Cave detective hunts for clues to past sea level

A yellow splash of light from Bogdan Onac’s headlamp bounces around the dripping orange walls of a cave like a frenetic firefly. At the other end of the beam, the University of South Florida paleoclimatologist …

Madrid air pollution reaches alarming levels

You don’t have to step into the street for Madrid’s roads to pose a hazard to your health: air pollution from cars in the city might just knock you over. Scientists are finding links between …

Madrid dabbles in citizen-led culture

If you visit the Tabacalera, a decrepit old tobacco factory in the center of Madrid, you might find artists painting in one basement room, hear muffled drums thumping from another, or catch a teenage video DJ performing in the courtyard next to the bike workshop.

There’s no tobacco processing done here anymore. And nobody charges at the door. In fact, it looks, sounds and feels like an anarchic arts squat. Until you bump into a security guard.

Ocean exploration, from empire to empirical

Creatures in chloroform, musty maps, and navigation by brass instruments. That was ocean exploration 18th-century style. Nowadays it’s satellite links, mandatory life vests on deck, and flow cytometers measuring minute lifeforms from the murk below …