Jeff Cassman

Death might seem like a pure loss, the disappearance of what makes a living thing distinct from everything else on our planet. But zoom in closer, to the cellular level, and it takes on a different, more nuanced meaning. There is a challenge in simply defining what makes an individual cell alive or dead. Scientists today… Continue reading How Is Cell Death Essential to Life?

November 14, 2024 3 min read Generative AI Is Poised to Worsen the E-Waste Crisis Generative AI could saddle the planet with heaps more hazardous waste By Saima S. Iqbal A server room in a data center. Every time generative artificial intelligence drafts an e-mail or conjures up an image, the planet pays for it.… Continue reading Generative AI Could Generate Millions More Tons of E-Waste by 2030

Alternatively, LUCA may have dined on the chemical waste of other creatures, suggesting that it was already part of a complex ecosystem with other microbes. The analysis can’t provide direct evidence of this possible ancient ecology, since traces of such lineages are long gone. But it’s unlikely that LUCA would have evolved complexity in isolation,… Continue reading All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA.

Attention Is Discovery, visual artist Anna Von Mertens’s thoughtful new exploration of astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt, describes and illuminates Leavitt’s decades-long study of stars, including the groundbreaking system she developed for measuring vast distances within our universe simply by looking at photographic plates. Leavitt studied hundreds of thousands of stars captured on the glass plates… Continue reading This ‘Human Computer’ Created a System for Measuring Vast Distances in Our Universe

Since the first avian influenza outbreaks hit the U.S. early this year, health and agriculture experts have struggled to track the virus’s spotty path as it spreads in dairy cow herds and an unknown number of humans. Infection risk still seems low for most people, but dairy workers and others directly exposed to cows have… Continue reading There’s Bird Flu in California Wastewater. What’s Next?

It’s fair to say that enjoyment of a podcast would be severely limited without the human capacity to create and understand speech. That capacity has often been cited as a defining characteristic of our species, and one that sets us apart in the long history of life on Earth. Yet we know that other species… Continue reading What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?

Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team. Trump has promised he would allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “go wild” on medicines, food, and health. With that, a… Continue reading What Might Happen to Public Health under RFK, Jr.