Technology

"Tucson, Arizona, is giving residents financial incentives to harvest their rainwater as the desert city works to become carbon neutral by 2030."

"Japan and China are racing to build a new type of ultra-fast, levitating train, seeking to demonstrate their mastery over a technology with big export potential."

"A satellite scheduled to launch from California later this month will measure sea level rise and provide other crucial data to scientists who study how global warming is affecting the Earth's oceans."

"A Biden administration won’t be able to untangle the legal and regulatory “mess” under part of the Clean Water Act that determines which streams, wetlands and other waters get federal protection, legal scholars and litigators say."

"A new generation of autonomous vessels is looking to catch illegal fishers in the act."

"Amid growing alarm about methane’s role in driving global warming, a Canadian firm has begun selling a service to detect even relatively small leaks. At least two rivals are on the way."

"North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered species with fewer than 366 remaining individuals, face two main threats: fishing gear entanglements and ship strikes."

"Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world's first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air."

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration must rethink its approval of a plan to breed genetically altered salmon because it did not fully consider what would happen if those fish escaped into the wild, a federal judge ruled Thursday."

"Some of the most popular products of biotechnology — corn and cotton plants that have been genetically modified to fend off insects — are no longer offering the same protection from those bugs. Scientists say that the problem results from farmers overusing the crops, and are pushing for new regulations.

These crops were the original genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. They weren't the first ones invented, but they were the first to be widely embraced by farmers, starting in the late 1990s.