Life

  1. Microbes

    Explainer: What you can do to fight antibiotic resistance

    Doctors and scientists are not the only people who can help preserve the effectiveness of life-saving antibiotics. Even patients have a role to play, as these tips show.

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  2. Microbes

    The HIV cure — that wasn’t

    Immediate and aggressive drug treatment of a baby born with HIV appeared to have cured the girl. In fact, a follow-up shows, she still has the disease.

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  3. Fossils

    Mega-bird!

    What may have been the bird world’s biggest flier ever had wings so long, they would have had trouble flapping fast enough to keep it aloft in tough winds. But this behemoth would have been able to soar both far and fast.

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  4. Microbes

    Superbugs: A silent health emergency

    Have antibiotics become too popular? Overusing these medicines fuels resistant germs that pose a global health threat.

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  5. Microbes

    Explainer: Where antibiotics came from

    A mold proved the source of the first known antibiotic: penicillin. But chemical dyes would lead to the first antibiotics used in treating people.

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  6. Fossils

    This dino-bird is super-feathered

    This late-Jurassic dino was also a bird. Its ample coat of feathers emerged before any need for flight.

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  7. Animals

    Teen shows salty lionfish are getting fresh

    Lauren Arrington kept spotting lionfish in rivers near her Florida home. Her science fair project probed how much fresh water these ocean fish could stand — and led to a published research paper.

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  8. Animals

    Cool Jobs: A whale of a time

    Studying blue whales, spinner dolphins and other cetaceans demands clever ways to unveil the out-of-sight behaviors of these marine denizens.

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  9. Animals

    Explainer: What is a whale?

    Can a dolphin be a whale — or a whale be a dolphin? Yes, because the terms used to describe the biggest marine mammals are quite elastic and fuzzy.

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  10. Microbes

    How a germ killer could backfire

    A common ingredient in toothpaste and hand sanitizers kills germs on contact. But it also can kill the helpful germs that make water safer.

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  11. Fossils

    Hot-blooded dinos? Try lukewarm

    New study finds these reptiles may have had an internal furnace that sort of resembled some sharks. It appeared to run neither hot nor cold.

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  12. Genetics

    Owww! The science of pain

    No one likes pain, but it keeps us alive. That’s why scientists want to learn how best to coexist with this complicated and still somewhat mysterious sensation.

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