All Stories
- Genetics
Gene activity change can produce cancer
Scientists have long thought that epigenetic changes, which alter gene activity, can cause cancer. Now they have demonstrated it in a mouse experiment.
- Science & Society
Feedback
Readers discuss mammograms, crops in a warming climate and the impacts of a recession on developing personalities.
- Astronomy
Listening in on cosmic messages
Yet to be deciphered, fast radio bursts represent the latest messages from space with the potential to tell us more about the cosmos.
- Science & Society
Logarithms celebrate their 400th birthday
Four centuries ago, John Napier provided human calculators the time-saving gift of logarithms.
- Astronomy
Searching for distant signals
Fast radio bursts are bright, brief and seem to come from very far away. Astronomers are pointing major telescopes skyward to solve the puzzle of these cryptic signals.
- Plants
These trees don’t mind getting robbed
Desert teak trees in India produce more fruit after they’ve been visited by nectar robbers.
- Health & Medicine
Long-term Parkinson’s treatment sheds bad rep
Prolonged used of levodopa doesn’t increase the severity of side effects from the Parkinson’s drug, new research shows.
- Earth
Wonders of the northern lights
An Icelandic aurora catches a photographer’s eye and a contest prize.
- Chemistry
Molecular cage traps rare gases
Organic compound could cull valuable xenon from the air and detect cancer-causing radon in homes.
- Life
Chemical evidence paved way for discovery of early life
The discovery in 1964 of compounds related to chlorophyll in billion-year-old rocks pushed back the timing of life’s origins.
- Environment
Wild monkeys near Fukushima have low blood cell counts
Primates near the ill-fated nuclear power plant may have been affected by radiation.
- Paleontology
Feathered dinosaurs may have been the rule, not the exception
Newly discovered fossil suggests feathers may have been common among all dinosaur species.
