News
- Humans
Artists who paint with their feet have ‘toe maps’ in their brains
Brain specialization comes with toe specialization in people who use their feet for painting, eating and writing.
- Physics
Physicists may be a step closer to solving the mystery of proton size
Multiple measurements now agree that the proton is smaller than previously thought.
- Tech
A new prosthetic leg that senses touch reduces phantom pain
A prosthetic leg that can sense foot pressure and knee angle helped two men walk faster and reduced phantom leg pain.
- Humans
Supercooling tripled the shelf life of donor livers
Cooling organs to subzero temperatures could help them last longer, making lifesaving transplants available to more people.
- Earth
Ancient crystal growths in caves reveal seas rose 16 meters in a warmer world
The Pliocene era cave formations on the Spanish coast of Mallorca offer hints about how oceans could respond to human-driven climate change.
- Humans
Vaping is suspected in a fifth death and hundreds of injuries
U.S. health officials can’t yet point to a substance or device that’s behind a rising number of severe lung injuries and deaths tied to e-cigarettes.
- Space
India lost contact with its first lunar lander just before touchdown
Chandrayaan 2 mission officials are trying to figure out why its rover-carrying lander went silent moments before it was to reach the moon’s surface.
- Humans
The longest Dead Sea Scroll sports a salt finish that the others lack
A newly discovered salty lamination on the Temple Scroll could help explain why the ancient manuscript’s parchment is remarkably bright.
- Earth
How Kilauea’s lava fed a massive phytoplankton bloom
Kilauea’s heavy flow of lava into the ocean in 2018 added both food and heat to fuel a sudden bloom of ocean algae.
- Physics
A new magnetic swirl, or skyrmion, could upgrade data storage
Magnetic whorls in a new type of material could be easier to control than their predecessors.
- Humans
DNA indicates how ancient migrations shaped South Asian languages and farming
Farming in the region may have sprung up locally, while herders from afar sparked language changes.
- Space
Einstein’s general relativity reveals new features of a pulsar
Measurements that rely on the physicist’s theory of gravity are letting astronomers view a pulsar in ‘a whole new way.’
