Articles with 400-600 Words

Experts estimate that by the year 2050, the world’s population will swell from the current 7.3 billion to over 9.5 billion, with just nine countries accounting for half the growth. If accurate, conventional farming methods, which revolve around growing one or two crops annually, will be unable to sustain the increase in food demand. Now, some Australian scientists may have found a way to cost-effectively accelerate crop yields with a technique called speed breeding, inspired by NASA’s experiments to grow wheat in space....

Though many artists specialize in cityscapes very few create masterpieces as detailed and intricate as those sketched by Stephen Wiltshire. Even more impressive is that each monochromatic landscape, which takes the British artist just a few days to complete, is drawn entirely from memory, a talent that has earned him the nickname “The Human Camera.”...

Experts predict myopia, or nearsightedness, will reach epidemic proportions by the end of the decade, with over a third of the world’s population requiring glasses or contact lenses. However, if a team of Israeli ophthalmologists from Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center has their way, the crisis may be averted with special “nanodrops” created to correct refractive errors responsible for nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), or blurred vision (astigmatism)....

Reports of an out-of-control space station hurtling towards Earth may sound like a bad April Fools’ prank. However, this was no joke. At 5:16 pm PDT on April 1 (April 2, 00:16 GMT), China’s school bus-sized Tiangong-1 met a fiery end over the South Pacific, ending weeks of uncertainty as to when and where it would land....

While April Fools’ Day is always fun, this year promises to be even more so. That’s because, for the first time in 62 years, the fun holiday coincides with Easter. This means your chocolate egg may turn out to be a real one, or the plastic ones you worked so hard to find could be filled with frozen peas or, even worse, broccoli!...

On Saturday, March 24, people across the US and worldwide — from London to Paris to Mauritius to Mumbai — took to the streets to protest for stricter gun laws. The mass demonstrations, which took place under the banner “March For Our Lives,” were instigated by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students to ensure no more innocent lives would be lost to gun violence, like the shooting experienced at the school on February 14....

Don’t be alarmed if your city, town, or neighborhood goes dark from 8:30 - 9:30 PM local time tonight (March 24). The blackout is not due to a sudden electricity outage, but a voluntary gesture to celebrate Earth Hour, which will be observed worldwide and include iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and the Sydney Opera House. The simple action, designed to demonstrate what can be achieved if we all unite to help reverse climate change, is the brainchild of the Australian chapter of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)....

When the ashes from a December 2014 eruption of a submarine volcano created a 400-foot (120-meter) island in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga experts predicted it would last a few months at most. However, over three years later, the land mass, situated between the uninhabited Polynesian islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai, is showing no signs of dissipating. Now, NASA scientists believe it may be around for as long as 30 years!...

Scientists have always known that a majority of the brain’s neurons, specialized cells responsible for transmitting information throughout the body, are formed at the fetal stage. However, after studies on mammals, like rats, showed that neurogenesis continues in the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus area of the brain vital to memory formation, through adulthood, it was assumed the same was true for humans as well. However, scientists from the University of California, San Francisco are challenging this long-held belief with a new study which asserts the human brain stops adding new neurons by age 13....