Stories by Mark Fischetti

San Francisco — Although polar bears and seals have become the poster children for vanishing sea ice in the Arctic, they have thrived for a long time.

San Francisco — The energy released by a lightning bolt is so strong that it creates an intense flash of light and usually loud thunder.

The San Francisco Bay Area is getting flooded with relentless rain and strong winds, just like it did a week ago, and fears of rising water are now becoming very serious

Teens stay up late at night and sleep late into the morning, a result of a natural shift in their circadian rhythms. That biological schedule puts them at odds with the adult world, as well as early start times for high school.

World population will hit nearly 11 billion by 2100

The chemicals attack taste buds while the brain associates nausea with eating
 

From baseball to billiards, robots are improving their play, even competing in the RoboCup and RoboGames

As a nation's population ages, more and more older people may draw from support systems such as Social Security, yet fewer workers may be around to pay into those systems.

Controlling where and what people build in the wild can reduce risk more than controlling the amount of trees in a forest
 

The results are in. Yesterday the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released it final report crystallizing 13 months of work by more than 800 scientists.

Contrary to claims, not everyone is No. 1

Cars, SUVs and pickup trucks sold in the U.S. are quickly becoming more fuel efficient, in large part because Federal rules require them to be.

With all the attention to the Ebola virus and other pathogens floating around in bodily fluids and the air, we may not be aware that the dirt beneath our feet is home to thousands of bacteria and other microorganisms.

Each of us, at times, can be a procrastinator, putting off something that is hard to do or that we don't want to do. But three researchers at Pennsylvania State University think we humans may also be precrastinators—hurrying to get something done so we can cross it off our mental to-do list, even if the [...]

For the first time in the history of our species, we are never alone and never bored. Have we lost something fundamental about being human?

The later high school classes start in the morning, the more academic performance improves

For nearly a minute the sky went black. Then it was over. I was standing in a long alley between two four-story brick buildings on a clear sunny day.

High school begins across the U.S. this week and next. And it begins too early! Too early in the day, that is. Ask any groggy teenager waiting for a bus or yawning in "home room" and he or she will tell you that it's just too darn early in the morning to learn chemistry equations [...]

Photos are everywhere today of wine bottles, and in some cases wine barrels, broken on the floors of Napa Valley, the famous wine region in California–dashed to the ground by a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck there early Sunday.

Each of us has a unique experience on this earth. A major reason for that is the buildup of our memories over time, which forms the ongoing narrative that we know as our life.

We've all done it: We're at an event, we take a bunch of photos with our phones, we take a selfie and maybe one with a friend, we post all the images online, and we're done.

By now, if you live in the northeastern U.S. you have heard or even said the following:  "This summer has been so cool. I love it." Or: "This summer has been so cool.

Four simultaneous twisters rip apart a small town in a new apocalyptic movie. Plausible or preposterous?
 

Biodiversity hotspots are golden places on earth where the number and diversity of animals and plants is exceptional. Environmentalists say that hotspots are the most critical of all places to protect against the ill effects of human development and climate change.