News
- Health & Medicine
A human liver-on-a-chip may catch drug reactions that animal testing can’t
An artificial organ may better predict serious drug side effects than animal testing does.
- Humans
Fossils suggest tree-dwelling apes walked upright long before hominids did
A partial skeleton from an 11.6-million-year-old European ape still doesn’t answer how hominids adopted a two-legged gait.
- Neuroscience
People who lack olfactory bulbs shouldn’t be able to smell. But some women can
Some women who appear to lack the brain structures that relay scent messages still have an average sense of smell, and scientists have no idea how.
- Health & Medicine
Running just once a week may help you outpace an early death
Any amount of running can lower a person’s risk of early death, an analysis of multiple studies finds.
- Tech
The first artificial material that follows sunlight may upgrade solar panels
Rows of tiny stemlike rods called SunBOTs orient themselves toward light, optimizing the solar energy that they can harvest.
- Space
Voyager 2 reveals the dynamic, complex nature of the solar system’s edge
With two spacecraft outside the sun’s magnetic bubble, researchers get a new look at the boundary between the sun and its galactic environment.
- Science & Society
Can neighborhood outreach reduce inner-city gun violence in the U.S.?
While mass shootings grab U.S. headlines, the steady scourge of inner-city gun violence gets less attention — and fewer solutions.
- Tech
Here’s what it will take to adapt the power grid to higher wildfire risks
Better sensing tech on power lines and reliance on more local power sources could help avoid vast power outages like those in California in October.
- Archaeology
A toe bone hints that Neandertals used eagle talons as jewelry
An ancient eagle toe bone elevates the case for the use of symbolic bird-of-prey pendants among Neandertals, researchers say.
- Chemistry
Molecular jiggling may explain why some solids shrink when heated
Scientists may have figured out how scandium fluoride crystals shrink as temperature rises, possibly leading to new insights into superconductors.
- Health & Medicine
New details on immune system ‘amnesia’ show how measles causes long-term damage
Measles wipes the memories of immune cells in the body.
- Neuroscience
Sleep may trigger rhythmic power washing in the brain
Strong, rhythmic waves of cerebrospinal fluid wash into the human brain during sleep and may help clean out harmful proteins.
