We disinfect water before we drink it. Germicidal ultraviolet could make airborne disease as rare as those carried by water.
Sunscreen for the planet
The world is warming faster than we can cut emissions. Volcanoes are already cooling the planet, with particles that reflect sunlight. Maybe we can too.
How to make an antibody
Antibody therapies are four of the world’s ten best selling drugs. If they were cheaper, they could prevent millions of deaths from rabies, malaria, and dengue.
Why science needs outsiders
Science has forgotten that the greatest breakthroughs often come from outsiders who are able to take a fresh perspective.
Rivers are now battlefields
Chinese dams will hold billions of people downstream to ransom. Could solar-powered desalination make them irrelevant?
Magical systems thinking
Systems thinking promises to give us a toolkit to design complex systems that work from the ground up. It fails because it ignores an important fact: systems fight back.
Liberté, égalité, radioactivité
France built 40 nuclear reactors in a decade. Here’s how they did it, and how the world can follow their lead today.