Microbial Cocktails Are More Than a Gut Feeling
[ad_1] In 2023, our understanding of the microbes that live inside the human gut will lead to new ideas for medicine. Today, we know that gut microbes help develop and…
Humans Walk Weird. Scientists May Finally Know Why
[ad_1] For something so routine, walking is shockingly complicated. Biomechanists break a single step into several phases: First there’s touchdown, when your heel strikes the floor. Next comes the single…
Why Do You Get Sick in the Winter? Blame Your Nose
[ad_1] To figure out what exactly was causing this antiviral capability, the scientists then incubated the vesicles with the viruses and imaged them under a microscope. They found that the…
A Drug to Treat Aging May Not Be a Pipe Dream
[ad_1] Life expectancy in the best-performing countries has been increasing by three months per year every year since the early 1800s. Throughout most of human history, you had a roughly…
The Many Metaphors of Metamorphosis
[ad_1] As far as metaphors for change go, this is a potent one. Yet when we think about the future and the change we might want to make, the natural…
Here’s What’s Next for Pig Organ Transplants
[ad_1] Starting in the 1960s, doctors attempted transplants of kidneys, hearts, and livers from baboons and chimpanzees—humans’ closest genetic relatives—into people. But the organs failed within weeks, if not days,…
The Mystery of Nevada’s Ancient Reptilian Boneyard
[ad_1] Berlin, Nevada, is a treasure chest for paleontologists. Just down the road from now-abandoned gold and silver mines, a rockbound collection of bones hints at an even richer past.…
Your Brain Uses Calculus to Control Fast Movements
[ad_1] A mouse is running on a treadmill embedded in a virtual reality corridor. In its mind’s eye, it sees itself scurrying down a tunnel with a distinctive pattern of…
Pink Snow Is Not a Cute Phenomenon—Here’s Why
[ad_1] The scientists used the device to record the snow’s albedo, a measure of what fraction of the sunlight beaming down is reflected back up. Red snow means lower albedo,…
The Extraordinary Shelf Life of the Deep Sea Sandwiches
[ad_1] In the late 1960s, a submersible named Alvin suffered a mishap off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The bulbous white vessel, holding a crew of three, was being lowered for…
Scientists Reexamine Why Zebra Stripes Mysteriously Repel Flies
[ad_1] For the current study, Tombak, then a PhD candidate at Princeton, and her team wanted to test stripe width to see if narrower ones might be even more repulsive…
To Ditch Pesticides, Scientists Are Hacking Insects’ Sex Signals
[ad_1] Proving that this way of producing pheromones works, and that they’re effective, has taken almost a decade. “We are now looking at scaling up the process and introducing them…
Turns Out Fighting Mosquitoes With Mosquitoes Actually Works
[ad_1] The Aedes aegypti mosquito is not just a nuisance—it’s a known carrier of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika viruses. Distinguished by the black and white stripes on its legs, the…
This Gulp of Engineered Bacteria Is Meant to Treat Disease
[ad_1] In the muddy trenches of World War I, thousands of soldiers on both sides fell ill with dysentery, a diarrheal disease often spread by contaminated water. Curiously, one German…
The Sci-Fi Dream of a ‘Molecular Computer’ Is Getting More Real
[ad_1] The reason they could opt for a more information-dense bit is because of the physics of the reading head. When the head sticks to a -1, it contorts in…
How to Detect a Man-Made Biothreat
[ad_1] But even if the platforms’ accuracy improves, it’s hard to know whether they would be able to detect a completely new organism that scientists have never seen before. Richard…
The Spooky Science of How Undead Spores Reanimate
[ad_1] Here’s a spooky conundrum: Is a spore alive or dead? Gürol Süel, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, wouldn’t blame you if you voted for dead:…
Sorry, Prey. Black Widows Have Surprisingly Good Memory
[ad_1] Black widows must despise Clint Sergi. While working on his PhD in biology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Sergi spent his time designing little challenges for spiders—which often involved…
After Hurricane Ian’s Floods, the Flesh-Eating Bacteria
[ad_1] In September, Hurricane Ian smashed into the southwest coast of Florida, bringing with it a storm surge that reached 13 feet in the coastal town of Fort Myers. Warm,…
Gas Drilling Is Disrupting Animal Migration
[ad_1] In general, it’s surprising how little ecologists know about why large animals choose their migration paths. The motivations for moving are obvious, and include things like food, water, and…
The Search for a Pill That Can Help Dogs—and Humans—Live Longer
[ad_1] halioua began 2020 with $5.1 million in funding. By way of thanks she sent all of her investors, including Rosen, fluffy toy puppies wearing company bandanas. She secured an…
A Huge New Data Set Pushes the Limits of Neuroscience
[ad_1] So neuroscientists use an approach called “dimensionality reduction” to make such visualization possible—they take data from thousands of neurons and, by applying clever techniques from linear algebra, describe their…
The Era of Fast, Cheap Genome Sequencing Is Here
[ad_1] Comparing those genomes to those of people without schizophrenia has allowed investigators to uncover multiple genes that have a profound impact on a person’s risk of developing it. By…
The Secret Microscope That Sparked a Scientific Revolution
[ad_1] “It almost seems as if Van Leeuwenhoek knew that a new microworld was to unfold,” Cocquyt told me. One of his scientific rivals, Johannes Hudde, later said, “isn’t it…
A Wheel Made of ‘Odd Matter’ Spontaneously Rolls Uphill
[ad_1] In a physics lab in Amsterdam, there’s a wheel that can spontaneously roll uphill by wiggling. This “odd wheel” looks simple: just six small motors linked together by plastic…