News
- Health & Medicine
Dust can spread influenza among guinea pigs, raising coronavirus questions
In three out of 12 guinea pig pairs, an animal coated in influenza virus, but immune to infection, spread the virus to another rodent through dust.
- Astronomy
In a first, astronomers spotted a space rock turning into a comet
Scientists have caught a space rock in the act of shifting from a Kuiper Belt object to a comet. That process won’t be complete until 2063.
- Earth
Death Valley hits 130° F, the hottest recorded temperature on Earth since 1931
Amid a heat wave in the western United States, California’s Death Valley is back in the record books with the third hottest temperature ever recorded.
- Life
How two new fungus species got named after the COVID-19 pandemic
Tiny fuzz on a beetle and fake leopard spots on palms now have Latin names that will forever nod to the new coronavirus.
- Astronomy
Hubble watched a lunar eclipse to see Earth from an alien’s perspective
Hubble observed sunlight filtering through Earth’s atmosphere during a lunar eclipse to see what a habitable exoplanet’s atmosphere might look like.
- Science & Society
Interfaith soccer teams eased Muslim-Christian tensions — to a point
Soccer bonded Christian and Muslim teammates in Iraq, but that camaraderie didn’t change attitudes.
- Neuroscience
Newly discovered cells in mice can sense four of the five tastes
Some cells in mice can sense bitter, sweet, sour and umami. Without the cells, some flavor signals don’t get to the ultimate tastemaker — the brain.
- Archaeology
The oldest known grass beds from 200,000 years ago included insect repellents
Found in South Africa, 200,000-year-old bedding remnants included fossilized grass, bug-repelling ash and once aromatic camphor leaves.
- Life
Climate change, not hunters, may have killed off woolly rhinos
Ancient DNA indicates that numbers of woolly rhinos held steady long after people arrived on the scene.
- Health & Medicine
4 reasons you shouldn’t trash your neck gaiter based on the new mask study
Despite news coverage to the contrary, the study was meant to figure out how to evaluate masks, not actually do the comparison.
- Physics
Four types of flames join forces to make this eerie ‘blue whirl’
Pinning down the structure of the “amazingly complex” blaze could help scientists control it.
- Life
A single molecule may entice normally solitary locusts to form massive swarms
Scientists pinpoint a compound emitted by locusts that could inform new ways of controlling the pests.
