An Atlas of Our Cells
Hundreds of researchers team up to map the human body's trillions of cells, and how they all get along. ...read more
Month: February 2019
20 Things You Didn’t Know About Chocolate
Scientists are still sorting out the chemistry, health effects and origins of this tasty treat, first enjoyed in South America more than 5,000 years ago. ...read more
Why is a Young Man Suddenly Convinced He’s a Doctor?
When an economics student starts practicing medicine on his classmates, real doctors have to step in. ...read more
Tame the Pain
Just one incident can make the brain overreact to future experiences. Researchers believe the solution is to reframe and retrain. ...read more
NASA’s New Nuclear Reactor Could Change Space Exploration
The Kilopower reactor is tiny, and it could power the spacecraft of the future. ...read more
The Secret Origins of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
How the Order of the Dolphin helped establish the scientific search for aliens. ...read more
A New Way to See Magnetic Fields
Using neutrons, materials scientists develop a method that goes below the surface. ...read more
What’s not to LOVE about Citizen Science?
Advance research about heart health, early childhood development, animal lifespans, and more. Then, mark your calendars! Citizen Science Day is April 13. Sign up to join the global Megathon and help us accelerate research on Alzheimer’s! Participate from home or join a team at a local library. Librarians: Check out the free Citizen Science Day webinars featured below. Then register your library if you’d like to get involved in Citizen Science Day 2019. Che ...read more
With Ancient Human DNA, Africa’s Deep History Is Coming to Light
In 2010, extraordinary circumstances allowed geneticists to reconstruct the first full genome of an ancient human: the DNA came from a hairball, frozen 4,000 years in Greenland soil. Since then, methods have improved so much in cost and efficiency that individual papers now report genomic data from hundreds of dead people (here, here, here). Ancient DNA (aDNA) has now been published from well over 2,000 human ancestors, stretching as far back as 430,000 years ago. But around 70 percent of ...read more
How Scientists Actually Dismantle a Nuclear Bomb
(Inside Science) -- There are enough nuclear weapons in the world to cause atomic Armageddon many times over, according to scientists, who estimate that no country could fire more than 100 nuclear warheads without wreaking such devastation that their own citizens back home would be killed. Most nuclear nations recognized by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons -- namely, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- have set about reducing their arsenals. C ...read more