News
- Climate
California landfills are belching high levels of climate-warming methane
Airborne remote sensing spots the Golden State’s biggest emitters of the potent greenhouse gas from the sky.
- Health & Medicine
Drug-resistant microbes kill about 35,000 people in the U.S. per year
The latest CDC report on drug-resistant microbes finds that these pathogens infect close to 3 million people in the United States each year.
- Animals
A tooth fossil shows Gigantopithecus’ close ties to modern orangutans
Proteins from the past help clarify how an ancient Asian ape that was larger than a full-grown, modern male gorilla evolved.
- Space
NASA gave Ultima Thule a new official name
The distant world briefly visited by New Horizons is now called Arrokoth, a Powhatan word that means “sky.”
- Earth
Plastics outnumber baby fish 7-to-1 in some coastal nurseries
Ocean slicks serve as calm, food-rich nurseries for larval fish. A new study shows that slicks also accumulate plastics, which get eaten by baby fish.
- Science & Society
Why a warrant to search GEDmatch’s genetic data has sparked privacy concerns
A search warrant issued by a state judge in Florida gives police access to DNA profiles of over a million Americans in a public genealogy database.
- Animals
Flipping a molecular switch can turn warrior ants into foragers
Toggling one protein soon after hatching makes Florida carpenter ants turn from fighting to hunting for food.
- Animals
Power lines may mess with honeybees’ behavior and ability to learn
Under power lines, honeybees might suffer neurological effects from exposure to electromagnetic fields.
- Animals
Silver-backed chevrotains have been ‘rediscovered’ by science after 29 years
With help from Vietnamese villagers, researchers captured photos of a species of deerlike ungulate thought lost to science nearly three decades ago.
- Health & Medicine
Vitamin E acetate is a culprit in the deadly vaping outbreak, the CDC says
Researchers detected vitamin E oil in all samples of lung fluid from 29 patients suffering from lung injuries tied to e-cigarettes.
- Earth
Geology, not CO2, controlled monsoon intensity in Asia’s ancient past
For millions of years, shifting geologic plates — not carbon dioxide levels —held the most sway over the intensity of Asia’s seasonal winds and rains.
- Humans
The medieval Catholic Church may have helped spark Western individualism
Early Catholic Church decrees transformed families and may help explain why Western societies today tend to be individualistic and nonconformist.
