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The Download: transphobic panic, and the US-China chip war

When Jay told his mom he was bisexual at 14, she was supportive. But when he came out as transgender a few years later, she pushed back. YouTube videos and online forums... Read more »

How the idea of a “transgender contagion” went viral—and caused untold harm

The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. But it arrived at exactly the time people with bad intentions were looking for science to buoy their opinions. The results were in... Read more »

Inside the software that will become the next battle front in US-China chip war

EDA software is a small but mighty part of the semiconductor supply chain, and it’s mostly controlled by three Western companies. That gives the US a powerful point of leverage, similar to... Read more »

Tiny caps can measure activity in lab-grown minibrains

Until now, scientists haven’t been able to study brain organoids beyond just a few cells. While the organoids are spherical, the conventional tools to study them—microelectrode array plates, which contain electrodes to... Read more »

The Download: electric planes, and trans men’s fertility

Scientists have known for years that light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife. In people, increased exposure to light at night disrupts sleep cycles and has been linked... Read more »

This is what’s keeping electric planes from taking off

The company plans to start in niche markets—like hopping across fjords in Scandinavia. These routes are difficult to replace with ground transport, and in some countries, like Norway, they could be subsidized... Read more »

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies

A global view of Earth assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite.NASA Specifications in the current proposal provide a starting point for planning, including a color temperature... Read more »

Why we can no longer afford to ignore the case for climate adaptation

As a professional field, climate change adaptation remained neglected, misunderstood, and small through the early 2000s, when Lara Hansen, an ecotoxicologist by training, began working on the subject for the World Wildlife... Read more »

A three-parent technique could help trans men have babies

That could be avoided if, instead of using hormones to stimulate the person’s ovaries to release mature eggs, doctors could remove pieces of the ovaries themselves, and somehow obtain mature eggs in... Read more »

Hackers linked to China have been targeting human rights groups for years

The hackers, known as RedAlpha, have taken aim at organizations including Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, Radio Free Asia, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and other think tanks... Read more »