News
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Humans
How to get a crying baby to sleep, according to science
Science has come up with a recipe for lulling a crying baby to sleep: Carry them for five minutes, sit for at least five more and then lay them down.
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Psychology
The pandemic may be stunting young adults’ personality development
People typically become less neurotic and more agreeable with age. The COVID-19 pandemic may have reversed those trends in adults younger than 30.
By Sujata Gupta -
Health & Medicine
This robotic pill clears mucus from the gut to deliver meds
A whirling robotic pill wicks mucus from the gut, allowing intravenous drugs such as insulin to be given orally, experiments in pigs suggest.
By Meghan Rosen -
Paleontology
Ancient fish fossils highlight the strangeness of our vertebrate ancestors
New fossils are revealing the earliest jawed vertebrates — a group that encompasses 99 percent of all living vertebrates on Earth, including humans.
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Health & Medicine
False teeth could double as hearing aids
Dental implants can conduct sound through jawbone, making them candidates for discreet, high-quality hearing aids, researchers say.
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Planetary Science
NASA’s DART spacecraft just smashed into an asteroid — on purpose
If the first-ever attempt to knock a space rock off course works, it could provide a blueprint to protect Earth from a killer asteroid.
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Anthropology
In Maya society, cacao use was for everyone, not just royals
Previously considered a preserve of Maya elites, cacao was consumed across all social strata, a new study finds.
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Environment
Mangrove forests expand and contract with a lunar cycle
The carbon-sequestering trees grow in a roughly 18-year cycle according to tides influenced by the moon’s orbit, a study in Australia finds.
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Earth
Here’s how olivine may trigger deep earthquakes
Olivine’s transformation into another mineral can destabilize rocks and set off quakes more than 300 kilometers down, experiments suggest.
By Nikk Ogasa -
Planetary Science
Here is the first direct look at Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years
In 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft took the first pics of Neptune’s rings. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is providing a more detailed look.
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Particle Physics
How ghostly neutrinos could explain the universe’s matter mystery
If neutrinos behave differently from their antimatter counterparts, it could help explain why our cosmos is full of stuff.
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Health & Medicine
This face mask can sense the presence of an airborne virus
Within minutes of exposure, a sensor in a mask prototype can detect proteins from viruses that cause COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.
By Freda Kreier