BBC Futureflipped into News1 day agoCanada wildfires: Will they change US climate attitudes?verified_publisherBBC Future - Richard FisherIn the 1500s, the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder produced a painting about people's indifference to distant suffering. Called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a copy of the original that's now on display in Brussels shows a farmer ploughing his field in the foreground. It's only when you look …
BBC Futureflipped into News1 day agoAs ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain futureverified_publisherBBC Future - Nicola JonesOff the coast of south-east China, one particular fish species is booming: the oddly named Bombay duck, a long, slim fish with a distinctive, gaping jaw and a texture like jelly. When research ships trawl the seafloor off that coast, they now catch upwards of 440lb (200kg) of the gelatinous fish …
BBC Futureflipped into News2 days agoUkraine: Why the Kakhovka dam breach is so significantverified_publisherBBC Future - Richard FisherWhen dam engineers plan for worst-case scenarios, sabotage is usually not part of their risk assessment. "Normally we don't design dams thinking about war or explosives," says Rafael Moran of the Technical University of Madrid, a professor of civil engineering who specialises in dam protection. …
BBC Futureflipped into News2 days agoHow air pollution sensors can track wildlifeverified_publisherBBC Future - Isabelle GerretsenTracking biodiversity worldwide is incredibly challenging; national monitoring programmes differ widely, the majority of collected data is erratic and little is shared publicly. But scientists may have found a surprising solution: the filters already used around the world to monitor air …
BBC Futureflipped into News3 days agoThe search for Earth's hidden mountainsverified_publisherBBC Future - Zaria GorvettIt was a glaring summer's day in Antarctica. Through frozen eyelashes, Samantha Hansen blinked out at the featureless landscape: a wall of white, where up was the same as down, and ground blended seamlessly into sky. Amid these disorientating conditions, with temperatures of around -62C (-80F), she …
BBC Futureflipped into News4 days agoThe quest for the era of personalised medicineverified_publisherBBC Future - David CoxIn early 2017, a neurologist at Boston Children's Hospital called Timothy Yu began work on the most ambitious project of his life: to design and synthesise an experimental drug for a dying child, within a timeframe of just a few months. Weeks earlier, Yu had been forwarded a desperate plea made on …