Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Tiny living machines called xenobots can create copies of themselves
When clusters of frog cells known as xenobots form a Pac-Man shape, they are especially efficient at replicating in a new way, researchers say.
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Can psychedelics meet their potential for treating mental health disorders?
Psychedelics hold lots of promise as treatments for mental health disorders like PTSD and depression. But the drugs still face hurdles.
- Health & Medicine
Merck’s COVID-19 pill may soon be here. How well will it work?
Once hailed as a potential game changer, more complete data now reveal drawbacks of Merck’s antiviral COVID-19 pill, molnupiravir.
- Oceans
The Southern Ocean is still swallowing large amounts of humans’ carbon dioxide emissions
A 2018 study suggested the ocean surrounding Antarctica might be taking up less CO₂ than thought, but new data suggest it is still a carbon sink.
- Planetary Science
This tiny, sizzling exoplanet could be made of molten iron
A newly discovered exoplanet that whips around its star in less than eight hours is smaller than Earth, as dense as iron and hot enough to melt.
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50 years ago, a 6-year-old boy became the first known rabies survivor
In 1971, a doctor thought he’d found a cure for rabies. Fifty years later, we still don’t have one.
- Health & Medicine
What we know and don’t know about the omicron coronavirus variant
The new omicron variant has lots of mutations and sparked a surge of cases in South Africa, but researchers still don’t know a lot about it.
- Anthropology
Ancient footprints suggest a mysterious hominid lived alongside Lucy’s kind
A previously unknown hominid species may have left its marks in muddy ash about 3.66 million years ago in what is now East Africa.
By Bruce Bower - Paleontology
This dinosaur had a weapon shaped like an Aztec war club on its tail
The flat and spiky tail club of a newly discovered ankylosaur was unique, even for this often weirdly armored group of dinosaurs.
- Anthropology
Ancient giant orangutans evolved smaller bodies surprisingly slowly
Fossil teeth from Chinese caves indicate that a single, ancient orangutan species gradually trimmed down over nearly 2 million years.
By Bruce Bower - Chemistry
Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent
Newly ID’d sulfur compounds in cannabis flowers give the plant its telltale odor. One, prenylthiol, is what also gives “skunked beer” its funky flavor.
- Life
Fungi may be crucial to storing carbon in soil as the Earth warms
Fungi help soil-making bacteria churn out carbon compounds that are resilient to heat, keeping those compounds in the ground, a study suggests.
By Freda Kreier