoscope in 1895, C. Francis Jenkins successfully tackled the problem of transmitting motion pictures through radio.
These fossilized foraminiferan shells, dating back 35 to 45 million years, were found in Tanzania. They all belong to species that are now extinct. The largest are about half a millimeter in diameter.

The History of the Ocean, as Told by Tiny Beautiful Fossils

Bountiful remains of foraminifera reveal how organisms responded to climate disturbances of the past. They can help predict the future, too.
The Pantheon, Rome

One Thousand Years of Domelessness

For more than 900 years, between the fifth century and the Renaissance, Romans didn’t cap their buildings with domes. Why?
Maxine Singer, Norton Zindler, Sydney Brenner and Paul Berg at the Asilomar Conference, February 1975

The Legacy of Asilomar

The 1975 scientific conference laid the ground rules governing the next half century (and counting) of biological research and public scrutiny of it.
A man scrambles up a gully on the Crestone Needle in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado.

How Science Might Help Keep Wild Places Wild

Recreation researchers are studying how to minimize human impact on public lands while maximizing accessibility.
Grace Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960.

Talking with Machines: Computer Programming as Language

The proliferation of different types of computing machines in the 1950s enabled—or perhaps forced—the creation of programming languages.
Fruit of the pong-pong tree (Cerbera odollam)

Cerbera odollam: “The Suicide Tree” That Harms and Heals

Even before The White Lotus, people feared the poisonous pong-pong tree, Cerbera odollam. But there's another way to look at the plant and its effects.