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- Earth
Ancient zircons may record the dawn of plate tectonics
A change in gemstone composition starting about 3.8 billion years ago may offer the earliest record of one tectonic plate sliding over another.
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A changing climate means changes on the plate
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses the future of food through the lens of climate change.
- Health & Medicine
How I decided on a second COVID-19 booster shot
Boosters help for a short time, and mixing vaccines doesn’t seem to push the immune system toward making unhelpful antibodies, studies show.
- Paleontology
Pterosaurs may have had brightly colored feathers on their heads
The fossil skull of a flying reptile hints that feathers originated about 100 million years earlier than scientists thought.
- Animals
Dog breed is a surprisingly poor predictor of individual behavior
Despite the popular conviction that dog breeds are associated with specific traits, breed accounts for only 9 percent of behavioral differences.
- Neuroscience
Mom’s voice holds a special place in kids’ brains. That changes for teens
Unfamiliar voices hold special appeal for teens, a sign of a shift from a focus on mostly family to wider networks, brain scans suggest.
- Health & Medicine
Joggers naturally pace themselves to conserve energy even on short runs
Data from fitness trackers and treadmill tests challenge ideas about what drives speed.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, scientists were seeking the cause of psoriasis
In the 1970s, scientists found a link between a chemical messenger and psoriasis, a complex inflammatory skin disorder.
- Plants
Leonardo da Vinci’s rule for how trees branch was close, but wrong
An update to da Vinci’s elegant, 500-year-old “rule of trees” offers a powerful, new way to describe the structure of almost any leafy tree.
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotics diminish babies’ immune response to key vaccines
With each round of antibiotics during a child’s first two years, antibody levels to four vaccines dropped further from what’s considered protective.
- Space
All of the bases in DNA and RNA have now been found in meteorites
Scientists have detected adenine and guanine in meteorites for decades and seen hints of uracil. But cytosine and thymine had remained elusive.
