Earth
Will Smith narrates ‘One Strange Rock,’ but astronauts are the real stars
Hosted by Will Smith, ‘One Strange Rock’ embraces Earth’s weirdness and explores the planet’s natural history.
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Cover Story
When bogs burn, the environment takes a hit
Bogs and other peatlands around the world store outsized amounts of carbon. Climate change and agriculture are putting them at risk.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Earth
New mapping shows just how much fishing impacts the world’s seas
Industrial fishing now occurs across 55 percent of the world’s ocean area while only 34 percent of Earth’s land area is used for agriculture or grazing.
Notebook
Ecosystems
Humans are overloading the world’s freshwater bodies with phosphorus
Human activities are driving phosphorus levels in the world’s lakes and other freshwater bodies to a critical point.
Features
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Depression among new mothers is finally getting some attention
Scientists search new mothers’ minds for clues to postpartum depression.
More Stories from the March 17, 2018 issue
- Neuroscience
The wiring for walking developed long before fish left the sea
These strange walking fish might teach us about the evolutionary origins of our own ability to walk.
- Health & Medicine
The small intestine, not the liver, is the first stop for processing fructose
In mice, fructose gets processed in the small intestine before getting to the liver.
- Health & Medicine
14 cattle eyeworms removed from Oregon woman’s eye
Oregon woman has the first ever eye infection with the cattle eyeworm Thelazia gulosa.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum computers go silicon
Scientists performed the first quantum algorithms in silicon, and probed quantum bits with light.
- Health & Medicine
Cutting off a brain enzyme reversed Alzheimer’s plaques in mice
Inhibiting an enzyme involved in the production of Alzheimer’s protein globs also made old globs, or plaques, disappear in mouse brains.
- Genetics
Study debunks fishy tale of how rabbits were first tamed
A popular tale about rabbit domestication turns out to be fiction.
- Climate
Look to penguins to track Antarctic changes
Scientists say carbon and nitrogen isotopes found in penguin tissues can indicate shifts in the Antarctic environment.
- Anthropology
In Borneo, hunting emerges as a key threat to endangered orangutans
Only small numbers of Bornean orangutans will survive coming decades, researchers say.
- Chemistry
Household products make surprisingly large contributions to air pollution
A study of smog in the Los Angeles valley finds that paints, fragrances and other everyday items are a growing component of the problem.
- Animals
Strong winds send migrating seal pups on lengthier trips
Prevailing winds can send northern fur seal pups on an epic journey.
- Animals
Ants practice combat triage and nurse their injured
Termite-hunting ants have their own version of combat medicine for injured nest mates.
- Space
Americans would welcome alien life rather than fear it
Americans would probably take the discovery of extraterrestrial microbes pretty well.
- Neuroscience
Babies can recover language skills after a left-side stroke
Very young babies who have strokes in the language centers of their brain can recover normal language function — in the other side of their brain.
- Life
A fake organ mimics what happens in the blink of an eye
A newly crafted artificial eye could help researchers study treatments for dry eye disease and other ailments.
- Particle Physics
The quest to identify the nature of the neutrino’s alter ego is heating up
The search is on for a rare nuclear decay that could prove neutrinos are their own antiparticles and shed light on the universe’s antimatter mystery.
- Astronomy
50 years ago, pulsars burst onto the scene
Thousands of pulsars have been discovered since the announcement of their detection 50 years ago.
