Temperature

It’s not just you – it has been hot lately. According to preliminary reports of global average temperatures, last week was the hottest week on record, with the record for hottest day broken several times in a row.

Since the advent of COVID-19, people have been more sensitive to checking for signs of fever. Now, researchers from the University of Washington have developed an app that turns a regular smartphone into an accurate, easy-to-use thermometer.

It's a sad fact that burn victims often feel a great deal of pain when the dressings on their wounds are removed. A new hydrogel-based dressing could change that, however, as it easily releases from the skin when cooled.

While many goods simply have to be kept frozen until use, some – such as certain vaccines – will break down even if they get warmed but remain frozen. An inexpensive new technology could alert people to the fact that this has happened.

Looking to nature can provide inspiration, especially in construction. Researchers studied the complex internal structure of a termite mound in hopes that we can one day construct to a building that can regulate its own internal climate.

Monitoring extreme environments requires a sensor continues to work in high temperatures. Now, researchers have developed a piezoelectric sensor that operates reliably at the temperature of erupting mafic lava, the hottest type of lava on Earth.

Over the past 150 years, researchers have seen the average human body temperature drop by more than half a degree Fahrenheit (0.3 °C). Now, researchers are speculating microbiome changes could be driving these long-term body temperature variations.

Life on Earth has persisted for billions of years through many extreme climate events. MIT scientists have analyzed 66 million years of climate data and found a stabilizing mechanism for global temperatures that plays out on large timescales.

Israeli company Green Kinoko is preparing for the first public tests of a remarkable clean outdoor cooling system. The Kinsho system operates like the inverse of an outdoor cafe heater, cooling several tables per unit without using any electricity.

A new study on fruit flies may help explain why siestas came to be such an important habit in many cultures, revealing a type of brain thermometer that kicks sleep-promoting cells into action as the mercury starts to climb.

The Moon isn’t the most hospitable place, but that’s not stopping NASA from sending humans back there soon. Thankfully, an orbiter has now found a region of the Moon with year-round jeans-and-jacket weather – underground caves.

On July 16, an extremely rare and historically important thermometer made by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, inventor of the mercury thermometer and the temperature scale that bears his name, sold for just US$93,750.