Technology

Poison? What poison? Some bacteria may treat the powerful toxins bathing poison dart frog skin like a buffet.  The alkaloid chemicals that poison dart frogs wield on their skin increase the variety of microbial species living…

McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of…

Soft diet, weak jaws. If red squirrels eat too many peanuts, their jaws end up weaker than the jaws of squirrels eating natural diets, researchers report January 15 in Royal Society Open Science. The results show that…

The viruses of cold and flu season are upon us, and in us, where they’re causing misery upon misery. But don’t worry. You can hop online, and for a mere $24.95, buy yourself a bottle of Zeebo Relief pills, designed to ease your…

STOCKHOLM — A Swedish artist is about to have the dream of a lifetime fulfilled: a little red model house he created will be launched into space this week and, if all goes according to plan, put on the surface of the moon. HT Image…

United by FireDenver Museum of Nature & ScienceAvailable wherever you get your podcasts For hundreds of millions of years, wildfires were directed solely by the weather, vegetation and terrain. But in the last century in…

Aircraft battling fires raging through the Los Angeles area are dropping more than water: Hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot-pink fire suppressant ahead of the flames in a desperate effort to stop them before they destroy more…

An undiscovered population of ancient black holes may be lurking throughout the universe. These bottomless cosmic pits would have a lot in common with more familiar black holes; in some cases, the two may be indistinguishable. But…

Baby Boomers may drive a drastic increase in dementia cases in coming decades, but there are steps people can take to reduce their risk.

Baby Boomers may drive a drastic increase in dementia cases in coming decades, but there are steps people can take to reduce their risk.

The year is 2015. “Mad scientist” Doc Brown has just brought wide-eyed teenager Marty McFly to the future in style: aboard a flying DeLorean. Although the time travelers are out of place, their mode of transportation is not. Cars…

It’s all relative Betelgeuse may have a sun-sized companion starthat orbits it about once every 2,100 days, astronomy writer Lisa Grossman reported in “Betelgeuse’s invisible buddy.” The story describes Betelgeuse as “the…

Editor in chief Nancy Shute introduces the new look and format of Science News, as it moves from publishing biweekly to monthly.

It’s official: The year 2024 was indeed the hottest on record. It was also the first year in recorded history that Earth’s average temperature was higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Scientists…

Citations S.A. Shah et al. Use of artificial intelligence–based detection of diabetic retinopathy in the US. JAMA Ophthalmology. Vol. 142, December 2024, p. 1171. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2024.4493. R. Amin et al. Immune digital…

A glyphosate-resistant weed has been found in the UK for the first time in what comes as another headache for British farmers. Glyphosate is the most effective herbicide for clearing vegetation before planting crops, but it is also used…

Shadows into LightTheresa S. BetancourtHarvard Univ., $35 For more than two decades, Theresa S. Betancourt has followed the lives of children (now adults) who returned home after being forced to fight in the civil war that…

Recovery from PTSD comes with key changes in the brain’s memory system, a new study finds. These differences were found in the brains of 19 people who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after the 2015 terrorist attacks in…

The demise of most of Australia’s kangaroo species by 40,000 years ago may have had less to do with climate-caused dietary pressures and more to do with human hunters. Dental analyses of ancient kangaroos reveal they weren’t…

Unusually dry conditions and hurricane-force seasonal winds are fueling multiple fast-moving and destructive wildfires in Los Angeles County. Gusts that reached over 145 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour) quickly drove the…

Landscapes in Southeast Asia once thought to stifle biological evolution may instead stoke its fires. Karst ecosystems have been referred to as arks of biodiversity, a term that highlights their biological richness but also…

Supercell thunderstorms are known for their devastatingly gnarly tornadoes, but exactly how the twisters form is poorly understood. A new study suggests that scientists could glean hints with a little help from the cosmos.…

Feces don’t get enough credit as food. The stinky stuff is not just an end product after food gets eaten, digested and finally discarded by animal guts. Poop can also be something nutritious, useful and actually eaten (again)…

The link between drinking alcohol and developing cancer, described in a new report by the U.S. Surgeon General, may come as a surprise to many Americans. Although evidence for this link has been growing for some time, fewer…

The link between drinking alcohol and developing cancer, described in a new report by the U.S. Surgeon General, may come as a surprise to many Americans. Although evidence for this link has been growing for some time, fewer…

H5N1 has infected 66 people in the United States since early 2024, mostly causing mild illness. A Louisiana man was the first to get severely sick.

Jan 07, 2025 09:38 PM IST Auroras are beautiful lights seen near the North and South Poles. If you are near the North Pole, the lights are called aurora borealis or Northern Lights. NASA astronaut Donald Petit has shared a…

“Forever chemicals” are pervasive, and researchers have in recent years been ringing the alarms about the negative impacts on human health. But humans aren’t the only animals to be concerned about. Freshwater turtles in…

On January 7, 2025, a powerful earthquake struck Tibet near Mount Everest, registering a magnitude of 7.1 according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and 6.8 by Chinese authorities. The tremor, with its epicenter in Tingri County, about…

AI is as good as clinicians at interpreting mammograms, a real-world study with nearly 500,000 participants in Germany suggests.