All Stories

  1. Humans

    An amusing romp through word histories

    From ak to wid, a new book makes etymology fun.

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  2. Paleontology

    New evidence weakens case against climate in woolly mammoths’ death

    Hunters responsible for woolly mammoths’ extinction, suggests a chemical analysis of juveniles’ tusks.

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  3. Chemistry

    Nanoparticles in foods raise safety questions

    As scientists cook up ways to improve palatability and even make foods healthier, some are considering the potential health risks of tiny additives.

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  4. Climate

    High-flying birds recruited for meteorology

    Monitoring the midflight movements of high-flying birds can provide valuable meteorological data, new research shows.

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  5. Animals

    How to drink like a bat

    Some bats stick out their tongues and throbs carry nectar to their mouths.

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  6. Paleontology

    Dimetrodon’s diet redetermined

    The reptilelike Dimetrodon dined mainly on amphibians and sharks, not big herbivores as scientists once believed.

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  7. Anthropology

    Sleep time in hunter-gatherer groups on low end of scale

    Hunter-gatherer communities in Africa and South America have similar sleeping patterns as people living in postindustrial societies, researchers find.

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  8. Planetary Science

    Five surprising discoveries about Pluto

    Here are five key (though not necessarily new) findings in the paper that epitomize the surprising complexity of the Pluto system.

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  9. Animals

    Bees get hooked on flowers’ caffeine buzz

    Flowers drug honey bees with caffeinated nectar to trick them into returning, causing the bees to shift their foraging and dancing behaviors.

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  10. Plants

    Early cyanobacteria fossils dug up in 1965

    In 1965, early photosynthetic plant fossils were discovered. The date of earliest oxygen-producing life forms has since been pushed much earlier.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    First known case of sexually transmitted Ebola reported

    A Liberian woman contracted Ebola in March by having sex with a survivor of the viral disease, researchers report.

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  12. Neuroscience

    Adolescent brains open to change

    Adolescent brains are still changing, a malleability that renders them particularly sensitive to the outside world.

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