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The youngest sex chromosomes on the block, and how to test a Zika vaccine without Zika cases
Strawberries had both male and female parts, like most plants, until several million years ago. This may seem like a long time ago, but it actually m…
7 years, 6 months ago
Should we prioritize which endangered species to save, and why were chemists baffled by soot for so long?
We are in the middle of what some scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction and not all at-risk species can be saved. That’s causing some cons…
7 years, 6 months ago
<i>Science</i> and <i>Nature</i> get their social science studies replicated—or not, the mechanisms behind human-induced earthquakes, and the taboo of claiming causality in science
A new project out of the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, found that of all the experimental social science papers published in …
7 years, 7 months ago
Sending flocks of tiny satellites out past Earth orbit and solving the irrigation efficiency paradox
Small satellites—about the size of a briefcase—have been hitching rides on rockets to lower Earth orbit for decades. Now, because of their low cost a…
7 years, 7 months ago
Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure—from robots
Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece—known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean c…
7 years, 7 months ago
Doubts about the drought that kicked off our latest geological age, and a faceoff between stink bugs with samurai wasps
We now live in the Meghalayan age—the last age of the Holocene epoch. Did you get the memo? A July decision by the International Commission on Strati…
7 years, 7 months ago
How our brains may have evolved for language, and clues to what makes us leaders—or followers
Yes, humans are the only species with language, but how did we acquire it? New research suggests our linguistic prowess might arise from the same pro…
7 years, 8 months ago
Liquid water on Mars, athletic performance in transgender women, and the lost colony of Roanoke
Billions of years ago, Mars probably hosted many water features: streams, rivers, gullies, etc. But until recently, water detected on the Red Planet …
7 years, 8 months ago
Why the platypus gave up suckling, and how gravity waves clear clouds
Suckling mothers milk is a pretty basic feature of being a mammal. Humans do it. Possums do it. But monotremes such as the platypus and echidna—altho…
7 years, 8 months ago
The South Pole’s IceCube detector catches a ghostly particle from deep space, and how rice knows to grow when submerged
A detection of a single neutrino at the 1-square-kilometer IceCube detector in Antarctica may signal the beginning of “neutrino astronomy.” The neutr…
7 years, 8 months ago