News
- Animals
Climate change may rob male dragonfly wings of their dark spots
Less colorful, cooler wings may be advantageous to dragonflies in a warmer world. But the change could mess with the insects’ mating.
- Animals
Froghoppers are the super-suckers of the animal world
To feed on plant xylem sap, a nutrient-poor liquid locked away under negative pressure, froghoppers have to suck harder than any known creature.
- Climate
Hurricanes may not be becoming more frequent, but they’re still more dangerous
A new study suggests that there aren’t more hurricanes now than there were roughly 150 years ago.
- Animals
Dogs tune into people in ways even human-raised wolves don’t
Puppies outpace wolf pups at engaging with humans, even with less exposure to people, supporting the idea that domestication has wired dogs’ brains.
- Earth
Satellites show how a massive lake in Antarctica vanished in days
Within six days, an Antarctic lake with twice the volume of San Diego Bay drained away, leaving a deep sinkhole filled with fractured ice.
- Health & Medicine
One mutation may have set the coronavirus up to become a global menace
A study pinpoints a key mutation that may have put a bat coronavirus on the path to becoming a human pathogen, helping it better infect human cells.
- Science & Society
The gap in parenting time between middle- and working-class moms has shrunk
Some well-educated mothers are spending less time with their kids than before, while some less-educated mothers are spending more, a new study shows.
- Materials Science
These weird, thin ice crystals are springy and bendy
Specially grown fibers of frozen water bend into curves and spring back when released.
- Life
Sea otters stay warm thanks to leaky mitochondria in their muscles
For the smallest mammal in the ocean, staying warm is a challenge. Now, scientists have figured out how the animals keep themselves toasty.
- Plants
How Romanesco cauliflower forms its spiraling fractals
By tweaking just three genes in a common lab plant, scientists have discovered the mechanism responsible for one of nature’s most impressive fractals.
- Health & Medicine
How your DNA may affect whether you get COVID-19 or become gravely ill
A study of 45,000 people links 13 genetic variants to higher COVID-19 risks, including a link between blood type and infection and a newfound tie between FOXP4 and severe disease.
- Climate
Human-driven climate change sent Pacific Northwest temperatures soaring
As scientists dissect what pushed temperatures up to 5 degrees Celsius above previous records, they may have to revamp how to predict heat waves.
