News

Health & Medicine

Here are experts’ answers to questions about COVID-19 vaccines for little kids

Pediatricians recommend that parents vaccinate their kids, toddlers and babies against COVID-19 to protect them from coronavirus infection.

Astronomy

A fast radio burst’s rapid, steady beat offers a clue to its cosmic origin

Amped-up neutron stars, pairs of magnetically entangled neutron stars or magnetar quakes could explain a three-second-long train of radio blips.

Animals

Do gophers farm roots? It’s not as clear as viral articles claim

Pocket gophers aerate and fertilize the soil in a practice that encourages rudimentary food production, researchers claim. But not everyone agrees.

Tech

This octopus-inspired glove helps humans grip slippery objects

The human hand, for all its deftness, is not great at grasping slippery stuff. A new glove aims to change that.

Astronomy

The most distant rotating galaxy hails from 13.3 billion years ago

Astronomers have spotted a rotating galaxy whose light comes from just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

Health & Medicine

Two pig hearts were successfully transplanted into brain-dead people

The transplants kept the patients’ blood flowing for three days and are an early step in figuring out if the procedure might work in living people.

Environment

Flower shape and size impact bees’ chances of catching gut parasites

Bumblebees have higher chances of contracting a gut parasite from short, wide flowers than from blooms with other shapes, experiments show.

Astronomy

Here are the James Webb Space Telescope’s stunning first pictures

President Biden revealed the NASA telescope's image of ancient galaxies whose light has been traveling 13 billion years to reach us.

Physics

Wiggling metal beams offer a new way to test gravity’s strength

A new experiment aims to get a better handle on “Big G,” the poorly measured gravitational constant.

Health & Medicine

The flowery scent of a Zika or dengue infection lures mosquitoes

Mice and humans infected with dengue emit acetophenone, attracting bloodsucking mosquitoes that could then transmit the viruses to new hosts.

Astronomy

Sand clouds are common in atmospheres of brown dwarfs

Dozens of newly examined brown dwarfs have clouds of silicates, confirming an old theory and revealing how these failed stars live.

Plants

This pitcher plant species sets its deathtraps underground

Scientists didn’t expect the carnivorous, eggplant-shaped pitchers to be sturdy enough to survive below the surface.