Life
- Animals
True vampires
Forget Count Dracula or Twilight’s Edward and Bella. Many creatures have a true thirst for blood, and here’s why.
- Animals
Vampires’ gift of ‘blood honey’
A Maryland biologist probes the unusual dining behaviors of a blood-thirsty bat.
- Brain
‘Study drugs’ can be dangerous
The misuse of these ADHD medicines not only constitutes cheating, but they can become addictive and can mess with your head.
- Health & Medicine
Mining medicine from poop
Researchers find a much less yucky way to treat people with a common killer infection.
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- Microbes
Slimming germs
In the gut, the right microbe mix can help keep off extra weight — at least in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Explainer: Where and when did HIV begin?
The virus that causes AIDS may have evolved in monkeys or apes more than a century ago.
- Brain
The upside of cheating
Many people assume that cheaters and thieves will secretly feel shame or guilt. A new study challenges that. It finds that people who cheat without causing anyone much harm actually enjoy a little buzz afterward.
- Microbes
Mystery microbes of the sea
Biologists find archaea a true curiosity. They make up one of life’s three main branches. The two better known branches are bacteria and eukaryotes (u KARE ee oatz). That last branch includes animals, plants and fungi. But archaea have remained mysterious. Very little is known about them. In fact, their unique status wasn’t even recognized until relatively recently, in 1977.
- Brain
Age-old fears perk up baby’s ears
Kids start paying attention to scary sounds when only a few months old.
- Life
Building an almost-brain
Special cells can weave themselves together into blobs that, under a microscope, look a lot like the brain tissue in a developing fetus. You might think of these cellular masses as “brains-under-development.” Madeline Lancaster and Jürgen Knoblich offer a more technical name for them: “cerebral organoids.”
- Brain
Learning words in the womb
Fetuses are listening. And they’ll remember what they heard. Studies had shown they can hear songs and learn sounds while in the womb. Now scientists show that fetuses can learn specific words, too. And for at least a few days after they’re born, babies can still recall commonly repeated words.
