A bad press release makes a good excuse to look at how developmental biology works. Late last week, we started seeing headlines about how new research was suggesting we might have two brains instead of the one that seems to show up on MRI scans. As is so often…
Post-eruption imaging of the Hunga caldera gives new details of its collapse. Krakatau, a volcanic island in Indonesia, killed more than 30,000 people when it erupted in 1883. One might assume that volcanic debris posed the major threat, yet many of the victims died from a tsunami caused by…
First paper added to community collection is a roadmap for research. Last year, the Trump administration did what it could to shut down work on the next US National Climate Assessment, eliminating funding for the US Global Change Research Program and booting hundreds of contributing authors. The administration even…
Pending move comes over the objections of the NIH director. On Friday, The Washington Post reported on a contentious White House meeting in which the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jay Bhattacharya, tried to fend off yet another effort to place funding decisions under political control.…
Isotope ratios provide a hint that the giants were actively managing temperatures. For most of the last century, T. rex was pictured as a sluggish, tail-dragging reptile that had to warm up in the sun before it could go anywhere. Then, further research changed that view, replacing it with…
Research suggests that bilingualism can offer cognitive benefits. Learning another language is a highly complex mental activity. It requires people to remember words, distinguish unfamiliar sounds, recognize patterns, work out grammatical rules, and retrieve the right expression at the right moment. All of this happens while listening, interpreting, and…
Chariklo is only about 250 km across, but it has two rings, and they’re changing. For decades, astronomers thought rings were something only giant planets had. That changed in 2013, when a small, dark body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus passed in front of a star and blinked twice…
Rare cells with widespread connectivity seem to be able to trigger sleep. For a long time, sleep research has treated the cerebral cortex as a passive follower reacting to signals from the deep brain. “Usually, sleep is associated with being controlled by subcortical regions,” said Geoffrey Terral, a neuroscientist…
Ning Xu of Tsinghua University captured tiny cilia beating in airways of a child with rare respiratory disorder. Abnormal beating of airway cilia from a child with Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, a genetic disorder affecting respiratory function. Credit: Ning Xu, Tsinghua University Abnormal beating of airway cilia from a child…
Public health groups warn EPA rule will cost Americans billions in health bills. Days after finalizing a rule that would eliminate climate rules for power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was sued by groups who say the EPA’s repeal was shockingly short-sighted and risked leaving the country’s single…
