All Stories
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Archaeology
This 1.4-million-year-old hand ax adds to Homo erectus’ known toolkit
A newly described East African find, among the oldest bone tools found, shows the ancient hominids crafted a range of simple and more complex tools.
By Bruce Bower -
Genetics
A bacterial toxin enables the first mitochondrial gene editor
Researchers have engineered a protein from bacteria that kills other microbes to change DNA in a previously inaccessible part of the cell.
By Jack J. Lee -
Physics
The universe might have a fundamental clock that ticks very, very fast
A theoretical study could help physicists searching for a theory of quantum gravity.
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Health & Medicine
These cells slow an immune response. Derailing them could help fight tumors
Immune therapies don’t work for a lot of cancer patients. Some researchers are enhancing these treatments with drugs that stymie suppressor cells.
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Health & Medicine
A COVID-19 vaccine may come soon. Will the blistering pace backfire?
Speed is essential, but not at the expense of safety and efficacy, experts warn. Sacrificing either could damage public trust.
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Neuroscience
Boosting a liver protein may mimic the brain benefits of exercise
Finding that liver-made proteins influence the brain may advance the quest for an “exercise pill” that can deliver the benefits of physical activity.
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Science & Society
There’s little evidence showing which police reforms work
When stories of police violence against civilians capture public attention, reforms follow despite a dearth of hard data quantifying their impact.
By Sujata Gupta -
Physics
Physicists have ‘braided’ strange quasiparticles called anyons
All known particles fall into two classes. Physicists just found new evidence of a third class in 2-D materials.
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Animals
Calculating a dog’s age in human years is harder than you think
People generally convert a dog’s age to human years by multiplying its age by seven. But a new study shows the math is way more complex.
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Genetics
South Americans may have traveled to Polynesia 800 years ago
DNA analyses suggest that Indigenous people from South America had a role in the early peopling of Polynesia.
By Bruce Bower -
Space
This is the most comprehensive X-ray map of the sky ever made
A new X-ray map of the entire sky, using data from the eROSITA telescope’s first full scan, looks deeper into space than any other of its kind.
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Health & Medicine
What you need to know about the airborne transmission of COVID-19
More than 200 experts have implored the World Health Organization to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread through the air.