Uncategorized
- Animals
Extreme climate shifts long ago may have helped drive reptile evolution
The end-Permian extinction left reptiles plenty of open ecological niches. But rapid climate change may be what kick-started the animals’ dominance.
- Health & Medicine
The new CDC guidelines may make back-to-school harder
The public health agency’s coronavirus advice could change how schools operate and may spur COVID-19 outbreaks in classrooms.
- Anthropology
‘The Five-Million-Year Odyssey’ reveals how migration shaped humankind
A globe-trotting trek through history shows how past population migrations changed the course of human biology and culture.
- Life
An award-winning photo captures a ‘zombie’ fungus erupting from a fly
The winner of the 2022 BMC Ecology and Evolution photo competition captures a macabre cycle of life and death in the Peruvian Amazon.
- Environment
Common, cheap ingredients can break down some ‘forever chemicals’
Forever chemicals, or PFAS, are harmful compounds that are very difficult to degrade. But some are no match for lye and dimethyl sulfoxide.
- Animals
Why mosquitoes are especially good at smelling you
How Aedes aegypti mosquitoes smell things is different from how most animals do, making hiding human odors from the insects more complicated.
- Planetary Science
Oort cloud comets may spin themselves to death
How icy objects from the solar system’s fringe break up as they near the sun is a long-standing mystery. One astronomer now thinks he has an answer.
- Health & Medicine
The first known monkeypox infection in a pet dog hints at spillover risk
A person passed monkeypox to a dog. Other animals might be next, allowing the virus to set up shop outside of Africa for the first time.
- Particle Physics
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
The massive quarks — counterintuitively heavier than the proton itself — might carry about 0.6 percent of a proton’s momentum.
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Two new books show how sexism still pervades astronomy
In A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman and The Sky Is for Everyone, female astronomers recount how sexism has affected their careers.
- Physics
Spiraling footballs wobble at one of two specific frequencies
Researchers simulated the path of a flying football to study how pigskins wobble and why they drift sideways.
- Planetary Science
Asteroid impacts might have created some of Mars’ sand
Roughly a quarter of the Red Planet’s sand is spherical bits of glass forged in violent impacts, new observations reveal.
