News
- Animals
Vinegar eels can synchronize swim
Swarming, swimming nematodes can move together like fish and also synchronize their wiggling — an ability rare in the animal kingdom.
By Nikk Ogasa - Health & Medicine
A faulty immune response may be behind lingering brain trouble after COVID-19
The immune system’s response to even mild cases of COVID-19 can affect the brain, preliminary studies suggest.
- Oceans
The past’s extreme ocean heat waves are now the new normal
Marine heat waves that were rare more than a century ago now routinely occur in more than half of global ocean, suggesting we’ve hit a “point of no return.”
- Planetary Science
Earth has a second known ‘Trojan asteroid’ that shares its orbit
A recently found space rock is about one kilometer wide, orbits ahead of Earth around the sun and will stick around for at least 4,000 years.
By Liz Kruesi - Archaeology
A taste for wild cereal sowed farming’s spread in ancient Europe
Balkan groups collected and ate wild cereal grains several millennia before domesticated cereals reached Europe.
By Bruce Bower - Animals
A new device helps frogs regrow working legs after an amputation
A single treatment shortly after adult frogs lost part of their legs spurred regrowth of limbs useful for swimming, standing and kicking.
- Health & Medicine
Will animal-to-human organ transplants overcome their complicated history?
The elusive goal of using animal organs for transplants could be within reach, but it’s too soon to tell.
By Laura Beil - Animals
Gut microbes help some squirrels stay strong during hibernation
Microbes living in the critters’ guts take nitrogen from urea and put it into the amino acid glutamine, helping squirrels retain muscle in the winter.
- Animals
Urban animals may get some dangerous gut microbes from humans
Fecal samples from urban wildlife suggest human gut microbes might be spilling over to the animals. The microbes could jeopardize the animals’ health.
- Neuroscience
Americans tend to assume imaginary faces are male
When people see imaginary faces in everyday objects, those faces are more likely to be perceived as male, a new study shows.
- Planetary Science
Machine learning points to prime places in Antarctica to find meteorites
Using data on how ice moves across Antarctica, researchers identified more than 600 spots where space rocks may gather on the southern continent.
- Animals
An Arctic hare traveled at least 388 kilometers in a record-breaking journey
An Arctic hare’s dash across northern Canada, the longest seen among hares and their relatives, is changing how scientists think about tundra ecology.