All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Seven facts and a mystery about hand, foot and mouth disease
Hand, foot and mouth disease is a viral illness that most kids get before age 5. Several different viruses cause the condition, which causes blisters and fevers.
- Neuroscience
Part of brain’s pleasure network curbed in mice with chronic pain
Part of brain’s pleasure network is muffled in mice with chronic paw injuries, a new study finds.
- Health & Medicine
Fist bumps spread fewer bacteria than handshakes
Fist bumping spreads far fewer bacteria than a handshake or a high five, a new study shows.
- Planetary Science
Rosetta spacecraft gets better view of comet’s fuzz
News images are giving astronomers a sense of the size of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's coma and the shape of its core.
- Health & Medicine
Resistance to key malaria drug spreads
Parasites that are less susceptible to artemisinin now affect several Asian countries.
- Environment
Deepwater Horizon damage footprint larger than thought
In the Gulf of Mexico, most deep-sea corals have escaped damage from the Deepwater Horizon blowout. However, the impact does extend deeper and wider than previously thought.
- Paleontology
Dinosaurs shrank continually into birds
Steady miniaturization and rapidly changing skeletons transformed massive animals into today’s fliers.
- Astronomy
When looking for aliens, try finding their pollution
Future telescopes may discover civilized aliens by detecting the industrial pollutants called fluorinated gases in exoplanet atmospheres.
- Psychology
Goalkeepers deceive themselves when facing penalty kicks
Soccer’s goalies fall victim to a logical fallacy during the sport’s most high-pressure situation, seeing trends where none exists.
- Quantum Physics
Birds’ turns match math of quantum matter
Equations that describe superfluidity may explain how information about which way and when to turn spreads in a starling flock.
- Earth
Early life probably fell victim to massive space rocks
Planet-sterilizing impacts probably snuffed out early life on Earth until around 4.3 billion years ago.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum Cheshire Cat experiment splits particles from their properties
When facing a fork in the road, neutrons appear to go in one direction and their spins in the other.
