Two weeks ago a massive heat wave struck two-thirds of the United States. It was hot enough to bake biscuits in Nebraska , cancel a triathlon in New York and knock out the power in Wisconsin. The pavement also probably burned a few people — and probably much worse than you might think.

New research from a leading burns centre in Nevada has found that a hot pavement can give you second-degree burns almost instantly, and that human skin risks being charred “in a matter of seconds” if it comes into contact with a roasting sidewalk.

This past spring, Brooklyn-based artist Amanda Browder was invited to Las Vegas as the inaugural Transformation Fellow in the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I teach. Browder makes monumental, vibrantly colored fabric sculptures that are designed and constructed to be draped and formed over buildings, activating the architecture beneath.

Like humans, many bacteria like to spend time at the beach. The so-called flesh-eating bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, don’t just like the beach; they need it, and rely on seasalt for survival. And as with human beachgoers, the warmer the water, the more of them there are.

Determining the worst call in sports history is a subjective exercise. There are multiple filters to consider, even after stripping away obvious bias such as fandom or betting interest.

There are scores of videos posted to social media of people frying an egg on hot pavement. New research shows, however, just how dangerous that hot pavement can be to your feet or other areas of bare skin.

California has the toughest gun control laws in the country and only continues to tighten them. But its efforts are undermined by a more permissive approach in other states, including the three that border California.

No matter how many times you may have read The Care and Keeping of You in middle school, periods (and how they work) are still pretty confusing.

Extremely hot days can make pavements hot enough to cause second-degree burns within seconds.