The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating FrogCarly Anne YorkBasic Books, $30 What’s the purpose of your study? It’s the question many basic-science researchers dread. And it’s the question that Carly Anne York received about 10 years ago from a fellow volunteer at the Virginia Zoo. At the time, York was a Ph.D. student studying squid…
Loneliness Is Inflaming Our Bodies—And Our Politics Medical research shows that social isolation is a serious chronic stressor. You can say something similar about its impact on our political system By Kim Samuel Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images Hannah Arendt has been on my mind a lot lately. The 20th-century German-Jewish political philosopher escaped the Nazi Holocaust,…
An initiative led by Brazil will pay countries to preserve tropical forests Luiz Claudio Marigo/Nature Picture Library/Alamy At the COP30 climate summit in November, a group of countries led by Brazil will launch a bold new initiative that will pay tropical countries to maintain forest cover. Instead of relying on donations or selling carbon credits,…
Controlling sound has long been a staple of science fiction and fantasy. In Dune, the cone of silence allows characters to converse privately, even in open spaces. The eerie billboards of Blade Runner 2049 whisper advertisements into the ears of those passing by. In the real world, quirks of architecture, intentional or not, can direct…
Ah, it’s a lovely night for enjoying the outdoors. You go outside in the warm summer air to listen to the crickets and breathe in the scents of verdant life and then turn your head to the heavens. You see hundreds of stars in the sky, and the brightest are conspicuously twinkling and gleaming. Some…
House builders in England are required to create benefits for nature Shutterstock / Jevanto Productions Housing developers in England are failing to deliver biodiversity measures required under their planning conditions, with developments routinely missing the woodland planting, wildflower grasslands, hedgehog highways and bat boxes promised by firms. Since last year, housing developers are required to…
Wavelike patterns in 115-million-year-old amber suggest that a long-ago tsunami inundated what is now northern Japan, researchers report May 15 in Scientific Reports. Tsunamis can be destructive and, to anything alive nearby, often terrifying. But the physical damage wrought by these giant waves eventually erodes away, typically leaving behind little evidence of their passage. As…
This Strange Mutation Explains the Mystifying Color of Orange Cats Your orange cat may host a never-before-seen genetic pathway for color pigmentation, according to new studies By Gayoung Lee edited by Lauren J. Young Chris Winsor/Getty Images Cats are arguably perfect. At least, evidence suggests that felines, which have evolved with minimal variation and maximal…
Baby KJ after a gene-editing infusion with researchers Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas and Kiran Musunuru Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia A baby boy with a life-threatening genetic condition has become the first person to receive a bespoke CRISPR gene-editing treatment, giving a glimpse into what the future of medicine might look like. It’s the first time anyone has…
Researchers found the gene and genetic variation behind orange fur in most domestic cats, solving a decades-long mystery.
