All Stories

  1. Physics

    How to get the biggest splash at the pool using science

    Move over belly flops and cannonballs. Manu jumps, pioneered by New Zealand’s Māori and Pasifika communities, reign supreme.

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  2. Humans

    FDA cuts imperil food safety, but not how you might think

    Layoffs at the FDA, USDA and CDC could erode the U.S. food safety system. Experts aren’t so worried about milk or chicken today; they’re concerned about the future.

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  3. Planetary Science

    A possible new dwarf planet skirts the solar system’s edge

    For the dwarf planet candidate, one trip around the sun takes over 24,000 years. Its orbit challenges a proposed path for a hypothetical Planet Nine.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    A cup of chickpeas a day lowers cholesterol

    Adding a cup of chickpeas or black beans to people’s daily diets could improve health by lowering cholesterol and inflammation, a new study suggests.

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  5. Space

    A private Japanese spacecraft failed on its way to the moon’s surface 

    The spacecraft’s owner, ispace, is attempting to land these crafts to commercialize lunar resources.

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  6. Archaeology

    Precolonial farmers thrived in one of North America’s coldest places

    Ancestral Menominee people in what’s now Michigan’s Upper Peninsula grew maize and other crops on large tracts of land despite harsh conditions.

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  7. Animals

    Preemptively cutting rhinos’ horns cuts poaching

    Comparing various tactics for protecting rhinos suggests that dehorning them drastically reduces poaching.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    A diet full of tiny plastics triggered health problems in mice

    Mice exposed to polystyrene nanoplastics developed problems in their guts and livers. It’s not yet clear if humans are similarly affected.

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  9. Animals

    Probiotics helped great star corals fend off a deadly disease

    A probiotic paste prevented the spread of stony coral tissue loss disease, but the treatment is still a proof-of-concept, not a cure.

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  10. Earth

    Small earthquakes can have a big impact on the movements of major faults

    Small and far-off earthquakes can stifle the spread of large motions on some of the world’s biggest faults.

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  11. Animals

    Flamingos create precise water vortices in a shrimp-hunting frenzy

    Nashville Zoo flamingos reveal the oddball birds generate many types of vortices to eat. The swirls could be an inspiration to human engineers.

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  12. Plants

    Trees ‘remember’ times of water abundance and scarcity

    Spruce trees that experienced long-term droughts were more resistant to future ones, while pines acclimatized to wet periods were more vulnerable.

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