All Stories
- Materials Science
These shape-shifting devices melt and re-form thanks to magnetic fields
Miniature machines made of gallium embedded with magnetic particles can switch between solid and liquid states.
- Health & Medicine
Procrastination may harm your health. Here’s what you can do
Scientists have tied procrastination to mental and physical health problems. But don't panic if you haven't started your New Year's resolutions yet.
- Astronomy
Lots of Tatooine-like planets around binary stars may be habitable
A new simulation suggests that planets orbiting a pair of stars may be plentiful, and many of those worlds could be suitable for life.
- Paleontology
A bird with a T. rex head may help reveal how dinosaurs became birds
The 120-million-year-old Cratonavis zhui, newly discovered in China, had a head like a theropod and body like a modern bird.
- Animals
Some young sea spiders can regrow their rear ends
Juvenile sea spiders can regenerate nearly all of their bottom halves — including muscles and the anus — or make do without them.
- Earth
Earth’s inner core may be reversing its rotation
In the past 13 years, the rotation of the planet’s solid inner core may have temporarily stopped and then started to reverse direction.
- Animals
A rare rabbit plays an important ecological role by spreading seeds
Rabbits aren’t thought of as seed dispersers, but the Amami rabbit of Japan has now been recorded munching on a plant’s seeds and pooping them out.
-
-
Yes, we can meet the climate change challenge
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses the first installment of our new climate change solutions series.
- Environment
Rare earth elements could be pulled from coal waste
The scheme would provide valuable rare earth metals and help clean up coal mining’s dirty legacy.
- Environment
Recycling rare earth elements is hard. Science is trying to make it easier
As demand grows, scientists are inventing new — and greener — ways to recycle rare earth elements.
- Animals
Chicken DNA is replacing the genetics of their ancestral jungle fowl
Up to half of modern jungle fowl genes have been inherited from domesticated chickens. That could threaten the wild birds’ long-term survival.
