Vol. 198 No. 7
October 10, 2020 cover

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Science Visualized

Notebook

More Stories from the October 10, 2020 issue

  1. Person in a car getting a nasal swab test
    Health & Medicine

    Treatments that target the coronavirus in the nose might help prevent COVID-19

    Scientists are developing and testing ways to prevent the virus from settling in prime nasal real estate.

    By
  2. Langsdorffia hypogaea male and female
    Plants

    This parasitic plant consists of just flashy flowers and creepy suckers

    With only four known species, Langsdorffia are thieves stripped down to their essentials.

    By
  3. College students walking down the street near Indiana University
    Health & Medicine

    A sobering breakdown of severe COVID-19 cases shows young adults can’t dismiss it

    Of about 3,200 people ages 18 to 34 hospitalized with COVID-19, nearly a quarter entered intensive care, and 10 percent were placed on ventilators.

    By
  4. black metaltail hummingbird
    Animals

    This hummingbird survives cold nights by nearly freezing itself solid

    To survive cold Andean nights, the black metaltail saves energy by cooling itself to record-low temperatures, entering a state of suspended animation.

    By
  5. astronaut on moon
    Space

    How do you clean up clingy space dust? Zap it with an electron beam

    An electron beam is the newest addition to a suite of technologies for cleaning sticky and damaging lunar dust off surfaces.

    By
  6. false-color microscope image of small virus particles on a lung cell
    Health & Medicine

    Lung cell images show how intense a coronavirus infection can be

    Microscopic views reveal virus particles coating the hairlike cilia of an airway cell from the lungs.

    By
  7. MACSJ1206.2-0847 galaxy cluster
    Space

    Dark matter clumps in galaxy clusters bend light surprisingly well

    Cosmologists have found one more way to be confused by dark matter.

    By
  8. Magnetar illustration
    Space

    Neutrinos could reveal how fast radio bursts are launched

    Highly magnetized stellar corpses called magnetars may be the source of two different cosmic enigmas: fast radio bursts and high-energy neutrinos.

    By
  9. GW Orionis illustration
    Space

    A weirdly warped planet-forming disk circles a distant trio of stars

    The bizarre geometry of a disk of gas and dust around three stars in the constellation Orion could be formed by “disk tearing” or a newborn planet.

    By
  10. Jiankui He
    Genetics

    Strict new guidelines lay out a path to heritable human gene editing

    But scientists say making changes in DNA that can be passed on to future generations still isn’t safe and effective, yet.

    By
  11. college football players talking to masked referees
    Health & Medicine

    College athletes show signs of possible heart injury after COVID-19

    Four of 26 college athletes, who had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19, may have had myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

    By
  12. drone view of pasture in Kansas
    Humans

    Drones find signs of a Native American ‘Great Settlement’ beneath a Kansas pasture

    An earthwork buried under a cattle ranch may be part of one of the largest Native American settlements ever established north of Mexico.

    By
  13. Ancient ostracod species mating
    Animals

    A tiny crustacean fossil contains roughly 100-million-year-old giant sperm

    Giant sperm preserved in an ancient ostracod may be the oldest known sperm fossil, showing that giant sperm have existed at least 100 million years.

    By
  14. tobacco hawkmoth drinking from a plant
    Environment

    This moth may outsmart smog by learning to like pollution-altered aromas

    In the lab, scientists taught tobacco hawkmoths that a scent changed by ozone is from a favorite flower.

    By
  15. Hope Diamond
    Earth

    Earth’s rarest diamonds form from primordial carbon in the mantle

    Chemical analyses of the rarest diamonds suggest the planet’s carbon cycle may not go as deep as scientists thought.

    By
  16. Bering Sea ice
    Climate

    Bering Sea winter ice shrank to its lowest level in 5,500 years in 2018

    Peat cores that record five millennia of climate shifts in the Arctic region suggest recent ice loss is linked to rising carbon dioxide levels.

    By
  17. image of a sea butterfly on a black background
    Animals

    Sea butterflies’ shells determine how the snails swim

    New aquarium videos show that sea butterflies of various shapes and sizes flutter through water differently.

    By
  18. Person donating blood
    Health & Medicine

    Blood donations show that the United States is still nowhere near herd immunity

    Testing donated blood for antibodies to the coronavirus highlights that the vast majority of the United States remains susceptible to infection.

    By
  19. photo of a gibbon looking at the camera
    Anthropology

    A stray molar is the oldest known fossil from an ancient gibbon

    A newly described tooth puts ancestors of these small-bodied apes in India roughly 13 million years ago.

    By