News
- Climate
Zapping clouds with lasers could tweak planet’s temperature
Breaking up the ice particles inside cirrus clouds could make them reflect more light, turning them into a tool to combat global warming.
- Genetics
Risk identified in procedure for ‘three-parent babies’
Resurgent mitochondria could spell trouble for disease therapy.
- Oceans
Ancient tsunamis reshaped Mars’ landscape
Ancient tsunamis generated by meteorite impacts may have reshaped ocean coastlines on Mars.
- Life
1.56-billion-year-old fossils add drama to Earth’s ‘boring billion’
Ancient multicellular eukaryotes big enough to be seen by the naked eye discovered in 1.56-billion-year-old rock in China may be an ancestor of modern algae.
- Life
How the Galápagos cormorant got its tiny wings
Galápagos cormorants’ tiny wings may be due to altered reception in cellular antennas.
- Life
Giraffe’s long neck linked to its genetic profile
Giraffes’ genes may reveal how their necks grew long and hearts got strong.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists wrestle with possibility of second Zika-spreading mosquito
It’s hard to say yet whether Asian tiger mosquitoes will worsen the ongoing Zika outbreak in the Americas.
- Anthropology
‘Slam-dunk’ find puts hunter-gatherers in Florida 14,500 years ago
Finds at an underwater site put people in Florida a surprisingly long time ago.
- Earth
Remnants from Earth’s birth linger 4.5 billion years later
Shaken, not stirred: Tungsten isotopes reveal that mantle convection has left some remnants of ancient Earth untouched for 4.5 billion years.
- Life
Gut microbe may challenge textbook on complex cells
Science may finally have found a complex eukaryote cell that has lost all of its mitochondria.
- Life
How to trap sperm
Lab-made beads can trick and trap sperm, potentially preventing pregnancy or selecting sperm for fertility treatments.
- Health & Medicine
Healthiest weight just might be ‘overweight’
The body mass index tied to lowest risk of death has risen since the 1970s. It now falls squarely in the “overweight” category.
