Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Deblina Sarkar is building microscopic machines to enter our brains
The ultratiny devices can communicate wirelessly from inside living cells and may one day help cure brain diseases.
- Humans
Race car drivers tend to blink at the same places in each lap
Blinking is thought to occur randomly, but a new study tracking blinks in racing drivers shows it can be predictable — and strategic.
- Health & Medicine
How over-the-counter birth control pills could improve reproductive health
The switch to over-the-counter access for a birth control pill will circumvent certain barriers and help improve reproductive autonomy.
- Health & Medicine
As U.S. courts weigh in on mifepristone, here’s the abortion pill’s safety record
Decades of data, including data collected during the coronavirus pandemic, support mifepristone’s safety. The drug’s fate in the United States may now be determined by judicial review.
- Archaeology
The oldest scaled-down drawings of actual structures go back 9,000 years
Rock engravings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia may be maps or blueprints of desert kites, massive structures once used to capture animal herds.
- Science & Society
Anténor Firmin challenged anthropology’s racist roots 150 years ago
In The Equality of the Human Races, Haitian scholar Anténor Firmin showed that science did not support division among the races.
- Health & Medicine
Stimulating spleens with ultrasound hints at a treatment for inflammation
Using an intense kind of ultrasound stimulation against inflammation holds promise but so far has been tested only in rodents and human blood samples.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists may have found an antidote for death cap mushrooms
A dye countered the effects of a mushroom toxin in human cells and mice. If the antidote does the same in people, it has potential to save lives.
- Science & Society
Deliberate ignorance is useful in certain circumstances, researchers say
The former East German secret police, the Stasi, spied on people for years. But when given access to the Stasi files, most people didn’t want to read them, researchers found.
- Neuroscience
A rare mutation helped one man stave off Alzheimer’s for decades
The brain of a Colombian man with an inherited form of Alzheimer’s may hint at ways to halt or slow the progression of the disease.
- Space
50 years ago, cosmic rays may have caused Apollo astronauts to see lights
Apollo astronauts reported seeing flashes of light where there were none. Fifty years later, the flashes still mess with modern astronauts’ vision.
- Tech
A flower-shaped soft robot could make brain monitoring less invasive
Once inserted in the skull, the device unfurls flexible sensors that can monitor the brain's electrical activity less invasively than current methods.
