All Stories
- Earth
Oxygen a bit player in Earth’s outer core
Sulfur and silicon may be more abundant in the planet’s heart than thought.
- Health & Medicine
Getting the picture of how someone died
CT scans can often reveal a clear cause of death, possibly making some autopsies unnecessary, British researchers find.
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- Space
Super Saturnian storm
The Cassini spacecraft captured images of massive tempest in planet’s northern hemisphere.
- Animals
Lost to history: The “churk”
More than a half-century ago, researchers at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — virgin hens that would reproduce via parthenogenesis. Along the way, and ostensibly quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a rooster-fathered hybrid that the scientists termed a churk.
- Life
Immune cells function beyond battle
Cells lining the intestines take cues from immune cells and gut bacteria when deciding whether self-defense or metabolism is more important.
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- Climate
Matt Crenson, Reconstructions
In ancient Southwest droughts, a warning of dry times to come.
- Humans
Matt Crenson, Reconstructions
Tools tell a more complicated tale of the origin of the human genus.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee delivers jolt deep in the brain
Caffeine strengthens electrical signals in a portion of the hippocampus, a study in rats finds.
- Humans
Two feet or four, software is the same
All walking animals use the same basic nerve patterns to put one leg in front of the other(s).
- Psychology
Babies may benefit from moms’ lasting melancholy
Fetuses pick up on maternal depression and thrive after birth if mothers don’t get better, a new study suggests.
