[ad_1] PC: Open Access Government On a warm day, a wall is usually something to escape from rather than something that helps cool a room. At Graz University of Technology in Austria, that assumption is being turned around with a ceramic structure that uses little more than water, porous clay and evaporation. The experimental cooling…

[ad_1] For most of human history, the atmosphere was something felt rather than measured. People knew that air moved, pushed against sails and filled the lungs, but its physical weight was harder to demonstrate. In 17th-century Italy, that began to change. Evangelista Torricelli, a mathematician and physicist from Faenza, was working on a problem that…

[ad_1] For decades, quarries have been places where the landscape was deliberately cut, blasted and reshaped for industry. Rock was extracted, hillsides were carved away and deep pits were left behind once the material was no longer economically useful. But when the machinery finally stops, the story of a quarry does not necessarily end.Across the…

[ad_1] Every winter, more than 100,000 giant Australian cuttlefish can be found mating along the rocky coastline of Point Lowly, northeast of Whyalla, South Australia. They put on shape-shifting, colourful displays in their attempts to attract a mate. This is the only cuttlefish aggregation in the world and thousands of enthusiastic fans travel to regional…

[ad_1] On the afternoon of 21 August 2017, millions of people across the United States looked towards the Sun as the Moon moved across it. For most viewers, the eclipse became a short-lived memory once the sky returned to normal. For Nia Payne, a 26-year-old woman in Staten Island, the event left something behind. Within…

[ad_1] For centuries, owning land has meant having a place that can be measured, divided and legally transferred. Dennis Hope thought he had found an exception. In the late 20th century, while considering how to make money from property, the unemployed American turned his attention away from land on Earth and towards the moon. He…