Monthly Archives: August 2022

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

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article. In the late 1950s, Ian Burton, then a geographer at the University of Chicago, learned about a troubling conundrum with levees. These expensive and engineering-intensive strategies—which the US Army Corps of Engineers favored for reining in floods along big river floodplains—worked well for holding…

This is what’s keeping electric planes from taking off

Startups are exploring how electric planes could clean up air travel, which accounts for about 3% of worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions. The problem is that today’s electric aircraft could safely carry you and about a dozen fellow passengers only around 30 miles, according to a recent analysis.  The limiting factor is the battery, in particular the…

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

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This is what’s keeping electric planes from taking off What’s happening?: Startups are exploring how electric planes could clean up air travel, which accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. The reductions…

Period and pregnancy tracking apps have bad privacy protections, report finds

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Most popular period and pregnancy tracking apps don’t have strong privacy protections, according to a new analysis from researchers at Mozilla. Leaky privacy policies in health apps are always a problem, but issues that fall into this particular category are especially concerning now that abortion is illegal…