Helen Gross

25/09/2023

Giant pandas delight zoo-goers with their rolling, sliding, and joyful play—especially in the snow. But a new study reveals a potential challenge for the captive animals: When living in different latitudes from their natural habitats, zoo pandas are less active than they would be in the wild.

For an entire year, Kristine Gandia and colleagues observed 11 bears at five zoos via “panda cams,” which the facilities provide to the public as a window into the animals’ daily lives.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

18/09/2023

As satellites began dispersing images of Hurricane Lee, a major hurricane currently traveling up the Atlantic, meteorologists knew they were looking at—“a monster storm” as one weather presenter described it. On X (formerly known as Twitter), another simply said, “Wow!” and pointed out the hurricane’s giant buzz saw-like shape.

15/09/2023

Talk of famous bike rides and you may think of Lycra-clad athletes racing in the Tour de France. But people worldwide also celebrate a much shorter bicycle journey made one April evening in 1943 by a suited 37-year-old man, clattering unsteadily home from work through the ancient streets of the Swiss city of Basel. This two-wheeled journey, you see, heralded the birth of psychedelia.

13/09/2023

From Osaka to Kobe to Kyoto, my wife Erin and I planned every day with one goal: avoid melting into puddles. Around us, hordes of tourists were in the same sweaty boat. But a few days in, I noticed something. The locals looked noticeably cooler, less crabby, more comfortable. Why?

The answer should come as no surprise. Japan, a nation renowned for its design thinking and innovation, is armed with a fistful of ways to survive punishing heat. While they love air-con as much as the next heat-stricken country, they also find respite in creative remedies, from electrically ventilated clothes to water-based rituals.

21/06/2023

Hvaldimir wreaks havoc at a salmon farm. His human supporters hope to eventually move him to a fish-filled fjord for rehabilitation.

30/05/2023

Work-life balance on Lake Ontario
Thanks to the lake’s proximity to a sizeable portion of the province’s population, Lake Ontario helps city dwellers turn quickly into weekend adventurers. This bustling lake is a city in itself, serving as a bridge to the Atlantic Ocean and an important migration path for fish, while providing visitors with kilometers of kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, and tours of nearby Thousand Islands, an archipelago of nearly 2,000 islands, as well as the famed Niagara Falls.

26/04/2023

The Monte dei Cappuccini is a hill south of the River Po that has great views over the Turin skyline.

23/04/2023

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA: A Colombian girl screams from pain and fear while being allegedly possessed by demons during an exorcism ritual performed at a house church. Hundreds of Christian believers, joined in nameless groups, gather every week in unmarked home churches dispersed in the city outskirts, to carry out prayers of liberation and exorcism.