Science & Society
‘A Polar Affair’ delves into a centurylong cover-up of penguin sex
In a new book, Lloyd Spencer Davis seeks to understand why an Antarctic explorer kept some of his penguin observations a secret.
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
What happens when governments crack down on scientists just doing their jobs?
Through their research findings or sense of duty, scientists can run afoul of government leaders keen to control information’s spread.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Life
Remarkable fossils capture mammals’ recovery after the dino-killing asteroid
A fossil-rich site in Colorado is revealing how mammals rebounded and flourished after an asteroid strike 66 million years ago.
Notebook
Life
Saharan silver ants are the world’s fastest despite relatively short legs
Saharan silver ants can hit speeds of 108 times their body length per second.
Features
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Is taking birth control as a teen linked to depression? It’s complicated
As researchers sift through conflicting data, no clear answers emerge on whether birth control during teenage years can cause depression later.
More Stories from the December 7, 2019 issue
- Climate
California landfills are belching high levels of climate-warming methane
Airborne remote sensing spots the Golden State’s biggest emitters of the potent greenhouse gas from the sky.
- Earth
Plastics outnumber baby fish 7-to-1 in some coastal nurseries
Ocean slicks serve as calm, food-rich nurseries for larval fish. A new study shows that slicks also accumulate plastics, which get eaten by baby fish.
- Animals
Power lines may mess with honeybees’ behavior and ability to learn
Under power lines, honeybees might suffer neurological effects from exposure to electromagnetic fields.
- Space
Light leaking from a distant galaxy hints at a cosmic makeover’s origins
Ultraviolet light slips through a hole in a distant galaxy’s gas. Older galaxies might have used the trick to ionize most of the universe’s hydrogen.
- Physics
Trapping atoms in a laser beam offers a new way to measure gravity
A new type of experiment to measure the strength of Earth’s gravity uses atoms suspended in light rather than free-falling atoms.
- Humans
The medieval Catholic Church may have helped spark Western individualism
Early Catholic Church decrees transformed families and may help explain why Western societies today tend to be individualistic and nonconformist.
- Life
Self-destructing mitochondria may leave some brain cells vulnerable to ALS
Mitochondria that appear to dismantle themselves in certain brain cells may be a first step toward ALS, a mouse study suggests.
- Neuroscience
People who lack olfactory bulbs shouldn’t be able to smell. But some women can
Some women who appear to lack the brain structures that relay scent messages still have an average sense of smell, and scientists have no idea how.
- Humans
Fossils suggest tree-dwelling apes walked upright long before hominids did
A partial skeleton from an 11.6-million-year-old European ape still doesn’t answer how hominids adopted a two-legged gait.
- Space
Realigning magnetic fields may drive the sun’s spiky plasma tendrils
Solar spicules emerge near counterpointing magnetic fields, hinting that self-adjusting magnetism creates these filaments, which may heat the corona.
- Health & Medicine
A human liver-on-a-chip may catch drug reactions that animal testing can’t
An artificial organ may better predict serious drug side effects than animal testing does.
- Health & Medicine
Dengue cases in the Americas have reached an all-time high
There have been more dengue cases in the Americas this year than ever before, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
- Humans
50 years ago, income inequality was severe in the U.S. It still is
In 1969, lower-income households tended to be nonwhite and in the U.S. South. That still holds true today.
- Tech
The first artificial material that follows sunlight may upgrade solar panels
Rows of tiny stemlike rods called SunBOTs orient themselves toward light, optimizing the solar energy that they can harvest.
- Life
Caribou migrate farther than any other known land animal
Caribou in Alaska and Canada migrate up to 1,350 kilometers round trip each year, a study reports.
- Space
The solar system may have a new smallest dwarf planet: Hygiea
New images reveal Hygiea is round, a final criterion for promoting the wee world from asteroid to dwarf planet status.
- Sponsored Content
Conversations with Maya: Feng Zhang
Maya Ajmera, President & CEO of Society for Science & the Public and Publisher of Science News, chatted with Feng Zhang, a Core Institute Member of the Broad Institute, a Professor at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
