In April 2024, the cicadas are starting to buzz. Reports of cicada broods emerging in the South of the U.S. are underway. The insect’s signature high-pitched and alarming sound has already led some people to call law enforcement in South Carolina to report a siren-like noise. However, that noise is not a siren, but periodical cicadas. These cicadas, broods XIX and XII, emerge in cycles of 13 to 17 years. It’s estimated that in 2024, trillions of cicadas will emerge from different states in t ...read more

In 1956, the U.S. Federal Aid Highways Act provided $25 billion to create a network of roads across the nation. In today’s money, that’s equivalent to $215 billion.The act had huge economic and social consequences. It helped boost the economy and create an automobile-centered society. But the new freeways also divided communities, disrupted pedestrian movement and broke social ties. In some notorious cases, freeway building was used to clear working-class Black communities and segregate citi ...read more

You did it! As of April 26, you've completed 1,024,319 acts of science, with four days still to go! But even though we've reached our target and April ends next week, we’re not skimping on fun citizen science activities! We’re focusing on medicine and public health, along with a big One Million Acts of Science Celebration. April 28: Help the Girl Scouts fight Alzheimer's Disease!For the month of April, Girl Scouts Overseas is playing Stall Catchers to fight Alzheimer's Disease and you can he ...read more

The terror bird — an extinct group of carnivorous birds that once dominated the current territory of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay after the extinction of dinosaurs — persisted between 23 million years ago and up to about 17 thousand years ago.With the head of an eagle, curved beak, body and legs of an African ostrich, and claws as big as those of the Jurassic Park raptors, “you wouldn't want to be in a cage with one of them,” remarked Washington Jones, a paleo-ornithologist at t ...read more

“We haven’t had a full night’s sleep since our son was born eight years ago,” said Mrs. B, pointing to her son’s dry, red and itchy skin.Her son has had eczema his entire life. Also known as atopic dermatitis, this chronic skin disease affects about 1 in 5 children in the industrialized world. Some studies have found rates of eczema in developing nations to be over thirtyfold lower compared with industrialized nations.However, rates of eczema didn’t spike with the Industrial Revoluti ...read more

In March 2024, a group of boaters in Venice Beach, Florida ran into a great white shark feeding on a whale carcass. While white sharks’ diet consists primarily of large marine mammals such as seals and sea lions, scavenging off of whale carcasses is an important way for them to maintain their diet. From the southern tip of South Africa to the California coast, we’ve observed white sharks, also known as great white sharks, engaging in fascinating hunting patterns from shorelines around the w ...read more

Few drugs have achieved the stardom that semaglutide, marketed in the United States as Ozempic or Wegovy, has today. A synthetic, injectable version of an intestinal hormone, it is the flagship of a new category of drugs initially developed for diabetes that rose to fame in the medical and public arena as an effective weapon against obesity. Semaglutide has proved so successful that its manufacturer, the Danish company Novo Nordisk, is unable to keep up with demand.The US Food and Drug Administr ...read more

Many things can throw one’s microbiome out of kilter. Not eating enough fiber or relying too much on highly processed food can starve the “good bacteria” dwelling in your gut. Frequent and sustained antibiotic use can also unintentionally kill them off. With today’s busy schedule, many people forgo the things that maintain good gut health. “Modern lifestyles hit the microbiome at many different angles," says Christopher Damman, a gastroenterologist at the University of Washington in Se ...read more

The quokka, an adorable marsupial hailing from southwestern Australia, is bound to put a smile on anyone’s face. They’re small and fuzzy, and the distinctive shape of their mouth gives quokkas the appearance of an ever-present grin. And despite their limited range, these herbivorous marsupials have captured the hearts of millions around the world — the viral #quokkaselfie trend on social media features thousands of selfies taken with quokkas.  Yet as the quokka population rapidly declin ...read more

The deeper you go, the bigger they get. This is an adage that applies to much of the life eking out an existence in the crushing depths of our oceans. Near the surface, tiny crabs are terrified of larger predators. In the deep, 13-foot-wide giant spider crabs are usually the predators themselves. Perhaps the most infamous example of this deep-sea gigantism is the giant squid, capable of attaining lengths of over 40 feet and possibly even longer should it stretch out its tremendous tentacles. Gi ...read more