Science writer Steve Silberman considers autism in the modern era of neurodiversity - a movement to respect neurological differences as natural human variation - framing the relatively progressive autistic experience of today against the the conditions oppressed past.
The skeletons of diatoms, algae that produce oxygen but also form toxic blooms, can create beautiful microscopic designs.
Rotavirus vaccination cuts childhood intestinal infection hospitalizations in half.
As more people survive serious brain injury, researchers are using EEG and fMRI to learn who is aware inside an unresponsive body.
Biology’s tree of life has morphed from the familiar classroom version emphasizing kingdoms into a complex depiction of supergroups, in which animals are aligned with a slew of single-celled cousins.
Hallucigenia sparsa gives hints to how some animals ended up with teeth in their guts and platelike pieces around their mouths.
Two genetic changes allowed plague bacteria to cause deadly lung infections and pandemic disease.
New measurements bolster the case that hydrogen sulfide is superconducting at about 200 kelvins, roughly 40 kelvins higher than any other known material.
Getting old happens faster for some, and the reason may be in the blood.
Small variations in the sun’s activity cause big changes in Greenland’s temperatures decades later by altering ocean currents, new research suggests.
Naturally occurring, concretelike rock allows the ground around Italy’s Campi Flegrei caldera to bulge without bursting.
Climate change is shrinking bumblebee habitat as southern territories heat up and bumblebees hold their lines in the north.
An ancient monkey’s tiny brain developed folds, raising questions about primate evolution.
Soft and filmy today, comb jellies might once have had rigid skeletons.
The collective motion of swimming bacteria can virtually eliminate a water-based solution’s resistance to flow.
Two particles discovered at the Large Hadron Collider are composed of five quarks, not two or three like nearly every other known quark-based particle.
Newly discovered “speed cells” clock rats’ swiftness.
Fifty years ago, Mariner 4 revealed that the Red Planet was peppered with craters. Now we know pockmarks are common on many other planets and moons, too.
A recent supernova shines with the light of 600 billion suns.
The acoustical properties of screams make them hard to ignore, a new study suggests.
An altered temperature sensor helped mammoths adapt to the cold.
Paleontologist Donald Prothero takes readers through the evolution of life on Earth from the earliest oozes of goo to our recent relative Lucy.
The New Horizons flyby reveals varied terrain and evidence of active geology on Pluto.
Rice-grain-sized youngsters can’t yet get a grasp with their tails.
Cornell ornithology lab’s computer identification of common North American avian species needs your photos.
