All Stories
- Physics
A tiny gold ball is the smallest object to have its gravity measured
A gold sphere with a mass of about 90 milligrams pulled on another sphere in accordance with Newton’s law of universal gravitation.
- Health & Medicine
An experimental toothpaste aims to treat peanut allergy
By rolling an immune therapy into a toothbrushing routine, a company hopes to show its product can help build and maintain tolerance to allergens.
- Environment
The world wasted nearly 1 billion metric tons of food in 2019
A new United Nations global food waste report shows where waste can be reduced, which would decrease hunger and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Anthropology
Finds in a Spanish cave inspire an artistic take on warm-weather Neandertals
Iberia’s mild climate fostered a host of resources for hominids often pegged as mammoth hunters.
- Animals
A year after Australia’s wildfires, extinction threatens hundreds of species
As experts piece together a fuller picture of the scale of damage to wildlife, more than 500 species may need to be listed as endangered.
- Health & Medicine
People fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can socialize without masks, CDC says
Two weeks after their final COVID-19 shot, people can visit other vaccinated people indoors without masks or physical distancing.
- Animals
A sea slug’s detached head can crawl around and grow a whole new body
Chopped-up planarians regrow whole bodies from bits and pieces. But a sea slug head can regrow fancier organs such as hearts.
- Animals
Delve into the history of the fight for Earth’s endangered creatures
The new book ‘Beloved Beasts’ chronicles past conservation efforts as a movement and a science, and explores how to keep striding forward.
- Physics
A magnetic trap captures elusive ultracold plasma
Pinning plasma within a set of magnetic fields offers physicists a new way to study clean energy, space weather and the inner workings of stars.
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Genetic medicine is fraught with ethical challenges
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses coverage of the ethical questions around genetics and precision medicine.
- Earth
To understand how ‘night-shining’ clouds form, scientists made one themselves
A rocket, a bathtub’s worth of water and a high-altitude explosion reveal how water vapor cools the air to form shiny ice-crystal clouds.
