News

Humans

This ancient Canaanite comb is engraved with a plea against lice

The Canaanite comb bears the earliest known instance of a complete sentence written in a phonetic alphabet, researchers say.

Health & Medicine

Here’s how mysterious last-resort antibiotics kill bacteria

Scientists are finally getting a grip on how a class of last-resort antibiotics works — the drugs kill bacteria by crystallizing their membranes.

Life

Video reveals that springtails are tiny acrobats

Poppy seed–sized cousins of insects, famed for wild escape leaping, right themselves in mid-falls faster than cats.

Earth

Catastrophic solar storms may not explain shadows of radiation in trees

Tree rings record six known Miyake events — spikes in global radiation levels in the past. The sun, as long presumed, might not be the sole culprit.

Astronomy

Part of a lost, ancient star catalog has now been found

Greek astronomer Hipparchus may be the first to try to precisely map the stars. His lost work turned up on parchment that had been erased and reused.

Astronomy

Astronomers have found the closest known black hole to Earth

Discovered by how it pushes around a companion star, the black hole is about 1,500 light-years away and roughly 10 times the mass of the sun.

Health & Medicine

Cat allergies may be tamed by adding an asthma therapy to allergy shots

Adding an antibody already used to treat asthma to standard allergy shots improved cat allergy symptoms for a least a year, a small study finds.

Health & Medicine

The U.S.’s alcohol-induced death rate rose sharply in the pandemic’s first year

Studies suggested cases of alcoholic liver disease rose in the first pandemic year, and new data show the death rate from alcohol use climbed too.

Physics

Crowdsourced cell phone data could keep bridges safe and strong

Accelerometers and GPS sensors in smartphones could provide frequent, real-time data on bridge vibrations, and alert engineers to changes in integrity

Planetary Science

Marsquakes hint that the planet might be volcanically active after all

Seismic data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander suggest molten rock moves tens of kilometers below the planet’s fractured Cerberus Fossae region.

Animals

Deer-vehicle collisions spike when daylight saving time ends

In the week after much of the United States turns the clock back, scientists found a 16 percent increase in crashes between vehicles and deer.

Health & Medicine

A major malaria outbreak in Ethiopia came from an invasive Asian mosquito

Malaria may become a much bigger problem in Africa’s cities if the invasive mosquito continues to spread.