All Stories

  1. Can psychedelics meet their potential for treating mental health disorders?

    Psychedelics hold lots of promise as treatments for mental health disorders like PTSD and depression. But the drugs still face hurdles.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Merck’s COVID-19 pill may soon be here. How well will it work?

    Once hailed as a potential game changer, more complete data now reveal drawbacks of Merck’s antiviral COVID-19 pill, molnupiravir.

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  3. Oceans

    The Southern Ocean is still swallowing large amounts of humans’ carbon dioxide emissions

    A 2018 study suggested the ocean surrounding Antarctica might be taking up less CO₂ than thought, but new data suggest it is still a carbon sink.

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  4. Planetary Science

    This tiny, sizzling exoplanet could be made of molten iron

    A newly discovered exoplanet that whips around its star in less than eight hours is smaller than Earth, as dense as iron and hot enough to melt.

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  5. 50 years ago, a 6-year-old boy became the first known rabies survivor

    In 1971, a doctor thought he’d found a cure for rabies. Fifty years later, we still don’t have one.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    What we know and don’t know about the omicron coronavirus variant

    The new omicron variant has lots of mutations and sparked a surge of cases in South Africa, but researchers still don’t know a lot about it.

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  7. Anthropology

    Ancient footprints suggest a mysterious hominid lived alongside Lucy’s kind

    A previously unknown hominid species may have left its marks in muddy ash about 3.66 million years ago in what is now East Africa.

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  8. Paleontology

    This dinosaur had a weapon shaped like an Aztec war club on its tail

    The flat and spiky tail club of a newly discovered ankylosaur was unique, even for this often weirdly armored group of dinosaurs.

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  9. Anthropology

    Ancient giant orangutans evolved smaller bodies surprisingly slowly

    Fossil teeth from Chinese caves indicate that a single, ancient orangutan species gradually trimmed down over nearly 2 million years.

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  10. Chemistry

    Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent

    Newly ID’d sulfur compounds in cannabis flowers give the plant its telltale odor. One, prenylthiol, is what also gives “skunked beer” its funky flavor.

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  11. Life

    Fungi may be crucial to storing carbon in soil as the Earth warms

    Fungi help soil-making bacteria churn out carbon compounds that are resilient to heat, keeping those compounds in the ground, a study suggests.

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  12. Animals

    A new book shows how animals are already coping with climate change

    ‘Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid’ takes a clear-eyed look at future of animal life.

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