All Stories
- Climate
Intense drought or flash floods can shock the global economy
Rainfall extremes have powerful impacts on the global economy, affecting the manufacturing and services sectors more than agriculture.
- Humans
Babies may use saliva sharing to figure out relationships
Actions like sharing bites of food or kissing may cue young children into close bonds, a new study suggests.
- Animals
A ‘trapdoor’ made of muscle and fat helps fin whales eat without choking
An “oral plug” may explain how lunge-feeding fin whales don’t choke and drown as they fill their mouths with prey and water while eating.
- Archaeology
Gold and silver tubes in a Russian museum are the oldest known drinking straws
Long metal tubes enabled communal beer drinking more than 5,000 years ago, scientists say.
- Animals
These tiny beetles fly fast thanks to wing bristles and a weird, wide stroke
Minuscule featherwing beetles have evolved a unique way of flying that lets them match the speed of beetles three times as big.
- Chemistry
A disinfectant made from sawdust mows down deadly microbes
Antimicrobial molecules found in wood waste could be used to make more sustainable, greener disinfectants.
- Earth
Volcanic avalanches of rock and gas may be more destructive than previously thought
Pressures within pyroclastic flows may be as much as three times as great as observations had suggested.
- Math
Take an online journey through the history of math
‘History of Mathematics’ explores the origins of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and more.
- Animals
Scientists vacuumed animal DNA out of thin air for the first time
The ability to sniff out animals’ airborne genetic material has been on researchers’ wish list for over a decade.
- Genetics
A genetic analysis hints at why COVID-19 can mess with smell
People with some genetic variants close to smell-related genes had an 11 percent higher risk of losing their sense of taste or smell.
- Animals
Part donkey, part wild ass, the kunga is the oldest known hybrid bred by humans
Syria’s 4,500-year-old kungas were donkey-wild ass hybrids, genetic analysis reveals, so the earliest known example of humans crossing animal species.
- Space
50 years ago, NASA’s space shuttle program got the green light
For over 30 years, space shuttles helped revolutionize science. Now, NASA is tackling new frontiers with help from commercial spaceflight companies.
