More from Philip Kiefer

A grassy, open pine forest on a sunny day.
Animals

Underneath Florida pines, gophers are getting weird

By Philip Kiefer

A man on a bicycle wearing a face mask as he passes flowering bushes.
COVID-19

Omicron variants keep getting better at dodging our immune systems

By Philip Kiefer

A green branch. The stem is covered in small, scale-shaped bugs. A wasp is perched above them on a leaf.
Animals

How hungry, stingless wasps became USDA’s weapon of choice to save southern citrus trees

By Philip Kiefer

A silver machine containing boiling grains.
Health

How have non-alcoholic beers gotten so good?

By Philip Kiefer

Emissions from plant and ship streaming into the air.
Climate Change

The Supreme Court’s EPA ruling may spell doom for US climate goals

By Sara Kiley Watson, Philip Kiefer

A night photo of a log with a bobcat in the background.
Animals

Watch bobcats, bears, and even birds use fallen logs as bridges

By Philip Kiefer

Colorful mantis shrimp with giant eyes that have color vision on black background
Animals

Do animals feel pain? Science author Ed Yong says that’s the wrong question.

By Philip Kiefer

A firefighter stands holding a canister of gasoline in a snowy forest looking out over burning piles of underbrush.
Climate Change

Why the US Forest Service paused prescribed burns—a key wildfire prevention tool

By Philip Kiefer

a heat map showing dark red on the city of las vegas and radiating out yellow to bits of green at the edge of the map as you move further from the city
Climate Change

Satellite images of Las Vegas show just how extreme urban heat islands can get

By Philip Kiefer, Lauren J. Young

A small child is having a bandage put on his arm after receiving a shot. A caregiver stands behind him.
COVID-19

Young kids will likely have COVID vaccine access in the next few weeks

By Philip Kiefer

bowls containing wheat flour, eggs, shellfish, peanuts, soybeans, and other common allergens
COVID-19

It’s harder for kids with food allergies to catch COVID

By Philip Kiefer

A line of firefighters dig with hand tools to construct fireline in a forest.
Environment

What it really means for a wildfire to be ‘contained’

By Philip Kiefer

What an ancient jawbone reveals about polar bear evolution
Animals

What an ancient jawbone reveals about polar bear evolution

By Philip Kiefer

Person with short brown hair in a white t-shirt and a COVID surgical mask checking their temperature on a thermometer for COVID rebound infection
COVID-19

What we know about COVID rebound so far

By Philip Kiefer

A microscope image of several SARS-CoV-2 virus particles.
COVID-19

An estimate of how many Americans have died from each COVID variant

By Philip Kiefer

A colorful parrot hooked onto a tree with its beak.
Animals

What’s got two legs and a head for climbing? Rosy-faced lovebirds.

By Philip Kiefer

A line of people queue up in front of a blue tent.
COVID-19

What’s next for China’s zero COVID policy

By Philip Kiefer

A blue and pink microscope slide showing several ovals in animal flesh.
Diseases

Here’s what we know about monkeypox transmission so far

By Philip Kiefer

US Army service members in surgical masks saluting the coffin of a veteran who died of COVID-19
COVID-19

What 1 million COVID deaths looks like from the frontlines

By Philip Kiefer

A chimpanzee sitting with a baby between her leg. Her mouth is open to yell.
Animals

By combining screams, chimps seem to know 400 ‘words’

By Philip Kiefer

A false-color image of Yosemite's half dome
Environment

These laser scans show how fires have changed Yosemite’s forests

By Philip Kiefer

A row of illuminated strings, with glowing orbs in some of them.
Health

The Human Cell Atlas is pinpointing where our bodies break down

By Philip Kiefer

A fire moving across a hillside at night
Climate Change

The American West is primed for a summer of fire

By Philip Kiefer

A hill made of oyster shell
Animals

We have a lot to learn from Indigenous people’s oyster-shucking practices

By Philip Kiefer

People standing on a bridge at sunset while bats fly over.
Animals

Climate change could introduce humans to thousands of new viruses

By Philip Kiefer

A pill bottle on a blue background spilling aspirin tabs.
Diseases

Millions of Americans take aspirin to prevent heart disease—but should they?

By Philip Kiefer

A plume of smoke viewed from above, in a valley of small pine trees.
Climate Change

Early US wildfires signal more spring infernos to come

By Philip Kiefer

Aerial view of a highway interchange with cars congested on one side.
Climate Change

Under a new policy, federal agencies will have to weigh the climate costs of their actions

By Philip Kiefer

N95 Masks laid out on a blue background
COVID-19

Masks can work—even if you’re the only one wearing them

By Philip Kiefer

Try as you might, you can't get the creme to stick to one side of an Oreo.
Physics

What MIT’s new ‘Oreometer’ revealed about twisting Oreos

By Philip Kiefer

Bees hanging onto each other
Animals

Do we still need to save the bees?

By Philip Kiefer

Shifting ancient climates shaped human evolution
Archaeology

Shifting ancient climates shaped human evolution

By Philip Kiefer

Anthropologists are still wrestling with their obligations to the living and dead
Archaeology

Anthropologists are still wrestling with their obligations to the living and dead

By Philip Kiefer

Blue oblong shapes marked with red dots against a background.
Science

What we might learn about embryos and evolution from the most complete human genome map yet

By Philip Kiefer

Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Washington, DC hosting a COVID vaccine booster meeting
COVID-19

The FDA is inching closer to a long-term COVID booster plan

By Philip Kiefer

Hamburger
Agriculture

Why is it so expensive to eat sustainably?

By Philip Kiefer

Fentanyl test trip over blue sample container to prevent overdoses in the opioid crisis
Health

At-home test strips can detect fentanyl—but that’s just the first step to preventing overdoses

By Philip Kiefer

A red ant against a white background
Animals

A killer fungus could help the US South fight back against insatiable ants

By Philip Kiefer

Saturn's ocean moon Enceladus with clear tiger stripes in a blue colorized image from the Cassini space probe
Moons

Here’s why Saturn’s ‘ocean moon’ is constantly spewing liquid into space

By Philip Kiefer

March 2022 wildfires over Texas in a satellite map
Environment

What’s behind the unusual wildfires burning through Texas

By Philip Kiefer

A sunny European plaza with empty tables because of the BA.2 COVID surge
COVID-19

COVID’s coming back in Europe. Are we next?

By Philip Kiefer

A bike path with a yellow stripe covered in water. A bridge is on the horizon.
Climate Change

What a century of rising seas can tell us about the next 30 years

By Philip Kiefer

COVID test samples with tubes and labels for detecting variants like Delta and Omicron
COVID-19

‘Deltacron’ could exist after all

By Philip Kiefer

SARS-CoV-2 or COVID virus infecting human cells in a green and purple microscopy image
COVID-19

A deep dive on the evolution of COVID and its variants

By Philip Kiefer

A mountaintop covered in green grass and surrounded by stone structures with staircases.
Archaeology

The ancient Mexican city of Monte Albán thrived with public works, not kings

By Philip Kiefer

A barge near an oil terminal
Climate Change

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve only covers a fraction of US energy demands

By Philip Kiefer

An orange starfish on a rock.
Animals

Classifying invertebrates is hard. Butts can help.

By Philip Kiefer

A row of suburban houses with a hill behind and an approaching wildfire over the California hills
Climate Change

Don’t blame national forests for America’s massive wildfires

By Philip Kiefer

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva wearing a purple costume, shown in three different poses on the ice during a program at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
Diseases

Kamila Valieva’s ‘doping’ drug probably doesn’t give athletes an edge

By Philip Kiefer

A white car sitting in a parking space being charged from a pole with a cable.
Electric Vehicles

Could swappable EV batteries replace charging stations?

By Philip Kiefer

six raw oysters in a circle around a lemon next to a glass of champagne to be used as aphrodisiacs for sex
Health

Research on aphrodisiacs is kind of unsatisfying

By Philip Kiefer

A man wearing a surgical mask is vaccinated by a healthcare worker wearing gloves.
COVID-19

Just had COVID? Here’s when you should get a booster.

By Philip Kiefer

Winter Storm Landon moving off the Gulf Coast on the night of February 3 on a weather radar satellite image
Environment

Ice, tornadoes, and cracking trees: Why Winter Storm Landon dragged a melee of weather across the US

By Philip Kiefer

A doctor talks to a patient who is sitting on an MRI machine's bed.
Health

Who gets an organ transplant? Waitlist rules are complicated.

By Philip Kiefer

A pile of books to represent scientific journals and COVID preprint studies
COVID-19

‘Preliminary research’ on COVID has been surprisingly solid

By Philip Kiefer

An ash cloud from the 2022 Hunga Tonga explosion over the South Pacific seen from outer space
Environment

How one major disaster can lead to another: a lack of clean drinking water

By Philip Kiefer

A patient sitting on a hospital bed with an IV, with two medical providers wearing protective clothes on either side.
COVID-19

Why the FDA paused monoclonal antibody treatments

By Philip Kiefer

A fossil with a series of diagonal slashes cut into one corner.
Biology

Eating meat may not have been as crucial to human evolution as we thought

By Philip Kiefer

a woman in a hospital bed with a close up on the venous catheter tubes in her hand and arm
Climate Change

The deadly combination behind the surge of ‘superbug’ fungus outbreaks

By Philip Kiefer

A wild sheep with curled horns in front of trees.
Animals

Humans probably didn’t mean to tame sheep and goats

By Philip Kiefer

A bronze helmet shown from the front and the side. It has curving horns coming out of the sides of the head, and a birdlike face.
Archaeology

Horned helmets came from Bronze Age artists, not Vikings

By Philip Kiefer

A doctor in a protective suit taking a nasal swab from a person to test for possible coronavirus infection
COVID-19

What does it mean for Omicron to peak?

By Philip Kiefer

A crab with huge eyes on the front of its face swimming after a shrimp with a big head.
Animals

This 90-million-year-old crab had the eyes of a hunter

By Philip Kiefer

a woman in a face mask and blue protective gloves holds up a black collection apparatus in the air in a densely forested environment. a sloth hangs from a tree nearby
Animals

Airborne animal DNA could help biologists track endangered species

By Philip Kiefer