Potential hints of weird new particles in a dark matter detector have evaporated with new data. Following up on a beguiling result from its predecessor experiment, the XENONnT experiment found no sign of extra blips that could point to new particles or another phenomenon, scientists report July 22 in Vienna at the International Conference on […]
It may soon be too late to end the global monkeypox epidemic. “We are losing the window to be able to contain this outbreak,” Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases doctor and virologist at Emory University in Atlanta said July 21 during a seminar sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International […]
How descendants of cannibals evolved abilities to share a home mostly without killing each other — never mind the rare oopsie snack — resonates after several pandemic years. Among the many kinds of velvety Delena huntsman spiders, four species from Australia show what for their kind is a downright freaky tolerance between a mom and […]
Dinosaurs might have been endothermic, or warm-blooded…. The combination of large size, endothermy and naked skin may explain the extinction of dinosaurs. About 65 million years ago there was a sharp drop in temperature…. Dinosaurs, lacking skin insulation and too large to burrow underground … could not survive. Meanwhile, evidence has come that … the […]
A century from now, when biologists are playing games of clones and engineers are playing games of drones, physicists will still pledge their loyalty to the Kingdoms of Substance and Force. Physicists know the subjects of these kingdoms as fermions and bosons. Fermions are the fundamental particles of matter; bosons transmit forces that govern the […]
With delicate hues of purple and pink, a lab technique called gram staining has reliably characterized bacteria for more than a century. Yet many scientists are mistaken about why the vivid method works, new research finds. Contrary to standard scientific texts, the purple dye called crystal violet, a main ingredient in gram staining, does not […]
Sci-fi novels and films like Gattaca no longer have a monopoly on genetically engineered humans. Real research scripts about editing the human genome are now appearing in scientific and medical journals. But the reviews are mixed. In Gattaca, nearly everyone was genetically altered, their DNA adjusted to prevent disease, enhance intelligence and make them look […]
An unusual blast of radio waves from deep space had a sense of rhythm. Over the few seconds in December 2019 when the burst was detected, it kept a steady beat. That tempo holds clues to the potential origin of the mysterious outburst, one of a class of flares called fast radio bursts. Of the […]
Pocket gophers certainly don’t qualify as card-carrying 4-H members, but the rodents might be farming roots in the open air of their moist, nutrient-rich tunnels. The gophers subsist mostly on roots encountered in the tunnels that the rodents excavate. But the local terrain doesn’t always provide enough roots to sustain gophers, two researchers report in […]
Humans have long tried to wrangle water. We’ve straightened once-meandering rivers for shipping purposes. We’ve constructed levees along rivers and lakes to protect people from flooding. We’ve erected entire cities on drained and filled-in wetlands. We’ve built dams on rivers to hoard water for later use. “Water seems malleable, cooperative, willing to flow where we […]