News

Animals

Migratory fish species are in drastic decline, a new UN report details

The most comprehensive tally of how migrating animals are faring looks at more than 1,000 land and aquatic species and aims to find ways to protect them.

Artificial Intelligence

How do babies learn words? An AI experiment may hold clues

Using relatively little data, audio and video taken from a baby’s perspective, an AI program learned the names of objects the baby encountered.

Neuroscience

A new device let a man sense temperature with his prosthetic hand

A device that can be integrated into prosthetic hands capitalizes on phantom sensations to enable users to sense hot and cold.

Animals

Here’s how many shark bites there were in 2023

The chance of being bitten by a shark is still incredibly slim, according to a new report from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Animals

The first known scorpion to live with ants carries mini hitchhikers

Small arachnids hitch a ride on the scorpion, possibly to get inside food-rich ant nests.

Plants

Here’s why blueberries are blue

Nanostructures in a blueberry’s waxy coating make it look blue, despite having dark red pigments — and no blue ones — in its skin, a new study reports.

Planetary Science

Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ moon might contain a hidden ocean

A fresh look at Cassini data reveals slight changes in the tiny moon’s orbit that suggest the presence of a vast ocean beneath the satellite’s icy shell.

Plants

This weird fern is the first known plant that turns its dead leaves into new roots

Cyathea rojasiana tree ferns seem to thrive in Panama’s Quebrada Chorro forest by turning dead leaves into roots that seek out nutrient-rich soil.

Paleontology

A rare 3-D tree fossil may be the earliest glimpse at a forest understory

The 350-million-year-old tree, which was wider than it was tall thanks to a mop-top crown of 3-meter-long leaves, would look at home in a Dr. Seuss book.

Planetary Science

An asteroid may have exploded over Antarctica about 2.5 million years ago

Tiny spherules of rock found in Antarctic ice may point to the oldest known “airburst,” or midair disintegration of an incoming asteroid.

Chemistry

The smallest known molecular knot is made of just 54 atoms

Chemists are still trying to figure out why this combination of gold, phosphorus, oxygen and carbon atoms resulted in a molecular knot in the first place.

Planetary Science

Bacteria that can make humans sick could survive on Mars

Experiments suggest that common illness-causing microbes could not only survive on the Red Planet but also might be able to thrive.