All Stories
- Animals
For a female mosquito, the wrong guy can mean no babies
Male Asian tiger mosquitoes leave female yellow fever mosquitoes uninterested in mating with their own species, a process known as “satyrization.”
- Health & Medicine
Backwash from nursing babies may trigger infection fighters
A nursing baby’s saliva may get slurped back into mom’s breast, where it stimulates an immune response.
- Planetary Science
Satellite captures double solar eclipse in action
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught a rare double eclipse as both Earth and the moon partially blocked the sun.
- Science & Society
Short memory can be good strategy
Game theory reveals that there’s a limit to the effectiveness of relying on prior results to predict competitors’ behavior.
- Climate
Earth just had its first storm-free hurricane peak in 38 years
This year marks the first time since 1977 that September 12, the typical height of the Atlantic hurricane season, passed without a single major cyclone anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Genetics
Evolution caught red-handed
Scientists have named a new gene on the fruit fly Y chromosome “flagrante delicto Y.”
- Ecosystems
Patrolling bats protect corn fields from pests
Bats play a key role in protecting corn from pests and fungus.
- Materials Science
Electron waves refract negatively
Waves of electrons have been bent backward in a sheet of graphene, allowing physicists to focus electrons the way a lens focuses light.
- Psychology
People find the skin of others’ softer than their own
Humans perceive other peoples’ skin as softer and smoother than their own because touch is important in social bonding, researchers suggest.
- Math
Evidence-based medicine lacks solid supporting evidence
Saving science from its statistical flaws will require radical revision in its methods
- Animals
Shipwreck provides window into Tudor-era cod fishing
In the 1500s, England was feeding its navy with fish caught far from home, a new study finds.
- Archaeology
‘Superhenge’ once lined Stonehenge neighborhood
A row of massive, now-buried stones once bordered a site near Stonehenge.
