All Stories
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Genetics
Ancient DNA unveils Siberian Neandertals’ small-scale social lives
Females often moved into their mate’s communities, which totaled about 20 individuals, researchers say.
By Bruce Bower -
Genetics
Black Death immunity came at a cost to modern-day health
A genetic variant that boosts Crohn’s disease risk may have helped people survive the 14th century bubonic plague known as the Black Death.
By Wynne Parry -
Astronomy
For the first time, astronomers saw dust in space being pushed by starlight
Images collected over 16 years reveal that dust expelled from a well-known binary star system is hurried on its way by light from those stars.
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Psychology
The pandemic shows us how crises derail young adults’ lives for decades
Age matters for when we experience calamities, such as pandemics. Young adults are especially vulnerable to getting thrown off their life course.
By Sujata Gupta -
Animals
Honeybees order numbers from left to right, a study claims
In experiments, bees tend to go to smaller numbers on the left, larger ones on the right. But the idea of a mental number line in animals has critics.
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Animals
Some seabirds survive typhoons by flying into them
Streaked shearwaters off the coast of Japan soar for hours near the eye of passing cyclones as a strategy to weather the storm.
By Freda Kreier -
Health & Medicine
A swarm of sneaky omicron variants could cause a COVID-19 surge this fall
Scientists are tracking similar mutations showing up in many variants that help the coronavirus evade some of our immune defenses and treatments.
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Earth
50 years ago, scientists found a new way to clean up oil spills
In the 1970s, researchers added chemicals to the list of oil spill cleanup methods. Soon, they may add microbes.
By Meghan Rosen -
Astronomy
A 3-D model of the Cat’s Eye nebula shows rings sculpted by jets
The Cat’s Eye is one of the most complex nebulae known. A 3-D reconstruction reveals the source of some of that complexity.
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Life
This ancient worm might be an important evolutionary missing link
A roughly 520-million-year-old fossil may be the common ancestor of a diverse collection of marine invertebrates.
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Archaeology
Drone photos reveal an early Mesopotamian city made of marsh islands
Urban growth around 4,600 years ago, near what is now southern Iraq, occurred on marshy outposts that lacked a city center.
By Bruce Bower -
Paleontology
Dinosaur ‘mummies’ may not be rare flukes after all
Bite marks on a fossilized dinosaur upend the idea that exquisite skin preservation must result from a carcass's immediate smothering under sediment.
By Jake Buehler