Technology

Why does a glass of wine make a holiday party feel more festive? It might be because our forebears used to party. PREMIUM A chimpanzee in Uganda eating fruit scrumped from the ground. Not the ancient Greeks, though they did name a…

Measles is making a comeback in the Americas.  The United States may soon have to return its gold medal status of measles elimination, a ranking bestowed by the World Health Organization that signals the virus is under control…

In 2009, Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team were combing the desert landscape of Burtele, a paleontological site in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, when Stephanie Melillo found something remarkable: an ancient, humanlike foot bone.…

When the wind blows on Mars, electricity crackles through the air. For the first time, scientists have detected electricity in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. A microphone on NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the sounds and…

Belém, Brazil — The Amazon rainforest is a poster child for the perils of climate change. Deforestation and warming temperatures threaten to push the iconic forest past its limits. So Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, was a…

Gratitude is arguably as quintessential to Thanksgiving as turkey, cranberry sauce and the kumbaya story of Pilgrims and Native Americans coming together. The word “thanks” is, after all, right there in the holiday’s name. Yet if…

Small, icy moons might be boiling under their surface. Many moons in the outer solar system are thought to harbor subsurface oceans beneath their icy crusts. New computer simulations, reported November 24 in Nature Astronomy,…

The koalas clambering around eucalyptus canopies may be cuddly herbivores, but their extinct relatives were horrifying predators. The charismatic marsupials are the closest living relatives of marsupial lions — powerful…

Tiny life-forms with bright colors might point the way to big dinosaur bone discoveries. In the badlands of western Canada, two species of lichen prefer making their homes on dinosaur bones instead of on the surrounding desert…

Takanori Takebe is on a mission to find out if people can breathe through their butts. As a medical doctor and stem cell biologist, Takebe spends most of his time trying to develop lab-made livers to treat organ failure. His…

Bats beware. The ability to fly won’t save you from hungry, determined rats. In a first, brown rats were filmed hunting bats by catching them midair. The finding, published in the November Global Ecology and Conservation, puts…

In people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, researchers linked minimal to moderate physical activity to a 3-to 7-year delay in cognitive symptoms.

Nancy Shute is editor in chief of Science News Media Group. Previously, she was an editor at NPR and US News & World Report, and a contributor to National Geographic and Scientific American. She is a past president of the…

You are participating in a holiday gift exchange with a few classmates. You each write down your own name on a slip of paper and fold it up. Then all the students place their names into a single hat. Next, students pull a…

Is your face a glazed doughnut or a dewy dumpling? I don’t mean which of these foods are stuck on your face. Instead, these are all recent skin care trends, which, despite some key differences, share a similarity beyond their…

When the United States faced the looming threat of World War II in the 1930s, it bet big on science — and won. The nation invested billions of dollars in research at universities and in industry. That influx of funds led to…

New scientific findings come out every day. Often, people only learn about the researchers behind some of these discoveries years or decades later when they win a Nobel Prize. We think you should know about them much sooner.…

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into Earth and the planet suddenly went dark. The impact and its aftermath were catastrophic. Tsunamis inundated coastlines, earthquakes rattled the ground, acid rain poured from…

This time of year, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is a nearly inescapable earworm. Rudolph, the old song goes, is bullied for having a nose so bright it glows (like a lightbulb!). But one Christmas Eve, his much-mocked nose…

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…

Our staff’s favorite books of the year pondered science’s role in some of society’s most pressing issues, from AI to childhood trauma to river restoration. Did we miss your favorite? Let us know at feedback@sciencenews.org.…

The International Space Station (ISS) shared a series of visuals of the urban areas lit up at night, which could be seen from space. Among them is Delhi. A picture shows the national capital shining brightly as the night lights form an…

The thunderous roar of the MGM lion that has opened Hollywood films for nearly a century has conditioned us to hear the big cat’s call as a blunt declaration: a booming blast announcing power and presence. But the real…

SAN DIEGO — A diet low in the amino acid glutamate may ease migraines, a small study suggests. A month of staying away from high-glutamate foods led to fewer migraines in a group of 25 people with Gulf War Illness. The…

In an extraordinary display of biological resilience, moss spores survived for nine months outside the International Space Station. The spores were then returned to Earth, where 86 percent germinated and began to grow, researchers…

Flu vaccines that take a page from the COVID-19 vaccine platform are making progress in clinical trials. In a phase 3 trial, Pfizer’s mRNA flu vaccine outperformed a traditional vaccine, researchers report in the Nov. 20…

The Arctic char, a red-pink bellied relative of trout and salmon, is a staple food source for millions of people living in the Arctic. But that dynamic is being embrangled by climate change, as the Arctic is warming two to four…

A material that slips through skin might someday make needle-free insulin possible for people with diabetes. In mice and mini pigs, attaching the permeating polymer to insulin and applying the resulting compound like a cream…

In September, the federal committee that makes vaccine recommendations voted to change the childhood immunization schedule. That in itself isn’t unusual; past committees have done so over the years. But this time, careful…

When it comes to learning something new, old-fashioned Googling might be the smarter move compared with asking ChatGPT. Large language models, or LLMs — the artificial intelligence systems that power chatbots like ChatGPT — are…