All Stories
- Animals
Mantis shrimp tune their eyes with sunscreen
Blocking some rays in just the right way creates six ways of actually seeing ultraviolet light.
- Animals
Red kangaroo’s tail acts like a fifth leg
Red kangaroos wield their tails like another limb when moving slowly.
- Psychology
Vocal fry
At the lowest registers of the human voice, a creaky, popping sound known as vocal fry emerges.
- Math
Scientists’ grasp of confidence intervals doesn’t inspire confidence
Confidence intervals are often misrepresented and are commonly misunderstood, even by researchers.
- Health & Medicine
Supercooling makes livers for transplants last longer
Supercooling a rat liver for transplant greatly increased an organ’s survival time outside the body, potentially opening the door for global allocation of human organs.
- Paleontology
Flightless dino-bird wore full-body feathers
Recently unearthed Archaeopteryx fossil sports full coat of feathers, suggesting feather evolution was more complex than previously thought.
- Health & Medicine
Candidate asthma and allergy drug passes early test
By suppressing an inflammation-causing antibody, an experimental drug can lessen allergy and asthma symptoms for months at a time.
- Neuroscience
Autism may carry a benefit: a buffer against Alzheimer’s
Brain plasticity of people with autism may protect them from Alzheimer’s disease, scientists propose.
- Life
Tibetans live high life thanks to extinct human relatives
DNA shared by modern-day Tibetans and extinct Denisovans suggests people picked up helpful genes through interbreeding with other hominids.
- Life
Stem cell papers retracted
Researchers who reported easy method for making stem cells admit mistakes mar their work, and have retracted their papers from Nature.
- Planetary Science
Titan’s origins linked to Oort cloud
The building blocks of Titan may have formed in the early solar system, not from a warm disk around Saturn when the planet was young.
- Genetics
Finally, some solid science on Bigfoot
DNA analysis finds no Bigfoot, no yeti, two weird bears and one scientist on a quest for the truth.
