On a late fall morning, Joseph Alexiou fastened his life jacket and stepped into an eight-foot fiberglass boat floating on the Gowanus Canal. A licensed New York City tour guide, and an amateur historian, Alexiou was preparing to take a passenger on an unsanctioned tour of the waterway he’d spent three years researching for his […]

The next generation of dating algorithms will use real-life interactions.

In the fight against insects, plants have evolved an arsenal of ingenious chemical defenses.

Burgers and fries have nearly killed our ancestral microbiome.

“Mother Nature can be a handful when she wants to be,” says John Conkling, the former technical director of the American Pyrotechnics Association and a professor emeritus of chemistry at Washington College. Except he used a stronger, more colorful word than “handful.” When it comes to fireworks, “she just doesn’t want to give you that […]

High-speed cameras capture how bouncing rain spreads crop disease.