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The U.S. Congress recently passed the most significant climate law in the nation’s history. The legislation is set to reduce U.S. carbon emissions at a time when the effects of climate change have become uncomfortably clear.

The law is called the Inflation Reduction Act. (The name comes from other parts of the legislation that aim to lower costs for health care and energy, among other things.) It will devote nearly $370 billion to reducing carbon emissions—the human-made pollution that is the biggest contributor to climate change. The goal is to get Americans to reduce their use of fossil fuels to power their homes, workplaces, and vehicles.

The law creates tax credits and rebates for companies and individuals who invest in renewable energy technology—things like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. That means that those who switch to renewable energy will pay less in taxes. 

The law also contains other climate protection measures. For example, it devotes funding to installing energy-efficient technology at industrial sites. Money will also be used to restore forests, which help to lessen the effects of climate change. In addition, fossil fuel companies will be required to pay fees when they produce excess pollution. And communities that are being heavily impacted by pollution will receive funding for clean-up efforts.

Experts say the new law is set to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent from their 2005 peak by the year 2030. 

Reactions to the law have been mixed. Some critics say it costs too much money, while others say it does not go far enough to address the climate crisis. But supporters say that, in a year when the effects of climate change have led to droughts, floods, and heat waves, any action is important.

“It’s so important that we do this, and the benefits are still likely to be so much larger than the costs,” Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at Brookings told the Associated Press. “This is still unquestionably the right thing to do.”

President Biden signed the bill into law on August 16, 2022.

Bill Russell, a basketball legend who helped the Boston Celtics win 11 National Basketball Association (NBA) titles, has died. He was 88.

Russell had an incredible career as both a player and a coach. As a student at the University of San Francisco, he led his team to 55 straight wins, won two National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships, and won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics. The same year he wowed at the Olympics, Russell was drafted by the Boston Celtics. Playing as a center, he was a defensive whiz and a renowned rebounder. It’s no accident that Russell was on the team during one of the eras when the Celtics dominated the NBA. The Celts won the championship every year between 1959 and 1966. In 1966, Russell became head coach of the Celtics—the first Black head coach in any of the nation’s four major sports leagues. He continued to play until 1969, leading the team to two more championships.

Although he was a hero to many, Russell was also the target of racist attacks. When Russell began his NBA career, racial segregation was legal in the southern United States. In 1961, while in Kentucky for a game, Russell was told he wouldn’t be served at a hotel coffee shop because he was Black. He and four other players informed their coach that they would not play in that night’s game and flew home. 

But life wasn’t necessarily easier in the North. Russell’s house in Massachusetts was burglarized and repeatedly vandalized with racial slurs. 

“We’ve got to show our disapproval of this treatment or else [nothing will change],” Russell once said. “We have the same rights and privileges as anyone else and deserve to be treated accordingly.”

A vocal supporter of civil rights, Russell was in attendance when Martin Luther King, Jr., led a famous civil rights protest known as the March on Washington. He also spoke out against school segregation in Boston, which persisted into the 1970s.

Russell spent the later part of his career as a commentator, an author, and a basketball icon. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and many other players who came after Russell have said they consider him to be a hero.

“Bill Russell was a pioneer—as a player, as a champion, as the NBA’s first Black head coach and as an activist,” Michael Jordan wrote after Russell’s death was announced. “The world has lost a legend.”

Do you ever wish you could sleep later in the morning? Some students in California will be able to hit the snooze button a few times, thanks to a new state law.

The legislation says California middle schools can’t begin the school day before 8 a.m. and high schools can’t start before 8:30 a.m. This is the first law of its kind to pass, although lawmakers in New Jersey and Massachusetts are considering similar legislation.

Why start the school day later? According to experts, teenagers need more sleep than adults do, and their bodies are wired to stay up later compared to people in other age groups. That can make it hard for teens to wake up and be alert in the early hours of the day. Experts say letting teens sleep later leads to less sleep deprivation, which can lead to better grades and improved mood. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that middle schools and high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later. 

“It really is in those first early morning hours that children are just essentially half asleep,” said Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, in an interview with NPR. “They’re not absorbing information. So why are we putting them in the classroom?”

Similar laws have been proposed in other states over the years, but none of them passed. Such laws face opposition from people who argue that later school start times would disrupt scheduling for things like school buses and after-school activities. (If the school day starts later, then activities might need to run later too.) Opponents also say parents might find it difficult to make sure their kids get to school at that later time while they themselves are trying to get ready for work.

The California law will test these concerns…and whether students will benefit from snoozing a little later. It will go into effect for the 2022–2023 school year.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, chances are you’ve been experiencing a very hot summer. Extreme heat has gripped parts of North America, Asia, and Europe—even in places where summers are normally mild. 

One country where the temperature has soared is the United Kingdom (U.K.). In July, parts of the U.K. experienced several days with temperatures higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). At the peak of the heat wave, on July 19, 2022, some areas reached just over 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). This was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the U.K. 

Summer temperatures regularly get into the 90s and even climb above 100 degrees in parts of the U.S. and other countries. But hot weather is not the norm in the U.K., where summer high temperatures average in the 60s and 70s Fahrenheit (teens and 20s Celsius). As a result, the country’s structures aren’t built to withstand high temperatures. As the heat wave of 2022 continued, asphalt and concrete expanded and buckled, forcing officials to close roads and airport runways. 

U.K. government officials urged people to stay home, warning them that being outdoors for too long could be dangerous. But being indoors did not necessarily bring relief. Only about 5 percent of homes in the U.K. are air conditioned. Some people found refuge at shopping centers and offices, many of which are air conditioned. 

Recent heat waves have caused chaos even in places that are more accustomed to high temperatures. In Chongqing, China, for example, unusually high temperatures caused the roof of a museum to begin to melt. In Fort Worth, Texas, heat combined with a lack of rain caused the ground to shift, leading to water main breaks, which is when pipes carrying city water supplies crack. In parts of Europe, hot and dry conditions led to destructive wildfires.

Will next summer be cooler? It’s hard to say. 

While extreme heat waves used to be unusual, scientists say that’s no longer true. Climate change is changing everything. In July, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that as global temperatures rise, heat waves, along with other extreme weather, will become increasingly common. Scientists are concerned about the effect that high temperatures will have on agriculture as well as human health.

“The best solution to this will be…being very ambitious on tackling the causes of this global warming,” said Dr. María Neira, director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at the WHO.

The James Webb Space Telescope has just begun its mission, but scientists say it is already changing the way we see the universe. Webb can detect infrared light, which the human eye can’t see, so it’s capable of giving us detailed images from deep space. Recently, the telescope released its first images…showing us parts of our universe that, until recently, have been mostly a mystery. 

One of the images revealed the Southern Ring Nebula, which is 2,500 light-years away from Earth. A nebula is a cloud made up of swirling dust and gases. It’s often the result of a dying star. Webb’s image of the Southern Ring Nebula shows that star, looking relatively hazy in the center of the nebula. The image also includes a brighter star that’s at an earlier stage of its life cycle and will one day eject its own nebula. 

New stars can form in nebulae, and Webb captured what scientists call a “stellar nursery”—a place where many stars are born. The image is of a region of the Carina Nebula, located 7,600 light-years away from our planet. It shows countless twinkling lights in and around a beautiful cloud of dust. NASA calls this region the Cosmic Cliffs because the dust cloud has taken on the shape of mountains and valleys. The stars in the Carina Nebula look tiny in the image, but NASA says many of them are much larger than our Sun. 

Another image shows a group of five galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet. Four of these galaxies, which are located 290 million light-years away, are moving (as everything in the universe does) and interacting. When galaxies interact, it can result in the formation of new stars and new galaxies. The  image from Webb is giving scientists a front-row seat to witness this “cosmic dance,” as NASA calls it.

These amazing images are just the beginning. Webb could operate for as many as 20 years, plenty of time to provide detailed views of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) as well as some of the oldest galaxies. Scientists can’t even predict everything Webb will show them.

“The universe has [always] been out there,” said Jane Rigby, Webb operations project scientist at NASA. “We just had to build a telescope to go see what was there.” 

July 19 is the anniversary of the first day of the Seneca Falls Convention, which took place in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. The event, organized by activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, aimed to expand women’s rights in the United States.

Although the United States was founded under the ideal that “all men are created equal,” Stanton, Mott, and other activists knew this wasn’t the reality. Only white men had guaranteed rights. Other Americans did not. This was especially true for enslaved Black Americans. The law did not even consider enslaved people to be people. White women were far better off, but they didn’t have the same rights as white men. In most states, they weren’t allowed to sign contracts or own property, and their educational opportunities were limited. And since women weren’t allowed to vote, they were unable to participate in elections for leaders who would champion their cause. The purpose of the Seneca Falls Convention was to draw attention to these inequalities and challenge the nation to live up to its ideals.

The two-day event drew more than 300 women and men. The attendees discussed whether to adopt a document called the Declaration of Sentiments. Written by Stanton and modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the document began, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” It resolved that, under the ideals of the United States, women were entitled to certain rights, including property ownership, equal education, and suffrage (the right to vote). 

Only one of the resolutions in the Declaration of Sentiments turned out to be controversial—women’s suffrage. But Stanton, along with abolitionist Frederick Douglass, were eventually able to convince enough attendees to support voting rights for women. The document was ratified on July 20.

Seneca Falls was only one milestone in a long fight for women’s rights. In the decades that followed, many states would pass laws that expanded certain rights for women. In 1869, Wyoming (which wasn’t yet a state) granted women full voting rights. Some other states and territories followed. More than 50 years later, in 1920, Congress ratified the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women in the United States the right to vote. 

You can read the Declaration of Sentiments at Britannica School.

Is it possible to tell how old someone is based on their selfie? Instagram is betting that it is.

Instagram is testing out a form of technology designed to determine someone’s age by scanning their face. Certain users will be required to take a video selfie, and then Instagram will send a still image from the video to a company called Yoti. Yoti will use an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to study the person’s facial features. 

“When a new face comes along, [the technology] does a pixel-level analysis of that face and then spits out a number—the age estimation,” Julie Dawson of Yoti told CNN.

According to Yoti, the technology “learned” to estimate ages by scanning millions of images of faces. This increased its ability to recognize what makes a person look younger or older. 

Instagram decided to use the technology to help ensure that its teen users aren’t seeing inappropriate content. The company has been criticized in the past for not doing enough to protect its young users.

Instagram (which requires users to be at least 13) does ask for users’ birthdates when they register. And it blocks certain content for users who have indicated they are under 18. Now, users will be required to use Instagram’s new age verification system if the birthdate on their account shows they are under 18 and they change it to indicate they are older than 18.

Yoti’s technology won’t always be accurate, though. According to Yoti’s own data, its age estimate was off by an average of 1.91 years for female users under 18 whose skin tone is darker. Its average error for female users under 18 with lighter skin was 1.41 years. 

Privacy may be another concern, but Yoti says the videos and still images will be deleted once they are used.

Instagram is working on other ways to verify users’ ages. One of them is a language analysis tool. It’s designed to figure out how old a user is based on how they write.

Kelsie Whitmore is going places. In May, the pitcher and left fielder made her debut with the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. She’s now the highest ranked female baseball player in decades—and many believe that her best is yet to come. 

Whitmore is used to leading the way. She was the only girl on her high school varsity baseball team, and when she was 17, she and two other women signed to play for the Sonoma Stompers, a team that’s part of the Pacific Association of Professional Baseball. Their teammates and opponents were all men. 

Now Whitmore, who also played on the U.S. Women’s National Team at the Pan American Games for several years, is closer than ever to Major League Baseball (MLB). Experts say the Atlantic League is one step below MLB. Many of the league’s players work on honing their skills in the hopes that a major league team will invite them to join its minor league partner team. Whitmore is no exception.

Whitmore is smaller than the men she’s trying to strike out, so she’s gotten creative when it comes to her pitching. The 24 year old has a secret weapon—a pitch that has become known as “The Thing.” She developed The Thing by changing her grip on the ball and the motion of her arm to change the way the ball moved. Such hard work, plus a whole lot of talent, has baseball experts believing that Whitmore has a bright future in the sport. Whitmore herself is aiming to get to the next level.

“Of course. That’s the big dream,” Whitmore told MLB.com. “I wouldn’t be playing this game if I didn’t have the mindset and the drive to want to hopefully, potentially, get there one day. It’s definitely going to be hard; it’s not going to be easy. But it’s definitely something that I…dream about.”

Bonker is passionate about helping others who are affected by nonspeaking autism. While in college, she founded Communication 4 All, an organization that provides communication resources to schools and other facilities. She’ll continue with this type of work now that she has her college degree.

“I have a dream. Communication for all,” she said in her speech. “My life will be dedicated to relieving [nonspeaking people] from suffering in silence.”

Bonker told her classmates that she hoped they would be inspired by Fred Rogers, as she was. Rogers was known to millions of children as Mister Rogers through his TV show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He often talked about helping others. In fact, his show aimed to help kids be comfortable with who they are. 

“When he died, a handwritten note was found in his wallet,” Bonker said. “It said, ‘Life is for service.’”

Bonker intends to keep putting that lesson into action.

Bigger isn’t always better. Scientists say they believe that a massive prehistoric shark called megalodon may have been wiped out by the presence of a smaller shark: the great white shark.

Megalodon was a beast. At 60 feet (18.3 meters) long, it was more than three times the length of the great white shark. Megalodon’s teeth were as big as an adult’s palm. It was probably at the top of the food chain. 

Knowing this, scientists have long wondered why this ancient sea monster went extinct about three million years ago. They think it’s possible that some environmental factors, like sea level changes, helped lead to megalodon’s demise. But they wondered about megalodon’s relationship with the great white shark. After all, the two species co-existed for a while, and the great white shark is still dominating the world’s oceans today.

Researchers examined zinc isotopes (variants) in the teeth of sharks that are both extinct and in existence. Zinc is an element. Zinc in tooth enamel can provide clues about an animal’s diet. Scientists found evidence that ancient megalodons and ancient great white sharks ate many of the same large fish. That means they may have been competing for food. Megalodons could have hunted great white sharks, but so far scientists haven’t found any evidence of that.

But why would the smaller great white shark win a competition against a giant megalodon? The answer may be that megalodons just couldn’t get enough to eat.

“The smaller sized great whites likely did not require as much food as megalodon did, so they would have had the competitive advantage if they were feeding on similar prey items,” geochemist Michael Griffiths told CNN.