The planet is warming and sea level is rising. In fact, global average sea level has risen about nine inches since record-keeping began in 1880. But that’s an average. The actual change in sea level varies from place to place, even along the U.S. Atlantic coast.

Preppers don’t have a great public image. The word often conjures up doomsday-obsessed extremists in a well-armed bunker or walled compound. But anthropologist Chad Huddleston says they’re a largely misunderstood group and that we could all learn a few things from them.

Empathy: you probably have an intuitive sense of what it is, but can you define it? The word itself is about a century old, and the meaning has actually been in almost continual flux.

As we sit here at the start of the year, we’re reflecting on where we are and where we are headed – as individuals, as a society, and as a planet.

More and more of our lives are on-line now and keeping personal data private seems increasingly difficult with a new data breach every time you turn around.

One of the biggest science stories of the year has been climate change. And for good reason. Carbon emissions in 2018 hit a record high. The Six Americas survey released in April found that 70 percent of Americans think climate change is happening, and nearly 60 percent understand that it is largely human-caused. That puts us back approximately where we were ten years ago, before politics and economics eroded public acceptance of the fact of climate change.

Depending on whom you ask, the gene editing technology CRISPR is either a savior, or one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. And some people’s worst fears materialized in late November, when a scientist announced the birth of two babies whose DNA he had edited. That claim hasn’t even been verified but has drawn strong and almost universal criticism.

You might have seen the headlines recently. Scientists gave octopuses ecstasy. It was part of a study where they expected to learn about social behavior. What the scientists didn’t expect though, was for the study to go viral.

The Clean Water Act is a federal law that gives the EPA authority to regulate pollution that affects the waters of the United States. But exactly what that last phrase means has been the subject of a long and contentious debate.

Bitcoin , the online currency system, is no longer the domain of cutting-edge computer geeks. It’s become mainstream news, with the boom and bust in Bitcoin prices making major headlines this year.