Emily Mullin    What may be the first commercially available book saved in DNA is the latest example of how consumers might use molecular data storage.

Sara Carmignani    New photos of Mercury taken during the joint European and Japanese BepiColombo mission reveal fascinating details of the small rocky planet.

Paresh Dave    Calculating air pollution from wildfires and other events has become more complicated. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily more accurate.

Matt Reynolds    After the devastation of the Los Angeles fires, officials are ready to rebuild. But defending against future fires requires thinking about more than buildings.

Luca Nardi    The space agency’s Spinoff project displays the countless everyday technologies that were spurred by space related research.

Dario d’Elia    Signals from the global navigation satellite system can be jammed and spoofed, so a Google spinout is working on an alternative positioning and navigation system that uses the Earth’s magnetic field.

Hannah Singleton    Melted plastic pipes and drastic water pressure drops are potentially leaching toxic chemicals and contaminants into local supplies. Multiple water authorities in north Los Angeles have issued Do Not Drink notices.

Virginia Heffernan    Now that Novo Nordisk is the world’s weight loss juggernaut, will it have to betray its first patients type diabetics

Charlie Wood    Three exotic new species of superconductivity were spotted last year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.

Eric Berger, Ars Technica    The, pound mystery object landed in Kenya at the end of December. Experts are still baffled.

Ming Pan    In early January, soil moisture in much of Southern California was in the bottom percent of historical records.

Dennis Mersereau    The arrival of La Ni a is starving California of rain, and more high Santa Ana winds could be on the way.

Marta Musso    On January , Atlas C G will reach its closest point to the sun.

Matt Reynolds    As he prepares to leave the White House, Ali Zaidi is sober about what’s coming but says too much has already been built and invested for Donald Trump to undo it.

Emily Mullin    Exposure to smoke is dangerous regardless of your health status, so follow these steps to limit the risk.

Fernanda González    In , natural disasters related to variations in the water cycle caused more than, deaths and at least billion of economic loss.

Alec Luhn    With wind speeds falling, firefighting reinforcements arriving from out of state, and more water sources online, authorities now have a critical window to take control of the situation.

Max G. Levy    Cartilage cells that contain fat explain why some skeletal tissues are less rigid than others, and could one day be grown in labs to produce better materials for performing reconstructive surgeries and rhinoplasties.

Jake Bittle    The state’s insurance industry was reformed in late to promote coverage in disaster prone areas. Tens of billions in fire damage will stress test the new regime.

Elena Capilupi    More than , people have been evacuated from their homes, with the fires which are still uncontained having been declared a major disaster by President Biden.