All Stories
- Animals
Scientists Say: Exoskeleton
This plate armor provides protection to insects, spiders and more. But that benefit comes with tradeoffs.
- Physics
Much of the sun’s light is green. Why does it look yellow?
Sunlight's peak intensity is at a green wavelength. Here’s why it doesn’t appear that way to us.
- Humans
Wiggling ears may have once helped boost human hearing
Ancient ear muscles may not help us hear today. They can, however, offer one readout of how hard someone is trying to listen.
- Animals
Can this ‘woolly mouse’ help bring back extinct mammoths?
Scientists created mice with woolly mammoth–like traits. But that doesn’t mean we’re close to bringing back woolly mammoths.
- Animals
Dire wolves or not, these pups could help counter extinction
Some question if these are just gene-tweaked gray wolves. Still, the tech behind the new "dire wolves" might help some living at-risk species avoid extinction.
- Health & Medicine
Explainer: What is cancer?
Cancer is a whole collection of diseases with one thing in common: all develop when the body’s cells start dividing out of control.
- Materials Science
A beautiful blue butterfly wing offers a new way to study cancer
Once a morpho butterfly wing is placed atop a thin slice of tissue, shining polarized light through it can help reveal how likely breast cancer is to spread.
- Brain
Let’s learn about memory
Brain injuries, drug use and other factors can impair our memory. But targeted practice and healthy habits can boost our ability to remember.
- Materials Science
This engineer uses light to get hearts pumping
Pengju Li designed a new type of pacemaker to help doctors during open-heart surgery.
- Plants
Scientists Say: Circumnutation
Plants are always on the move, their tips slowly waving in search of better light — a process called circumnutation.
- Tech
Squirty gels bring food-like flavors to virtual reality
A new device recreates complex flavors including lemonade, coffee and fish soup by delivering a mix of chemicals.
- Animals
Analyze This: Why the fastest creatures are neither tiny or huge
The “Goldilocks zone” for fast animal speed seems to depend on a body not being too small or so big it gets in the way of its own strength.
