All Stories
- Archaeology
Glassmaking may have begun in Egypt, not Mesopotamia
Ancient Mesopotamians lagged behind Egyptians as glassmakers.
- Health & Medicine
Old blood carries risks for brain
Young blood may not save the brain, by one measure at least.
- Health & Medicine
A Pap smear can scoop up fetal cells for genome testing
Pap smear during pregnancy could offer an early way to test for fetal genetic disorders.
- Archaeology
For some early monks, impaired hearing amplified sounds of silence
Middle-ear ailments probably had little impact on early Christian monks’ lives.
- Paleontology
Cretaceous bird find holds new color clue
New molecular clues in 130-million-year-old bird fossil could help paleontologists firm up case for ancient color in dinosaurs.
- Animals
Brazilian free-tailed bats are the fastest fliers
Ultrafast flying by one bat species leaves birds in the dust.
- Humans
Oldest alphabet identified as Hebrew
Contested study indicates ancient Israelites developed first alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
- Animals
An echidna’s to-do list: Sleep. Eat. Dig up Australia.
Short-beaked echidna’s to-do list looks good for a continent losing other digging mammals.
- Physics
Whirlpools might have stirred up baby universe’s soup
Vortices appear in the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions.
- Plants
Tweaking how plants manage a crisis boosts photosynthesis
Shortening plants’ recovery time after blasts of excessive light can boost crop growth.
- Astronomy
Mysterious radio signals pack power and brilliance
The brightest fast radio burst has been detected, while another team reveals a previous burst might have carried gamma rays as well as radio waves across space.
- Earth
How a ring of mountains forms inside a crater
Rocks drilled from the Chicxulub crater linked to the demise of the dinosaurs reveal how mountainous peak rings form within large impact craters.
