An exercise-induced hormone linked to a range of benefits might add another to its repertoire: protection against Alzheimer's disease. A new paper, published in Nature Medicine, explains that the hormone irisin, released by our bodies when we exert ourselves, seems to offer protection against the memory loss and brain damage associated with Alzheimer's. In those with the disease, however, irisin levels are depleted. Boosting irisin levels through exercise, then, might be a way to stav ...read more

Since at least the early '80s, the world has been getting greener. Satellite data show plants cover more and more land every year. That's happening even as deforestation increases in the tropics. Scientists have attributed some of the greening to climate change and an effect called CO2 fertilization, where rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fuel photosynthesis, the process plants use to make food, and in turn help plants grow. Now researchers have discovered that agriculture - expan ...read more

If a tree drops in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Humans may never know, but mosquitoes might. Until now, it was thought that mosquitoes could only hear a few inches away, but new research shows that they can detect sound from up to 32 feet away. This surprising ability allows Aedes aegypti mosquitos to track down distant mates and even tune in to human speech. The study, published on February 7 in the journal Current Biology, also offers another sur ...read more

In the desert town of Lajamanu, Australia, at the bend of a narrow dirt road, Carmel O’Shannessy worked at a school as a teacher-linguist in the early 2000s. Lajamanu’s Indigenous Warlpiri people, who live in the country’s Northern Territory, were skilled at drawing sustenance from the landscape’s parched red soil, and O’Shannessy soon discovered hidden cultural riches the Warlpiri had stored up. As she got to know the children in the community, O’Shannessy n ...read more

In 1970, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Centre was forced to address a tricky new issue in the realm of women in space: the validity of pants in the workplace.  Women and pants have a strange relationship throughout the 20th century, and further back, too, though for the moment we aren't going to get into Joan of Arc wearing men's armour. Pants — or trousers or slacks — began the last century as men's clothing, but it wasn't long before exceptions started to appear in th ...read more

(Inside Science) -- In a finding that mirrors the fantasy of HBO's “Game of Thrones,” French researchers working at the site of a third-century B.C. settlement have discovered evidence that Celtic communities decapitated and preserved human heads. A team of archaeologists unearthed fragments of human skulls that they believe confirm a practice of deliberate decapitation. They concluded that the skulls were either war trophies or the result of a still little understood ritual practic ...read more

For decades, scientists have been on the hunt for brilliant galaxies in the distant universe. These quasars were first noticed for being spectacularly bright – some of the most energetic objects ever discovered. But astronomers think many of them – in fact, the vast majority from the early universe – may be in hiding, camouflaged behind much closer galaxies. Because of their brightness, astronomers want to use quasars to probe the era of reionization. This is a ...read more

Planets, stars, and black holes all grow by consuming material from a spinning disk. While these disks may differ in size, they're all mostly dependent on the mighty force of gravity, which keeps them spinning around the central mass. Gravity lets small clumps grow into bigger clumps. But it's not enough to pull the whole disk into the middle in one giant clump, because angular momentum is pulling those clumps away from the center as they spin. That's a good thing, because it means that t ...read more

Last week, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft departed the International Space Station, having delivered a batch of new experiments and cargo. Among them was the Refabricator, a new machine that will not only make objects on demand things for the astronauts, it will recycle them too. While 3-D printers are becoming commonplace, nowhere are their benefits more obvious than in the confines of space. Cargo resupply missions to the ISS are routine, but as human spaceflight pu ...read more

While we tend to think that Earth’s oceans make it a watery planet, it’s actually only a tiny fraction of a percent of water by mass. Looking out into the universe, it’s clear water is more common than our own planet implies. Some exoplanets can have half their mass as water. So, what causes some planetary systems to stay wet, while others dry out? The answer might be aluminum. Tim Lichtenberg is the lead author of a new study published Feb. 11, in Nature Astronomy. He says th ...read more