All Stories
- Science & Society
Is U.S. democracy in decline? Here’s what the science says
Political scientists disagree over how to interpret a slight dip in the health of U.S. democracy.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, chronic pain mystified scientists
Chronic pain has puzzled scientists for decades, but diagnoses and treatments have come a long way.
- Environment
An idea to save Mexico’s oyamel forests could help monarch butterflies too
Climate change is putting monarch butterflies’ overwintering forests in Mexico at risk. Could planting new forests solve that problem?
- Oceans
How tiny phytoplankton trek long distances upward in the ocean
Taking in seawater while filtering out dense salts lets unicellular phytoplankton migrate tens of meters vertically toward sunnier seas.
- Life
Here are some stellar picks from Nikon’s top microscopy images of 2024
The annual Small World photomicrography competition, now in its 50th year, puts life’s smallest details under the microscope.
- Planetary Science
The cataclysmic origins of most of Earth’s meteorites have been found
Just a few smashups in the asteroid belt may account for 70 percent of Earth’s meteorites, limiting what’s known about our solar system’s history.
- Plants
Carnivorous plants eat faster with a fungal friend
Insects stuck in sundew plants’ sticky secretions suffocate and die before being subjected to a medley of digestive enzymes.
- Planetary Science
NASA’s Europa mission is a homecoming for one planetary astronomer
Over her long career, Bonnie Buratti has seen the search for life in the solar system go from a joke to a flagship mission.
- Animals
At-home experiments shed light on cats’ liquid behavior
Cats can flow like liquids through tall crevices, but they solidify a bit as they approach short crannies, new research shows.
- Neuroscience
Your brain can perceive subtle odor changes in a single sniff
The speed at which our brain can tell smells apart is on par with color perception, a new sniff device shows.
- Psychology
Navigation research often excludes the environment. That’s starting to change
Participants “navigating” on a lab computer have shaped navigation knowledge. Studies that add in the environment challenge those findings.
- Planetary Science
Saturn’s first Trojan asteroid has finally been discovered
Saturn joins the sun’s other giant planets that have Trojans, space rocks that orbit along the same path.
