Wind farm slowed blades to save bats, but still found 32 dead
Even when wind farms slow their turbines to spare bats, mortality remains stubbornly high—raising hard questions about whether the fix actually works.
By Ainura Kalau · Sep 23, 2026
Deeper reporting,
thinking made visible.
Longer essays and features from Science Blog. Pieces here go through additional research and review.
Earth & Environment
Cocoa prices nearly tripled as West African drought upended the chocolate supply chain
When two countries control the world's chocolate supply, a bad monsoon becomes a grocery store crisis.
By Kiran Journals · Sep 23, 2026
Wind turbine material promised a sweet second life as gummy bears—what happened next
A viral scientific breakthrough promised to solve wind energy's waste problem—but the gummy bears were never the real goal, and the hype outpaced what the lab could actually deliver.
Sep 23, 2026
Light rain launches more soil bacteria into air than heavy downpours
In controlled single-drop experiments, bubble-driven bacterial aerosols peaked at moderate impact speeds because porous soil trapped air that burst through the spreading raindrop.
Sep 22, 2026
Engineers use a simple pipe to prevent a deadly gas eruption from a Cameroon lake
Engineers use a simple pipe to prevent a lake from releasing the invisible killer that suffocated an entire region in 1986.
By Justin Brown · Sep 22, 2026
Oceanographer tracked 28,800 lost bath toys across two decades of ocean drift
Twenty-eight thousand eight hundred plastic bath toys — yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles and green frogs, made in China…
By Justin Brown · Sep 22, 2026
DNA molecules competed to solve a 100-bit computation in a salt water droplet
A scaffolded DNA computer in a 35-microliter magnesium-buffered droplet used molecular competition to make the low-energy configuration encode the answer to a 100-bit calculation.
Sep 22, 2026
Solar farms for wildlife host nearly three times more birds than adjacent cropland
Solar farms designed for wildlife are harboring nearly three times more birds than the conventional crops they replaced, challenging long-held assumptions about renewable energy and nature.
By Ainura Kalau · Sep 22, 2026
U.S. lands absorb 13% of greenhouse gas emissions, but EPA program measuring it is being shut down
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's most recent full accounting, the 2022 Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, puts total national emissions at 6,343.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Sep 21, 2026