Emiliano Ponzi For the roughly 90 percent of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice of 2017 is coming soon (at 11:28 a.m. E.S.T. on Thursday, to be precise). And if it wasn’t so dark out, you’d see how happy I am that the year’s longest night is sweeping down over the northern…

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. But in the last three years its economy has collapsed. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times Hunger has gripped the nation for years. Now, it’s killing children. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times The Venezuelan government knows, but…

When eight heads arrived at a shipping warehouse in Detroit, the feds uncovered some unsavory details about the little-known trade in human remains.

https://nyti.ms/2jlglTa

Enlarge / A New Caledonian crow uses a serrated leaf edge to pull grubs out of a hole in a log. Mark Sibley Crows share an interesting set of behaviors with humans: they like to play, and they often use tools . We know that humans play to learn. When toddlers knock over a pile of blocks, they're…

On a Friday in April, Bob Tharp, the mayor of Decatur, Ark., takes me to see what used to be the commercial heart of his town. There isn’t much to look at beyond the husk of a Walmart Express: 12,000 square feet of cinder block painted in different shades of brown. The glass doors are locked, as…

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Wine-Country-fires-first-fatal-hours-12278092.php

Enlarge NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet We've been extremely lucky. The LIGO and VIRGO detectors only operated simultaneously for a few weeks, but they were a remarkably busy few weeks. Today, those behind the joint collaboration announced that they've observed the merger of two neutron…

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/the-art-of-thinking-well.html?_r=0&referer=

Enlarge / Who came up with these names? Welp, it wasn't an AI. 1954 Kem-Glo paletted via Retro Renovation At some point, we've all wondered about the incredibly strange names for paint colors. Research scientist and neural network goofball Janelle Shane took the wondering a step further. Shane…

Cassini Arrives at Saturn Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, after a seven-year voyage. It was the first spacecraft to orbit the ringed planet. Northern Winter Like Earth, Saturn has a tilted axis. Cassini arrived in the depths of northern winter, with Saturn’s rings tipped up and its north pole in…

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/opinion/thoreaus-invisible-neighbors-at-walden.html?_r=0&referer=

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/nyregion/trinity-school-letter-to-parents.html?referer=

https://www.nytimes.com/guides/well/how-to-deal-with-stress?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&smvar=q3eg

https://nyti.ms/2ymF0cl

I n 2013, a flier began making the rounds in Gardendale, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham. On it, a blond white girl wearing a red backpack and knee-high socks peered innocently at a question hanging above her head: “Which path will Gardendale choose?” Beside her was a list of communities in Jefferson…

The smallest electrical motor on the planet, at least according to Guinness World Records , is 200 nanometers. Granted, that's a pretty small motor -- after all, a single strand of human hair is 60,000 nanometers wide -- but that tiny mark is about to be shattered in a big way. advertisement…

A small fleet of net-flinging spacecraft could clear every big piece of space junk out of low-Earth orbit within a dozen years, according to a researcher working on the concept. Each spacecraft, known as an ElectroDynamic Debris Eliminator (EDDE), would capture orbital debris in a net, then drag the…