Picture rows of translucent tanks in a dark room. Partially formed embryos float silently, bathed in amniotic fluid. That’s the science fiction portrayal of an artificial womb, where machines gestate our babies, stirring unsettling undertones of inhumanity. It’s birth without pregnancy. As The Matrix’s Neo might say: Whoa. While that’s still the stuff of fantasy, there have been serious attempts to create artificial wombs dating back to the 1960s. Most fell far short of t ...read more

Connected devices make our lives easier — and more vulnerable. We need white hats more than ever. One winter morning in 2015, as he left for work from his home in Silver Spring, Md., Jonathan Margulies pushed the button on his remote to close his garage door. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. The motor was shot. He ended up replacing it with a “smart” opener that not only lifted and lowered the door, but also connected to the internet. With a swipe on a smartphone ...read more

The decrease in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests researchers observed in a pilot study of the Portland, Ore., area after the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Only middle-aged Portlanders, 45-64 years old, saw this benefit, though — the nearly universally insured elderly population, 65+, saw no changes. How often men should knock boots weekly to potentially reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease. Doing the dirty deed seems to lower blood levels of homocysteine, an amino ac ...read more

The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more

The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more

A scientist creates a crowdfunding platform for other researchers. Like many undergrads in science fields, Cindy Wu was intrigued by an academic career in research. After the biology major graduated in 2011, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Washington in Seattle, her alma mater. While there, she wanted to repurpose a treatment for anthrax to help clear up staph infections, but wasn’t sure how to get money for her idea. When she approached her adviser about it, W ...read more

11. In 1868, Charles Darwin was the first to document a collection of physical and behavioral traits seen in domestic animals, particularly mammals, but not their wild relatives. 12. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that researchers offered a single explanation for the phenomenon of floppy ears, smaller teeth, tameness and other “domestication syndrome” traits: a mild deficit in neural crest cells.13 In vertebrate embryos, neural crest cells (NCCs) form along the dorsal side, or ...read more

It’s a no-brainer to harness renewable energy sources like solar and wind. But a recent study in PNAS suggested that wind (and other renewables) will fall short of slashing carbon emissions, because there just isn’t enough of it in the U.S. Based on data from a company owned by one of the study’s authors, this map’s white areas show where wind turbines would be most effective — but because wind isn’t available all the time, they’d only produce roughly 50 ...read more

How the decades-long conflict led to today's increasingly impotent antibiotics. When the World Health Organization issued a report last February highlighting the antibiotic-resistant pathogens that posed the gravest public health threats, it capped a disheartening year. A powerful variety of E. coli reached American shores, and a Nevada woman died of an infection untreatable by available antibiotics. While it’s not time to panic, the stakes are high. The U.S. sees about 2 million resi ...read more