Technology

For the first time, researchers have successfully extracted and decoded RNA from an extinct animal. The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was a wolflike marsupial that went extinct after the last one died in a zoo…

Searching for superheavies — Science News, September 8, 1973 Physicists and chemists have been actively searching for superheavy elements, substances with atomic weights and numbers greater than the 105 now known.…

The future of disease tracking is going down the drain — literally. Flushed with success over detecting coronavirus in wastewater, and even specific variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, researchers are now…

Modified logs dating to about 476,000 years ago might be the oldest evidence of wooden structures, a new study finds. Wooden artifacts decompose easily and are relatively scant in the archaeological record compared with stone…

Ask Clara Sousa-Silva about her research and she’ll be absolutely clear: Yes, she is looking for aliens. But she is not hunting them. “The idea that I’m hunting anything, I find very distasteful,” she says. “I have spent my…

The world’s largest source of natural diamonds — and of more than 90 percent of all natural pink diamonds found so far — may have formed due to the breakup of Earth’s first supercontinent, researchers report September 19 in Nature…

A Costa Rican pirate spider lives up to the family name: It tricks closely related orb weaver spiders into “walking the plank,” right to their doom.  The world’s many pirate spiders exploit a very particular food source — other…

Some days really are longer than others. And now scientists know by precisely how much. Using a laser gyroscope, scientists have measured variations in Earth’s rotation rate smaller than a millionth of a percent. The technique…

The human body is made up of a complex community of trillions of cells of diverse shapes and sizes, all working together to keep you alive. The smallest of these cells, like platelets and red blood cells, are dwarfed by massive…

Scientists have discovered that the lancet liver fluke parasite, notorious for turning ants into "zombies" by manipulating their brains, is even more cunning than previously believed. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen in…

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is set to create history on September 24, 2023, by bringing back samples from the asteroid Bennu after spending seven years in deep space. Asteroid Bennu is a potentially hazardous, near-Earth space rock that…

The Deepest MapLaura TretheweyHarper Wave, $32 In 2019, the multimillionaire and explorer Victor Vescovo made headlines when he became the first person to visit the deepest parts of all five of Earth’s oceans. But arguably…

Until recently, gravitational waves could have been a figment of Einstein’s imagination. Before they were detected, these ripples in spacetime existed only in the physicist’s general theory of relativity, as far as scientists…

PTI | | Posted by Sreelakshmi B The first test vehicle mission of India's ambitious maiden human spaceflight venture Gaganyaan to validate the crew escape system will be launched in a month or two, a key ISRO official said on…

The woman’s mysterious symptoms started in her stomach. Weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea led to night sweats and a dry cough. Then, doctors found lesions on her lungs, liver and spleen. An infection, perhaps. But tests for bacteria,…

Could the lives of the eight billion people currently on Earth have depended on the resilience of just 1,280 human ancestors who very nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago? The study, published in the journal Science earlier this month,…

A “magic number” of physics might not be so magic after all. Using a powerful particle accelerator, researchers have spotted an elusive variant of oxygen for the first time. The isotope, oxygen-28, was predicted to be stable…

By now, it’s no secret that the phrase “bird brain” should be a compliment, not an insult. Some of our feathered friends are capable of complex cognitive tasks, including tool use (SN: 2/10/23). Among the brainiest feats that…

Hulking hunters like Burmese pythons may be famous for scarfing up deer, alligators and other enormous prey (SN: 11/25/15). But one unassuming little African snake may take the title for most outsized meals. The nonvenomous,…

On the morning of September 5, a loosely swirling system of thunderstorms formed off the western coast of Africa. By September 6, the system had become a Category 1 storm, with maximum winds at least 130 kilometers per hour (80…

As an amateur historian studying Philippine-American history in Washington, D.C., I’ve long been familiar with the story of Arturo Rotor and Emma Unson Rotor. The couple moved from the Philippines to Baltimore in 1941 for…

Like teenage Romeos toting sticker-plastered guitar cases, male palm cockatoos show that romancing a crush with a love song isn’t just about music — it’s also about style. Wild palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) craft…

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio now holds the record for the longest US spaceflight. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.(AP) Rubio surpassed the US space endurance record of 355 days on Monday at the International Space Station. He arrived at the…

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ Nancy Shute is editor in chief of Science News Media Group. Previously, she was an editor at NPR…

Feline fecundity One shot of an experimental gene therapy kept female cats kitten-free for at least two years, Erin Garcia de Jesús reported in “Gene therapy prevents cat pregnancy” (SN: 7/15/23 & 7/29/23, p. 10).…

Occasional flashes light up Venus’ shroud of clouds. Previous analyses have hinted that the bursts of light could be lightning in the hellish world’s atmosphere. But a new study suggests most of the flashes may be nothing more…

On a series of expeditions along the spine of the Andes Mountains, a team of high-climbing researchers has found mammalian life scampering through some of Earth’s harshest environments. From 2020 to 2022, evolutionary biologist Jay Storz…

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju shared pictures of ‘Matsya 6000’, a submersible which is in preparation for exploring the deep oceans as part of India's ‘Samudrayaan Mission’ being developed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology…

British scientist Ian Wilmut, whose research was central to the creation of the cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, has died at the age of 79, the University of Edinburgh said on Monday. Ian Wilmut (File)(AP) His death on Sunday years after…

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