LOS ANGELES — Days after the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency visited a Los Angeles public housing project with lead-contaminated water, the agency ordered drinking water systems nationwide to replace every lead pipe within 10 years.

“We’ve known for decades that lead exposure has serious long-term impacts for ...Read more

DURKEE, Ore. — Bert Siddoway heard the fire before he saw it, no seconds at all between the flash of lightning and the boom of thunder. The strike “shook the whole flipping town,” he said, and immediately ignited a wildfire in a hard-to-reach spot in the hills above the community where he is both a rancher and captain of the rural ...Read more

MIAMI — On a bayfront street in Miami Shores, water bubbled up from the asphalt. It surged up through a drain, covering the entire street in just a few hours despite a perfectly clear sky.

Saturday marked the peak of this season’s king tide, the highest tide of the year. Across South Florida, and along the east coast, salty water crept into...Read more

Less than two months after the removal of dams restored a free-flowing Klamath River, salmon have made their way upstream to begin spawning and have been spotted in Oregon for the first time in more than a century.

Biologists with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that they found a single fall-run Chinook on Oct. 16 in a ...Read more

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

How did cockroaches survive the asteroid that led to the extinction of dinosaurs? – Kinjal, age 11, Delhi, India

When the rock now known as the Chicxulub impactor plummeted...Read more

SpaceX knocked out its 99th operational flight of the year with a Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday night.

A Falcon 9 with 20 Starlink satellites lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:31 p.m. Eastern time.

This was the 17th flight of the first-stage booster that made a recovery landing downrange in ...Read more

CHICAGO – A “supermajority” of young Americans across the political spectrum feel distressed about human-made climate change and want bolder action from the government and corporations, a new study has found. Experiencing the worsening effects of a rapidly changing climate throughout their youth and into adulthood, this crisis has become ...Read more

SpaceX is set to launch its 99th operational flight of the year with a Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday night if the winds diminish.

A Falcon 9 with 20 Starlink satellites is aiming for liftoff from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:31 p.m. Eastern time with a backup option on Saturday at 7:06 p.m.

Space Launch...Read more

Earlier this year, OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies wooed Hollywood studios with the futuristic promise of AI tools that they said could help make the business of creating movies and television shows faster, easier and cheaper.

What the tech companies wanted was access to troves of footage and intellectual property from series...Read more

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Exhausted, though relieved to have survived, is how Dr. Meghan Martin summarized her Hurricane Milton experience in her first post-storm update to her more than 2 million TikTok followers last week.

“These hurricanes, man, like, back to back like this,” she said as she ruffled her short, wavy hair and exhaled.

The ...Read more

A tribal casino in Oklahoma is using an app tied to its surveillance camera system that uses artificial intelligence to detect patrons carrying firearms.

Travis Thompson, director of compliance for the Muskogee Nation Gaming Enterprise in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said it’s believed to be the first casino property to install the ZeroEyes digital ...Read more

Toyota Motor Corp.’s research unit and Hyundai Motor Co.’s Boston Dynamics are joining forces to speed up development of humanoid robots with artificial intelligence.

The partnership will pair Toyota Research Institute’s expertise in large behavior model learning for machines with Boston Dynamics’ humanoid Atlas robot, they said ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Elon Musk's SpaceX is suing the California Coastal Commission, just days after the agency tasked with protecting the state's coast and beaches rejected a plan for the company to launch up 50 rockets into space this year.

In the federal suit, filed Tuesday in the Central District of California, the company accuses the state ...Read more

Bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay in Florida and Barataria Bay in Louisiana are exhaling microplastic fibers, according to our new research published in the journal PLOS One.

Tiny plastic pieces have spread all over the planet – on land, in the air and even in clouds. An estimated 170 trillion bits of microplastic are estimated to...Read more

The global aquaculture industry has tripled in size since the year 2000, with producers raising a mind-boggling diversity of species, from seaweeds and clams to carp, salmon and cuttlefish. Many of these creatures are undomesticated and lead complex and highly social lives in the wild.

The rapid growth in aquaculture means that ...Read more

NASA has officially given SpaceX the next two missions to the International Space Station under its Commercial Crew Program with Boeing’s Starliner still potentially available for a late visit in 2025 if it achieves certification.

NASA announced updated crew rotation plans Tuesday including a crew assignment for Crew-10, the program’s next ...Read more

Centuries ago, estuaries around the world were teeming with birds and turbulent with schools of fish, their marshlands and endless tracts of channels melting into the gray-blue horizon.

Fast-forward to today, and in estuaries such as New York Harbor, San Francisco Bay and Miami’s Biscayne Bay – areas where rivers meet the sea – ...Read more