This August, the sky will dim until the daytime world becomes dark. The bright disk that usually lights everything, burns skin, feeds plants and tells animals when to sleep will become a blank circle, surrounded by the shifting haze of its atmosphere. This scene will pass over the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina, potentially capturing an audience even larger than the Super Bowl. And these people — including you, I hope — will likely react emotionally, not scientifically. ...read more

Pot growers have turned public lands into industrial agricultural sites. And the ecosystem effects are alarming. On a hot August morning, Mourad Gabriel steps out of his pickup onto the gravel road that winds up the side of Rattlesnake Peak. Dark-bearded and muscular, the research ecologist sports a uniform of blue work clothes, sturdy boots and a floppy, Army-style camo hat. He straps on a pistol. “Just to let you know,” Gabriel says, sensitive to the impression the gun makes, ...read more

A woman suffers from digestive symptoms that wax and wane for months. What could be the root of her mysterious illness? “I’ve never seen my belly so big,” said Christina, puffing her cheeks out like a cartoon character. “It keeps bloating and bloating.” Christina, the wife of my good friend Norman, was a healthy 50-year-old who took no medications and had no chronic health issues. She had first told me about the bloating, diarrhea and stomach cramps one month e ...read more

Bacteria That Shape Blood Vessels Researchers have discovered a surprising link between gut-dwelling bacteria and the brain’s blood vessels. Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) are capillaries that are enlarged or deformed and thin-walled, making them vulnerable to leaks — which can lead to stroke or seizure. To study these deformities, experts genetically engineered mice to form CCMs after an injection of a specialized drug. Some rodents went on to develop abdominal infections, ...read more

A neurobiologist’s legacy: rewriting how cells operate — and how they go rogue. A model of Ben Barres’ brain sits on the windowsill behind his desk at Stanford University School of Medicine. To a casual observer, there’s nothing remarkable about the plastic lump, 3-D-printed from an MRI scan. Almost lost in the jumble of papers, coffee mugs, plaques and trophies that fill the neurobiologist’s office, it offers no hint about what Barres’ actual gray matter ...read more

Long before recent political turmoil across the pond came to a head, Britain made a literal break for it and physically separated from mainland Europe. Now, researchers have an idea of how the process went down some 450,000 years ago. A new study from Imperial College London and other European institutes supports the claim that before the English Channel existed, a large chalk ridge connected Britain and France. The ridge acted as a dam, holding back a lake that had formed in front of a nearby g ...read more

On Aug. 21, the dark inner part of the moon’s shadow will sweep across the United States, creating a total solar eclipse for regions in 14 states. But, you may ask, the sun is so much larger than the moon, so how does this work? While our daytime star has a diameter about 400 times larger than that of the moon, it also lies roughly 400 times farther away. This means both disks appear to be the same size, so at certain times from certain locations, the moon can completely cover the sun. Be ...read more

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“It’s the first direct evidence of how the tools were used,” says Nowell. “All of a sudden, a wealth of information is unlocked.” Detecting species by protein residues on stone tools is especially important for once-marshy sites, like Shishan, which are not conducive to bone preservation.Although the Shishan excavations have yet to determine which species of hominin was at the site, Nowell’s team found that they were eating everything from Asian elephant and r ...read more

War and strife have uprooted many researchers. Can their life’s work be saved? Eqbal Dauqan was excited. She had just completed her postdoctoral fellowship and was leading the new therapeutic nutrition department she’d lobbied to create at Yemen’s Al-Saeed University. Then the bombs started dropping. “Everything was damaged, our university, our home. My family had to move to a rental apartment outside the center of the city, where people were fighting and killing eac ...read more