Uncategorized
- Anthropology
How an ancient stone money system works like cryptocurrency
Money has ancient and mysterious pedigrees that go way beyond coins.
- Microbes
How a slime mold near death packs bacteria to feed the next generation
Social amoebas that farm bacteria for food use proteins to preserve the crop for their offspring.
- Planetary Science
What does Mars’ lake mean for the search for life on the Red Planet?
A lake spotted hiding under Martian ice could support life, but finding out if anything lives there could be challenging.
- Animals
Got an environmental problem? Beavers could be the solution
A new book shows how important beavers have been in the past — and how they could improve the landscape of the future.
- Science & Society
People are bad at spotting fake news. Can computer programs do better?
Fake news–finding algorithms could someday make up the front lines of online fact checking.
- Particle Physics
A new quasiparticle lurks in semiconductors
Strange entities called collexons hint at undiscovered physics among interacting subatomic particles in a semiconductor.
- Physics
A star orbiting a black hole shows Einstein got gravity right — again
For the first time, general relativity has been confirmed in the region near a supermassive black hole.
- Genetics
Here’s why wounds heal faster in the mouth than in other skin
Wounds in the mouth heal speedily thanks to some master regulators of immune reactions.
- Planetary Science
Mars (probably) has a lake of liquid water
A 15-year-old Mars orbiter has spotted signs of a salty lake beneath the Red Planet’s south polar ice sheets.
- Health & Medicine
Lowering blood pressure may help the brain
Aggressively treating high blood pressure had a modest positive effect on the development of an early form of memory loss.
- Tech
Readers share their experiences with DNA ancestry tests
Readers delighted in learning about Emmy Noether, and asked about autonomous taxis and how the first Americans may have arrived via coastal routes.
- Science & Society
What does fake news look like to you?
Editor in Chief Nancy Shute discusses the importance of being able to illustrate science visually.
