Life
- Plants
Cool Job: Rethinking how plants hunt for water
Studies probing the very beginnings of root development may have important implications for growing food in a world where the climate is changing.
- Brain
Could Zika become a cancer treatment?
The same virus that provoked fear over causing birth defects, last year, may have a beneficial alter ego. Scientists find it may kill cells destined to form deadly brain tumors.
- Health & Medicine
Good germs lurk in gross places
What do poop, dog drool and snot have in common? Though disgusting, they all carry microbes that can help keep people healthy.
- Chemistry
Super-chilled imaging technique brings its developers the Nobel Prize in chemistry
Three men who helped develop a super-high-resolution imaging technique for proteins, viruses and more received the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
- Animals
To become Australians, these spiders crossed an ocean
The ancestors of a species of trapdoor spider must have survived a journey from Africa, a new genetic analysis finds.
- Brain
Understanding body clocks brings three a Nobel Prize
Three American men will share this year’s Nobel prize for physiology or medicine. The award recognizes their contributions to understanding the workings of the body’s biological clock.
- Chemistry
Why onions make us cry
Researchers add another piece to the molecular puzzle biochemists have tried to solve for decades — why onions can make our eyes tear up.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Dung
This word is used to refer to animal poop. You know, manure. Crap. Feces.
- Animals
Cool Jobs: Puzzling over proteins to study life and death
Scientists are using proteins to understand dinosaur family trees, to fight malnutrition with a peanut-butter mix in Africa and to make “Google maps” of human cells.
- Genetics
Genes may predict how well the flu vaccine will work in young people
The activity of nine genes predicted how well people 35 and under would respond to the flu vaccine.
- Earth
Expedition finds South Pacific plastic patch bigger than India
A giant, floating ‘garbage patch’ in the South Pacific off Chile’s coast is mostly tiny bits of plastic.
- Brain
Spying on brains in action
New tools let scientists see inside the brain and nervous system as their research subjects move around.
