Science & Society
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Science & Society
U.S. science funding sends young people a mixed message
I think science, and more specifically scientific thinking, is the most powerful tool for understanding the world. Everyone should learn how to think like a scientist.
- Physics
Top 10 scientific supers
From supersonic to supernova, superego and supersymmetry, a roundup of science’s super superlatives.
- Science & Society
NIH struggles to rebound from shutdown
Researchers fear delayed grant funding from missed review meetings.
- Science & Society
Humans’ living creations put on display
The Center for PostNatural History, a museum that opened in 2012, features Freckles and other organisms altered by humans.
- Science & Society
Scarcity
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explain why having too little means so much.
- Science & Society
Funding slide
U.S. federal spending on science has decreased sharply since 2010. Scientists are feeling the crunch.
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- Science & Society
2013 Nobels decades in the making
Prizes show that discovery takes inspiration plus perspiration.
- Health & Medicine
Cellular transport research wins Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology
Guest post by Tina Hesman Saey and Nathan Seppa.
- Astronomy
The NASA take on ‘Gravity’
An astronaut and a NASA expert consider the reality of the film’s space dangers.
- Animals
The giraffes that sailed to medieval China
Chinese exploration of the world is often left out of Western textbooks (at least it was left out of mine), but for a brief period, from 1405 to 1433, the Chinese under Ming emperor Yongle sent out numerous trade missions that reached as far as present-day Kenya. During the fourth expedition, which left China in 1413, part of the fleet led by commander Zheng He sailed to Bengal in India, where in 1414 they met envoys from the African coastal state of Malindi (now part of Kenya). The men from Malindi had brought with them as tribute giraffes, and they gave one of those giraffes to the Chinese, who took it home.
- Science & Society
A new look and other fruits of our digital experiments
Science News has reinvented itself many times over the decades, and while our latest incarnation pushes us into the digital future, our mission remains unchanged: to translate the latest advances of science into an easy-to-read form.
