Science & Society

  1. Science & Society

    NIH struggles to rebound from shutdown

    Researchers fear delayed grant funding from missed review meetings.

    By
  2. Science & Society

    Humans’ living creations put on display

    The Center for PostNatural History, a museum that opened in 2012, features Freckles and other organisms altered by humans.

    By
  3. Science & Society

    Scarcity

    Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explain why having too little means so much.

    By
  4. Science & Society

    Funding slide

    U.S. federal spending on science has decreased sharply since 2010. Scientists are feeling the crunch.

    By
  5. Health & Medicine

    Details of new botulinum toxin withheld

    By
  6. Science & Society

    2013 Nobels decades in the making

    Prizes show that discovery takes inspiration plus perspiration.

    By
  7. Health & Medicine

    Cellular transport research wins Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology

    Guest post by Tina Hesman Saey and Nathan Seppa.

    By
  8. Astronomy

    The NASA take on ‘Gravity’

    An astronaut and a NASA expert consider the reality of the film’s space dangers.

    By
  9. Animals

    The giraffes that sailed to medieval China

    Chinese exploration of the world is often left out of Western textbooks (at least it was left out of mine), but for a brief period, from 1405 to 1433, the Chinese under Ming emperor Yongle sent out numerous trade missions that reached as far as present-day Kenya. During the fourth expedition, which left China in 1413, part of the fleet led by commander Zheng He sailed to Bengal in India, where in 1414 they met envoys from the African coastal state of Malindi (now part of Kenya). The men from Malindi had brought with them as tribute giraffes, and they gave one of those giraffes to the Chinese, who took it home.

    By
  10. Science & Society

    A new look and other fruits of our digital experiments

    Science News has reinvented itself many times over the decades, and while our latest incarnation pushes us into the digital future, our mission remains unchanged: to translate the latest advances of science into an easy-to-read form.

    By
  11. Science & Society

    Feedback

    Readers respond to our stories 'Distracted Driving' and 'Ratio of a good life exposed as ‘nonsense’'

    By
  12. Health & Medicine

    Home births more risky than hospital deliveries

    Babies born at home are more likely to lack pulse after five minutes.

    By