All Stories
- Archaeology
A puzzling mix of artifacts raises questions about Homo sapiens' travels to China
A reexamined Chinese site points to a cultural mix of Homo sapiens with Neandertals or Denisovans.
- Neuroscience
Tiny treadmills show how fruit flies walk
A method to force fruit flies to move shows the insects’ stepping behavior and holds clues to other animals’ brains and movement.
- Animals
Hibernating bumblebee queens have a superpower: Surviving for days underwater
After some bumblebee queens were accidentally submerged in water and survived, researchers found them to be surprisingly tolerant of flooding.
- Health & Medicine
What can period blood reveal about a person’s health?
The FDA recently approved a menstrual blood test for diabetes, the first diagnostic of any kind based on period blood. It may be just the beginning.
- Science & Society
In ‘Get the Picture,’ science helps explore the meaning of art
Journalist Bianca Bosker infiltrates the secretive art world to understand the science and psychology of why art matters to the human experience.
- Artificial Intelligence
This robot can tell when you’re about to smile — and smile back
Using machine learning, researchers trained Emo to make facial expressions in sync with humans.
- Animals
This newfound longhorn beetle species is unusually fluffy
Discovered in Australia, the beetle is covered in whitish hairs and has distinctive eye lobes, antennae and leg shapes.
- Animals
50 years ago, scientists wondered how birds find their way home
In the 1970s, lab tests hinted that birds can navigate using magnetic fields. New studies suggest that beak and eye proteins are behind the ability.
-
-
Rethinking how we live with wildfires
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses a new approach for managing wildfires that includes collaboration with local and Indigenous communities.
- Math
Scientists find a naturally occurring molecule that forms a fractal
The protein assembles itself into a repeating triangle pattern. The fractal seems to be an accident of evolution, scientists say.
- Animals
In a first, these crab spiders appear to collaborate, creating camouflage
Scientists found a pair of mating crab spiders blending in with a flower. The report may be the first known case of cooperative camouflage in spiders.
