Skin Newly discovered organ may be lurking under your skinNational Geographic - Catherine ZuckermanIdentified in mice, the simple organ most likely exists in humans, too, offering fresh insight into how we experience painful pressure and pricks. Most people who’ve been jabbed by a needle know the drill:
Brain-computer interface Will we ever control the world with our minds?BBC Future - Mark PiesingFor decades, controlling computers by thought was the stuff of science fiction. But now we are tantalisingly close to a breakthrough. The question is, does it create more problems than it solves? Science-fiction
Scientists Just Solved a Mystery of How Gallstones Formdiscovermagazine.com - Daniel Bastardo Blanco Up to 25 million Americans suffer from gallstones. The unwanted pebbles form in the gallbladder and can grow to be as large as a golf ball. They can …
Carbon Carbon atoms marry to form first-ever ringsciencemag.org - Robert F. Service Carbon is a shapeshifter. When its atoms bond to four neighbors, it becomes diamond. With three bonds, it transforms into sheetlike graphite or …
HIV An HIV Genome From Two Decades Before Its DiscoveryThe Atlantic - Ed YongTo understand the virus’s history, a team worked to reconstruct its genome from a time before anyone knew the virus existed. In 1966, a 38-year-old man visited a hospital in what is now the Democratic
Science Stretchy sensor tracks its wearer's health via their skinnewatlas.com - Ben Coxworth It was just last year that we heard how scientists from Stanford University had designed a skin-worn sensor that measures stress via cortisol levels …
Lithium Could Iron Replace Lithium in Batteries?Popular Mechanics - By David GrossmanTransitioning to renewable energy across society will require many changes, including more batteries. Energy storage is crucial for making sure that inconsistent renewable sources, like wind or solar,
The Arctic A thawing Arctic is heating up a new Cold WarNational Geographic - Neil SheaNations—and their militaries—are scrambling to control long-frozen resources and new shipping routes. Late on a gray November afternoon Marvin Atqittuq, a newly elected patrol commander in the Arctic of
Zhuhai Planet 10 times Earth's mass may have smacked Jupiter long agoReuters - Will DunhamWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, may have been smacked head-on by an embryonic planet 10 times Earth’s mass not long after being formed, a monumental crash with apparent
North Pole The Bonkers Tech That Detects Lightning 6,000 Miles AwayWIRED - Condé Nast If lightning strikes a few hundred miles from the North Pole, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes, because there’s a global …
Microplastics Microplastic in the atmosphere is making its way to the ArcticLos Angeles Times - Amina KhanScientists who sampled seemingly pristine Arctic snow have discovered high levels of microplastics that were likely carried north by the atmosphere. The discovery, published in the journal Science Advances,
Science Newly-identified blood-sucking leech has been quietly living in American swamps for decadesnewatlas.com - Ben Coxworth It may not be a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster, but a somewhat creepy new animal species has recently been discovered. Named Macrobdella mimicus, it's …
Aliens Here’s what Earth might look like to alienssciencemag.org - Daniel Clery When Earthly astronomers train their telescopes on exoplanets beyond our solar system, they’re lucky to see even a single dot of light. How can they …
Drought 'Snow droughts' are coming for the American WestNational Geographic - Alejandra BorundaBy the middle of the century, two or more bad snow years in a row in mountains from Colorado to California will likely be the norm. On April 1 each year, researchers ski and snowshoe out into the high
Play buttonScience Incredibly Gross New Species of Fish Found in AntarcticaPopular Mechanics - By Courtney LinderThat's according to scientist Andrew Stewart, who discovered the curious new species of fish shown in the photo above during the filming of "Expedition Antarctica," a documentary following researchers
Theresa May Is crying truly cathartic?BBC Future - Christian JarrettWe tend to think of crying as cathartic… yet that crying in public is a sign of weakness. But researchers have found that both of these beliefs are false. When Theresa May announced in Downing Street she
Herbicides Plants' "body clocks" may determine when herbicides work bestnewatlas.com - Ben Coxworth Spraying crops with weed-killer is not only harmful to the environment, but it's also costly for farmers. With those problems in mind, scientists …
Mathematics New Proof Settles How to Approximate Numbers Like PiQuanta Magazine - Kevin Hartnett The ancient Greeks wondered when “irrational” numbers can be approximated by fractions. By proving the longstanding Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture, two …
Bears Humans, not glaciers, likely doomed Ice Age cave bearsNational Geographic - Tim VernimmenAnalysis of genetic material from dozens of prehistoric bears shows that their decline neatly matches the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. Neanderthals lived in Europe for thousands of centuries, and
Natural History Museum To date a dinosaurknowablemagazine.org - By Laura Poppick Stegosaur expert Susie Maidment is laying crucial groundwork for assigning ages to fossils from North America’s most dinosaur-rich rocks. More …
Proxima Centauri Dwarf star planets could glow with lifePopular Science - Charlie WoodFrom afar, the galaxy could look like a flashing rave. Though our cosmic backyard brims with planets, few seem fit for life as we know it. Some do orbit at just the right distance for water to stay liquid,
Frogs The man breeding Southern California's endangered yellow-legged frogLos Angeles Times - Louis SahagunIt was happy hour at the “Frog Shack,” a tiny building at the Los Angeles Zoo offering all the amenities that Southern California’s rarest — and perhaps fussiest — amphibians might need to survive. Aeration
Play buttonMathematics Math Is As Beautiful As ArtPopular Mechanics - By David GrossmanFor some people, math can be a necessary headache. Yes, algorithms guide countless aspects of daily life. There are tips to calculate and hours to count. But unless someone's a specialist, they'll probably
Fossils Why Does the U.S. Army Own So Many Fossils?Atlas Obscura - Sabrina Imbler In 1993, the sea seemed to return to Coralville, Iowa. Over 28 days of rain, 17,000 cubic feet of water flowed over the spillway of the dam there, …
Voyager 2 NASA's Voyagers Grow Weaker Each YearThe Atlantic - Marina KorenNASA is rationing watts to keep its oldest mission going. Beyond Earth and its bubble of satellites; past Mars, where rovers explore; past Jupiter and its circling orbiter—outside the solar system entirely—two
Gabon What Nut-Eating Gorillas in Gabon Mean for Human EvolutionAtlas Obscura - Isaac Schultz In Loango National Forest of Gabon, a group of western lowland gorillas sit down to dine. The gorilla diet is not exactly eclectic. It is mostly …
Black Holes To Make Two Black Holes Collide, Try ThreeQuanta Magazine - Erika K. Carlson How do black holes merge and make gravitational waves? Maybe with a little help from their friends. The spiraling dance of a pair of colliding black …
Medicine Japanese researchers build robotic tail to keep elderly uprightReuters - Reuters EditorialTOKYO (Reuters) - Millions of years after the ancestors of humans evolved to lose their tails, a research team at Japan’s Keio University have built a robotic one they say could help unsteady elderly keep
Our Cells Are Filled With ‘Junk DNA’ — Here’s Why We Need Itdiscovermagazine.com - Daniel Bastardo Blanco Would you purchase a book with over 98 percent of the text written in gibberish? Biology has no business in the book industry, yet it still writes a …
