Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Controlling nerve cells with light opened new ways to study the brain
A method called optogenetics offers insights into memory, perception and addiction.
- Health & Medicine
How one medical team is bringing COVID-19 vaccines to hard-to-reach Hispanic communities
Unidos Contra COVID’s Spanish-speaking volunteers go to where Philadelphia’s Hispanic people gather, giving shots and addressing concerns one-on-one.
- Climate
Collapse may not always be inevitable for marine ice cliffs
Runaway collapse of ice cliffs could dramatically boost sea level. But these cliffs may not be so vulnerable, new simulations suggest.
- Quantum Physics
Physicists used LIGO’s mirrors to approach a quantum limit
Using LIGO’s laser beams to reduce jiggling rather than detect gravitational waves, scientists have gotten closer to the realm of quantum mechanics.
- Earth
A new book uses stories from tsunami survivors to decode deadly waves
In ‘Tsunami: The World’s Greatest Waves,’ two scientists chronical hundreds of eyewitness accounts to show the human cost of life at the water’s edge.
- Astronomy
Dust and a cold spell on Betelgeuse could explain why the giant star dimmed
Scientists had two options to explain Betelgeuse’s weird behavior in late 2019. They chose both.
- Science & Society
Moral judgments about an activity’s COVID-19 risk can lead people astray
People use values and beliefs as a shortcut to determine how risky an activity is during the pandemic. Those biases can lead people astray.
- Chemistry
Many cosmetics contain hidden, potentially dangerous ‘forever chemicals’
Scientists found signs of long-lasting PFAS compounds in about half of tested makeup products, especially waterproof mascaras and lipsticks.
- Plants
A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ
A cantilever-like plant part long evaded researchers’ notice in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, grown in hundreds of labs worldwide.
- Ecosystems
As ‘phantom rivers’ roar, birds and bats change their hunting habits
A massive experiment in the Idaho wilderness shows it’s not just human-made noises that impact ecosystems. Natural noises can too.
- Paleontology
An ancient creature thought to be a teeny dinosaur turns out to be a lizard
CT scans of hummingbird-sized specimens trapped in amber reveal that the 99-million-year-old fossils have a number of lizardlike features.
- Physics
Gravitational waves confirm a black hole law predicted by Stephen Hawking
The first black hole merger detected by LIGO affirms that the surface area of a black hole can increase over time, but not decrease.
