Life
- Health & Medicine
Humans might be able to hibernate during space travel
Scientists are studying how animals hibernate and developing new technologies to help humans sleep through space travel.
- Brain
Let’s learn about the science of language
The languages we speak may help shape how we see, smell and hear the world around us.
- Plants
Analyze This: Plants sound off when they’re in trouble
When dry or cut, tomato and tobacco plants make sounds too high for humans to hear. Such sounds could provide a way to snoop on crops.
- Health & Medicine
Hand dryers can infect clean hands with bathroom germs
Hot-air hand dryers are a haven for microbes. A finalist at Regeneron ISEF found that these machines spray germs all over freshly washed hands.
- Animals
How to tell if cats are having fun — or if fur is flying
Quietly wrestling cats may be hard at play. But if they’re chasing and yowling, you might have a cat fight on your hands.
- Microbes
Scientists Say: Virus
A virus must take over a living cell's machinery to make more viruses.
- Fossils
Ocean life may have bounced back after the ‘Great Dying’
Marine ecosystems may have been back in action just a million years after the most severe extinction event known.
- Ecosystems
Let’s learn about how wildfires keep ecosystems healthy
Wildfires are so important for many ecosystems that sometimes professionals set them on purpose.
- Brain
Ingredients in popular snack foods can make them addictive
Researchers find that highly processed foods rich in sugar and added fat may be as addictive as tobacco.
- Plants
Mimosa plant ‘muscles’ fold tickled leaves fast
A mimosa plant uses special cells to close leaflets when bumped and then reopen them — again and again.
- Animals
People and animals sometimes team up to hunt for food
Dolphins working with people to catch fish recently made a big splash. But humans have a long history of cooperating with other animals.
- Animals
Pokémon ‘evolution’ looks more like metamorphosis
Pokémon “evolve” into larger, more powerful forms within seconds, but this evolution more closely resembles another biological process — metamorphosis.
