One of history’s dark jokes is that the Roman Empire, for all its vaunted accomplishments, only made a single great “contribution” to science: the killing of Archimedes. Today the U.S. risks suffering the same kind of shame. In 212 B.C.E. the Romans sacked the city of Syracuse after a prolonged siege, and a Roman soldier…
An antiparasitic drug became widely known during the covid-19 pandemic, though its uses have nothing to do with the virus HJBC/Shutterstock Source: Shutterstock Before 2020, most people had probably never heard of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. But interest in this once obscure medication skyrocketed during the covid-19 pandemic amid unfounded claims it could prevent or…
CLIMATEWIRE | The White House is rejecting assertions from Democrats and former NOAA officials that its cuts to weather and disaster spending contributed to the Texas flooding that killed more than 100 people. But that stance sidesteps a looming reality: The vast majority of President Donald Trump’s rollbacks to the agencies’ funding, staffing and science…
Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that can spread elsewhere in the body SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Despite many decades of effort and numerous human trials, only one virus that is designed to kill cancers has ever been approved by regulators in the US and Europe. But a second could get the green light at…
Here’s a new detail of how a real-life Cordyceps fungus zombifies still-living animals: Crashing their “blood sugar.” That’s a recently discovered bit of science related to the zombie-apocalypse video game and TV series “The Last of Us.” The fiction chronicles an imaginary version of Cordyceps that has jumped from insects to humankind. The menace spreads…
Most U.S. Babies Are Deficient in Key Gut Microbes Essential for Their Health Babies lacking in key gut bacteria are at greater risk of developing asthma, allergies or eczema By Rachel Nuwer edited by Andrea Gawrylewski Evgeniia Siiankovskaia/Getty Images Dirty diapers are more than a messy reality of infant care—baby poop can be an indicator…
U.S. diets should include more of vitamins D and E, fiber, calcium and magnesium — all are essential nutrients that could offer health benefits.
Just about anybody who played hide-and-seek as a kid remembers counting, with eyes (presumably) covered, in units of one-one-thousand. “One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand.” It’s one way to develop a feel for the duration of a second. If you live to be 80 years old, you will experience 2,522,880,000 seconds, not any one of which feels like…
The cranium of a girl thought to be the offspring of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens parents Israel Hershkovitz A 140,000-year-old hominin skull from Israel probably belonged to a hybrid child of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens parents, according to an analysis of its anatomy. The 5-year-old girl was buried within the earliest known cemetery, possibly reshaping what we…
The first structures ever 3-D printed inside living cells point to applications for biology research.
