April 14, 2018View Digital Issue
Features
Feature
Researchers are asking big questions about animal movements and pest control by tracking tiny insects in flight.
Feature
As heat waves become more common, cities try to respond.
Feature
Researchers reflect on Stephen Hawking's contributions to the field and the cosmological puzzles he left behind.
Call to Action
Editor's Note
Editor in Chief Nancy Shute ponders about memorable scientists and how we can make it easier for people to connect to their work.
Features
As heat waves become more common, cities try to respond.
Researchers are asking big questions about animal movements and pest control by tracking tiny insects in flight.
News
Archaeopteryx fossils suggest the dino-birds were capable of flapping their wings in flight.
Stone tools signal rise of social networking by 320,000 years ago in East Africa, researchers argue.
Mice that gained excessive weight on a high-fat diet also lost a quarter of their taste buds.
A prototype contraceptive for men safely reduced testosterone and other reproductive hormones during a month-long treatment.
To give enough time to take protective action, earthquake warning systems may have to issue alerts long before it’s clear how strong the quake will be.
Stretchy joints let earwig wings flip quickly between folded and unfurled.
Arguments flare over mass public shootings that remain scientifically mysterious.
Venus’ surface seems to be divided into jostling blocks of crust, defying conventional wisdom about how the surfaces of rocky planets work.
Astronomers build on the Drake Equation to probe the chance that humans will find existing aliens. The answer: Not likely.
The Cassini spacecraft plunged to its death into Saturn six months ago, but the discoveries keep coming.
Notebook
An analysis of studies asking kids to draw a scientist finds that the number of females drawn has increased over the last 50 years.
A newly discovered type of aurora is a visible version of usually invisible charged particles drifting in the upper atmosphere.
Tattoos in mice may persist due to an immune response, challenging currently held beliefs about how the skin retains tattoos.
Thanks to high vaccination rates, measles has mostly disappeared from the Americas.
Christine Gabriele is taking tissue samples from humpback whales in Hawaii to determine why more and more have nodular dermatitis.
Reviews & Previews
The Truth About Animals digs up surprising stories about sloths, pandas, penguins and other wildly misunderstood wildlife.
In Losing the Nobel Prize, astrophysicist Brian Keating discusses the downsides of science’s top honor.
Darwin’s Fossils recounts how finding extinct species in South America helped Charles Darwin develop his theory of evolution.
Letters to the Editor
Readers had questions about the dino family tree and Venus' habitability.
Science Visualized
A new map shows that light-colored lunar plains point back to huge impact basins, raising questions about the age and history of the moon.