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Taken in aggregate, the billions of online searches we make every day say a lot about our most private thoughts and biases.
Lee Woodgate/Getty Images/Ikon Images
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The long arms of pivot irrigation rigs deliver water from the Ogallala Aquifer to circular fields of corn in northwestern Kansas. A new study suggests many of the world's rivers and streams could dry up because people are draining underground aquifers that sustain streams through dry periods.
Dan Charles/NPR
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A worker cuts black granite to make a countertop. Though granite, marble and "engineered stone" all can produce harmful silica dust when cut, ground or polished, the artificial stone typically contains much more silica, says a CDC researcher tracking cases of silicosis.
danishkhan/Getty Images
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Missouri resident Patricia Powers had no health insurance when she was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago; she and her disabled husband were struggling to get by on, at most, $1,500 a month. If they'd lived across the river in Illinois, she'd have been eligible for Medicaid.
Laura Ungar/Kaiser Health News
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Elliot Berman with his team at Solar Power Corporation outside their office and manufacturing facility in Braintree, Mass., in 1973. John Perlin, author of Let it Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy, credits Berman with planting the flag of solar photovoltaics throughout the world.
Solar Power Corporation via John Perlin
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After finishing up some household chores, Brody Knapp gets a chance to play with his mother, Ashley, at their home in Kansas City, Mo.
Alex Smith/KCUR
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U.S. adults put on about a pound a year on average. But people who had a regular nut-snacking habit put on less weight and had a lower risk of becoming obese over time, a new study finds.
R.Tsubin/Getty Images
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A prototype of SpaceX's Starship stands at the company's Texas launch facility on Saturday. The Starship spacecraft is a massive vehicle designed to eventually be able to take people to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Loren Elliott/Getty Images
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A team of scientists used a telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain to detect a gas giant orbiting a tiny red star some 30 light-years from Earth.
Baback Tafreshi/Science Source/Getty Images
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Triathletes who trained too much chose immediate gratification over long-term rewards, researchers found.
Markus Büsges/EyeEm/Getty Images
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A selection of small feeding vessels dating back to the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Researchers now say vessels like these were used as prehistoric baby bottles.
Katharina Rebay-Salisbury
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Recipients of the 2019 MacArthur fellowships, otherwise known as the "genius" grants. (Two of this year's fellows declined photographs.)
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
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Salmon swim upstream in Seattle in 2017. A mass of abnormally warm water off the west coast of the U.S. that year contributed to a federal fishery disaster. Warming oceans and rising sea levels are threatening coastal economies as the world's climate changes.
Elaine Thompson/AP
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Ruby Johnson, whose daughter was recently hospitalized with a respiratory illness from vaping, testified before a House Oversight subcommittee hearing on lung disease and e-cigarettes on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
Andrew Harnik/AP
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Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks during a television interview in front of the West Wing of the White House, on Sept. 19, 2019. Wheeler has threatened to withdraw billions of dollars in federal highway money unless California clears a backlog of air pollution control plans.
Alex Brandon/AP
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An employee of the Boston biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks runs a gene sequencing machine through its paces. The company synthesizes thousands of genes a month, which are then inserted into cells that become mini factories of useful products.
Tim Llewellyn/Copperhound Pictures/Ginkgo Bioworks
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Tim Llewellyn/Copperhound Pictures/Ginkgo Bioworks