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Experts assessing U.S. West Coast earthquake readiness say that despite decades of warnings about a potential massive quake, significant gaps remain in infrastructure, building codes, and emergency response systems. Their evaluation points to aging structures, inconsistent retrofitting, and insufficient public preparedness as key vulnerabilities that would be exposed when a major seismic event eventually strikes.
MIT Technology Review's latest coverage highlights two issues: digital child-safety tools that have prevented harms like suicide and predation but also caused false alarms and anxiety, with researchers proposing better alternatives. Separately, the outlet examines how agriculture's reliance on natural gas for fertilizer production has driven price volatility, worsened by the Iran conflict's impact on trade through the Strait of Hormuz.
Rising natural gas prices tied to the Iran conflict have driven up urea prices, which briefly exceeded $850 per metric ton in April—80% above pre-conflict levels and the highest since the Russia-Ukraine war disrupted markets in 2022. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes, has been effectively shut to commercial shipping, threatening supply to some of the world's poorest nations.
A digital edition of the 1911 Roget's Thesaurus was created in 1988 by MICRA Inc., a New Jersey company led by Patrick J. Cassidy, through manual transcription of the original text. The project was part of MICRA's wider work on electronic language resources, which also included digitizing Webster's 1913 Dictionary.
South Africa's government has proposed a law requiring 'practising natural scientists' to register with the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions, covering anyone providing scientific services or advice, whether paid or unpaid. Exceptions apply to educators at recognized institutions and those crafting government science policy, but failure to comply could result in up to a year in prison.
Researchers compiled river chemistry data from basaltic watersheds worldwide to recalculate how much carbon dioxide is naturally absorbed through silicate rock weathering. They found that critical zone processes—such as atmospheric deposition, hydrothermal contamination and secondary mineral formation—reduce the alkalinity that actually reaches rivers, meaning basalt weathering contributes a smaller share of global CO2 drawdown than prior estimates suggested, roughly 0.3% of annual anthropogenic emissions.