Tests reveal a lack of microbial diversity on board. That’s been linked to health issues in other settings Astronauts aboard the International Space Station routinely clean up. Here, Japanese astronau...
Heating the glassy shards offers clues to how they formed Shards of glass are what remain of a young Roman man’s brain. Tests show that parts of the brain turned to glass after reaching 510° Celsius. ...
Historically, married women in the United States have done the lion’s share of their households’ laundry, cooking and cleaning. But that gendered norm appears to be shifting, with the gap between the ...
The tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans has a brain just about the width of a human hair. Yet this animal’s itty-bitty organ coordinates and computes complex movements as the worm forages for food. “When...
The Stone Age forest dwellers bolster the idea that humans evolved across Africa An investigation of a previously excavated site in West Africa finds that people inhabited that region’s rainforests, s...
Some companies make the claim, but all the data come from mice In experiments, scientists have found that gut bacteria can have an effect on mice’s desire for sugar. Some companies claim probiotics ca...
Carl Zimmer unspools the history of aerobiology In the 19th century, tuberculosis surged through Europe in a deadly epidemic. A new book recounts how aerobiology, the study of life in the air, illumin...
Frigid water helped paint Mars red and may have shaped a vast coastline, two new studies into the planet’s history reveal. Scientists have detected a possible ancient beach in Mars’ northern hemispher...
The complete hyaenodont fossil holds evolutionary clues about the ancient apex predators Hyaenodonts, illustrated here, were hyena-sized, meat-eating mammals that hunted through the forests of present...
A first survey of museum specimens finds biofluorescence in 37 of 45 species With an extravagant tail, a male of the emperor’s bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea guilielmi) has a lot of feathery decoration ...
A small, rocky island off Iceland is home to the world’s largest breeding colony of Atlantic puffins. When breeding season is in full swing, around 1.5 million adults pair up and nestle into burrows o...
The third episode of The Deep End finds Jon in the operating room as he gets electrodes implanted in his brain. You’ll hear how Jon and other volunteers feel in the hours, days and weeks after their s...
