Dear Reader,
One of our core tasks at KQED Science is to bring you what's called "news you can use." It's information you might want in order to plan your day or be ready for something coming, such as a bad storm. Last year, we published a daily air quality map through the wildfire season that thousands of people used to find out the levels of particulate matter in the air. We will bring it back during this year's wildfire season, should we have another bout of dangerous pollution.
This spring we noticed it's a bad year for pollen, and when we checked with allergists, they confirmed it. People are suffering more than usual from a high pollen count that began early in the year with trees, and will continue through grass season for several more months. So we've now published a forecast of the Bay Area's pollen count—it's a 5-day forecast we update daily so those of you who suffer from pollen allergies know what to expect before you head out the door.
And if you have ideas about other kinds of news you'd like to use, please let us know!
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Kat Snow
Senior Editor, Science
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| | | Abundant rain is good for our chronically challenged water supply, but it can be a pain in the ear, nose and throat for allergy sufferers, as more plants means more pollen. And climate change is only making it worse. | | |
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| | | The 5-day forecast for pollen levels in the Bay Area, updated daily. | | |
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| | | Yep, you probably have Demodex mites living on your face. These tiny arachnids feast on sebum, the greasy oil in your pores. But should you be worried about your eight-legged guests? | | |
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| | | In 2010, Yosemite began a permitting lottery for visitors to Half Dome, out of safety concerns due to overcrowding on the trail. But a recent analysis of the park's injury numbers found that the system did not reduce accidents. | | |
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| | | It sounds odd, but scientists say we could slow down global warming by converting a really nasty greenhouse gas into one less potent. | | |
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| The striking landscape of "Game of Thrones" has led some researchers to build climate simulations that explain the erratic seasons depicted in the show, and others to piece together the geological history. Inspired by this work, geoscience researchers built the first plate tectonic reconstruction of the "Game of Thrones" continents. | | |
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| Normally dams are built to block rivers, but a legendary trout stream in Shasta County could be the river that blocked a dam. | | |
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