All Stories
- Life
Aye-ayes just got weirder with the discovery of a tiny, sixth ‘finger’
Aye-ayes have a sixth “finger,” or pseudothumb, that may compensate for other, overspecialized fingers by helping the lemurs grip things.
- Health & Medicine
Prozac proves no better than a placebo in treating kids with autism
In a small clinical trial, drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors didn’t ease obsessive-compulsive symptoms in children with autism.
- Neuroscience
Light from outside the brain can turn on nerve cells in monkey brains
An extra-sensitive light-responsive molecule allowed nerve cells to be switched on or off with dim light.
- Neuroscience
Alzheimer’s may scramble metabolism’s connection to sleep
Mice designed to have brain changes that mimic Alzheimer’s disease have altered reactions to blood sugar changes.
- Animals
White bellbirds have the loudest known mating call of any bird
White bellbirds have the loudest mating call, according to scientists who compared the songs of bellbirds and screaming pihas in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Life
A peek inside a turtle embryo wins the Nikon Small World photography contest
The annual competition highlights the wonders to be found when scientists and photographers zoom in on the world around us.
- Planetary Science
Astronomers have spotted a new type of storm on Saturn
In 2018, telescopes on Earth and in space identified a never-before-seen kind of storm activity on the ringed planet.
- Earth
Powerful storms may be causing offshore ‘stormquakes’
A perfect-storm mixture of hurricane, ocean and seafloor topography can create distinct seismic signals called “stormquakes.”
- Animals
New books explore why dogs and humans have such a special bond
‘Dog Is Love’ and ‘Our Dogs, Ourselves’ delve into the complicated, sometimes contradictory relationship that we have with our canine companions.
- Health & Medicine
These tiny aquatic animals secrete a compound that may help fight snail fever
A newly identified molecule from rotifers paralyzes the larvae of worms that cause schistosomiasis, which affects over 200 million people worldwide.
- Life
Acrobatic choanoflagellates could help explain how multicellularity evolved
A newfound single-celled microbe species forms groups of multiple individual organisms that change shape in response to light.
- Paleontology
Big dinosaurs kept cool thanks to blood vessel clusters in their heads
Giant dinosaurs evolved several strategies for cooling their blood and avoiding heatstroke.
