News

  1. Astronomy

    Here’s why humans chose particular groups of stars as constellations

    Distances between stars, their brightnesses and patterns of human eye movement explain why particular sets of stars tend to be grouped together.

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  2. Ecosystems

    How kelp forests off California are responding to an urchin takeover

    A pair of studies reports 95 percent loss of kelp forests along the northern coast while sea otters are helping maintain surviving kelp farther south.

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  3. Science & Society

    Parents in Western countries report the highest levels of burnout

    The first survey comparing parental exhaustion across 42 countries links it to a culture of self-reliance.

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  4. Astronomy

    The ‘USS Jellyfish’ emits strange radio waves from a distant galaxy cluster

    The unusual pattern of radio waves dubbed the USS Jellyfish tells a story of intergalactic gas meeting black hole by-products.

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  5. Animals

    A toxin behind mysterious eagle die-offs may have finally been found

    A 20-year study of water weeds and cyanobacteria in the southern United States pinpoints a bird-killing toxin, and it's not your usual suspect.

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  6. Animals

    A gene defect may make rabbits do handstands instead of hop

    Mutations in a gene typically found throughout the nervous system rob rabbits of their ability to hop. Instead, the animals walk on their front paws.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine holds up in an updated analysis of trial data

    The redo dropped the overall efficacy of AstraZeneca’s vaccine from 79 percent to 76 percent. But a slight fluctuation is not unexpected, experts say.

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  8. Animals

    Octopus sleep includes a frenzied, colorful, ‘active’ stage

    Four wild cephalopods snoozing in a lab had long stretches of quiet napping followed by brief bursts of REM-like sleep.

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  9. Life

    A plant gene may have helped whiteflies become a major pest

    An agricultural pest may owe part of its success to a plant detox gene it acquired long ago that lets the insect neutralize common defenses.

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  10. Anthropology

    How using sheepskin for legal papers may have prevented fraud

    Removing fat is key to turning animal skin into parchment. With sheepskin, the process creates a writing surface easily marred by scratched-out words.

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  11. Physics

    Atomic clocks take a step toward redefining the second

    Measurements of the clocks’ frequencies provide the most precise clock comparisons yet, with uncertainties less than a quadrillionth of a percent.

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  12. Astronomy

    A new black hole image reveals the behemoth’s magnetic fields

    A new analysis of Event Horizon Telescope data from 2017 brings to light the magnetic fields twisted around the black hole at the core of galaxy M87.

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