News
- Archaeology
This 1.4-million-year-old hand ax adds to Homo erectus’ known toolkit
A newly described East African find, among the oldest bone tools found, shows the ancient hominids crafted a range of simple and more complex tools.
- Genetics
A bacterial toxin enables the first mitochondrial gene editor
Researchers have engineered a protein from bacteria that kills other microbes to change DNA in a previously inaccessible part of the cell.
- Physics
The universe might have a fundamental clock that ticks very, very fast
A theoretical study could help physicists searching for a theory of quantum gravity.
- Health & Medicine
These cells slow an immune response. Derailing them could help fight tumors
Immune therapies don’t work for a lot of cancer patients. Some researchers are enhancing these treatments with drugs that stymie suppressor cells.
- Health & Medicine
A COVID-19 vaccine may come soon. Will the blistering pace backfire?
Speed is essential, but not at the expense of safety and efficacy, experts warn. Sacrificing either could damage public trust.
- Neuroscience
Boosting a liver protein may mimic the brain benefits of exercise
Finding that liver-made proteins influence the brain may advance the quest for an “exercise pill” that can deliver the benefits of physical activity.
- Science & Society
There’s little evidence showing which police reforms work
When stories of police violence against civilians capture public attention, reforms follow despite a dearth of hard data quantifying their impact.
- Physics
Physicists have ‘braided’ strange quasiparticles called anyons
All known particles fall into two classes. Physicists just found new evidence of a third class in 2-D materials.
- Animals
Calculating a dog’s age in human years is harder than you think
People generally convert a dog’s age to human years by multiplying its age by seven. But a new study shows the math is way more complex.
- Genetics
South Americans may have traveled to Polynesia 800 years ago
DNA analyses suggest that Indigenous people from South America had a role in the early peopling of Polynesia.
- Health & Medicine
What you need to know about the airborne transmission of COVID-19
More than 200 experts have implored the World Health Organization to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread through the air.
- Particle Physics
This is the first known particle with four of the same kind of quark
A weird four-quark particle could be a unique testing ground for the strong force that governs how quarks stick together.
