The New York Times

If a glue did not stick to the inside of the tube or bottle, you might think it must not be a very good glue. On the other hand, clinging glue has annoyed generations of parents and children attempting to scoop out the remaining bits with their fingers. This is one of life’s little problems.…

In 1962, the ecologist Robert Whitaker set out to categorize the different realms of life on Earth. Some were deserts, others tundra, still others tropical forests. He coined a word for these inhabited environments, one that scientists have used ever since: biomes. The planet’s biomes emerged over hundreds of millions of years. Coastal wetlands sprang…

Arsenic can poison people today through exposure to pesticides and pollution. But arsenic is also naturally present in the water and soil in some parts of the world. The Atacama Desert, sitting on top of arsenic-rich volcanic rock, is one of them. The concentration of arsenic in Atacama drinking water can be 20 times higher…

A small, newly discovered galaxy orbiting the Milky Way is emitting a surprising amount of electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma rays, astronomers reported Tuesday. The finding may be the latest in a long string of cosmic false alarms, they said, or it might be that the mysterious dark matter that permeates the universe…

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Googlereported on Wednesday in the journal Nature that they had made a significant advance that brings them a step closer to developing a quantum computer.

Researchers at Princeton University and their colleagues recently reported in the journal Science that termite mounds may serve as oases in the desert, allowing the plants that surround them to persist on a fraction of the annual rainfall otherwise required and to bounce back after a withering drought. The mounds could thus prove potential bulwarks…

Three-dimensional printers create inexpensive, striking prosthetics for children who are missing fingers.

In a test that began in 2012, scientists had injected hundreds of tons of water and carbon dioxide gas 1,500 feet down into layers of porous basaltic rock, the product of ancient lava flows from the nearby Hengill volcano. Now the researcher, Sandra Snaebjornsdottir, a doctoral student at the University of Iceland, was looking for…

Recent research that says that A.D.H.D. pills can “normalize” a child’s brain over time has drawn criticism.